SERIES: Only When I Sleep 11
DISCLAIMER: I'm really not capable of the brilliance of AtS, or BtVS (first few seasons anyway).
TIMELINE: After 'Triangle' and 'Redefinition' (just pretend they were simultaneous, and you'll be fine).
SPOILERS: Darla arc, 'Triangle'.
SYNOPSIS: Buffy dreams with... the finer parts of Angel.
DISTRIBUTION: Anyone can have it, but please ask first :).
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I pretty much did Surly Angel in the last installment. Obsessive Voiceover Automaton Angel will get old fast, not least for me, < g > and I believe it's going to last at least another couple of eps. They can handle it, they have other characters and, yeah, plots; a one-on-one dream/discussion fic probably can't. So I'm not going to try. Instead: Darla said it wasn't Angel or Angelus; last time it wasn't 'Angel' the soul was in the ether. So I'm going to work on the basis that the bit of Angel that's getting through to Buffy - that wants to get through to Buffy -is the saner bit that's currently stuck/hiding/sitting depressed wherever and therefore hopefully avoid the heartbreak of one-sided conversation. It was pretty much a straight choice between going this way and flinging the computer out the window, but I'll think about it for the next one.
FEEDBACK: Those method thoughts? Also depend on response < g >. So tell me if you think it works! (or if it doesn't, but please be nice).
RATING: PG-12
THANKS: Being now halfway through (whoohoo!) I feel compelled to pour out gratitude to everyone who has sent me feedback on this series, because without it I would have given up (or at the very least still be languishing around the third episodes). I haven't got room to put names, but it's all been appreciated. Special shout-out to all my dedicated feedbackers, who've sent it for all or nearly all the parts; again, no room to name, but you know who you are, and you're hugely, wildly appreciated ;).

It's completely possible to cry yourself to sleep. I mean, I knew that, because I've done it before, a lot. I think what I meant was, it's possible to fake-cry yourself to sleep. To weep and sob at any time without ever being totally sure why you're doing it, but it's expected and you feel like you should, and it is kind of a release, so you do. But it doesn't really mean anything.

I'm not being inhumanly unemotional and unfeeling here: I miss Riley. I do. I'm sad that he's gone, and about why he's gone, that he felt flirting with death was preferable to talking to me, and especially that I never realised. Maybe part of me is sadder at losing the chance of having something than I am at losing him specifically, but it's an ache. It is getting better, but it still hurts.

It's just that that hurt has to contend with another abandonment issue. I have Angel's leaving to compare it to, and it just... doesn't. Riley's going has left a big hole in my life. Angel's going left a big hole in my heart. And only one of them is unfillable.

Which is why I decided I was going to stay away from all men in all possible planes and dimensions for a little while. Including certain exes.

Can one gird one's subconscious?

* * * * *

So no-one was more surprised than me to find myself wandering around Angel's old apartment. Yes, THE apartment, and the less said about that the better because a hell of a lot of my loneliness focuses on this place.

The place was changed. Subtly. I checked the bookcases, and the books were all upside down and sticking out, and not ruler-worthy neat like he likes them. Everywhere was covered in dust, the walls looked grimy, and the furniture looked old (not antique old, because they always looked like that. Dingy old). There was a broken statue on the table by the easy chair; an angel that had once looked up to heaven lay innocuously shattered.

Now, the most observant I may not be. But I've done psych (well, some of psych) and I didn't miss all my English classes in high school. I jumped readily to a conclusion or two: 1. this wasn't my dream, my choice, my place, like usual. It was his. And 2. the symbolism in his unconscious mind was kind of obvious. I remembered he was currently redefining 'rough time'. A broken angel = broken Angel.

Big pieces, though. Fixable.

After a while (I'm not going to tell you how long it seemed, because it makes my conclusion-jumping look moronic), I heard a scrabbling at the door, as if someone had a key but couldn't remember how it worked.

I hurried over and opened the door. Angel stumbled in and I caught him, almost falling myself; strong I may be, but heavy he is. I took a moment while I helped him over to the chair to check him over. The slight differences were here too.

I'm in a really good position to remember, because after the ceremonious taking-down-of-Riley-photos, I went and found Angel's from the place where I hid them after he left, in a weak attempt to test my weakness. I cried properly then; hiding them and finding them.

I remember taking down Angel's pictures savagely, with a passion I wasn't sure was love or hate, but determined to rip them up, or burn them, or throw them away so I would never have to see his face, never have to remember, ever again... and then being unable to do anything but stare, and gently touch his face, and cry. Riley's pictures I took down absently, after a quick mental debate of whether to leave one or two up which the voice of bitterness won. All I remember thinking is 'hey, I'll have to keep this one. Will looks really cute in it'.

I perched myself on the arm of the chair I'd dumped Angel into and reached out to stroke his hair tentatively. He hadn't moved, but he jumped when I came close. I tried again, slowly, as if I was trying to touch a wild, nervous animal and eventually he let me rest my fingers on his head. He closed his eyes and sat still, leaning back. He looked exhausted.

"You're here, right?" he said quietly after a while.

I paused, then carried on combing my fingers through his hair soothingly. He wasn't wearing gel, which worried me; it's like his only vanity. (Actually, it's a good thing, because his hair looks kind of weird without it).

"You know I am," I said, trying to pitch my voice like his. The air seemed almost thick, tension hanging around and between us. It was like a dream. Well, it is a dream. But generally it's always felt more real than reality. Maybe the difference is him, because the two of us was all that felt real, tangible, now.

I checked over his shoulder and behind me; at some point when I'd been focused completely on him the room had taken on a ghostly, ethereal tinge. Everything was coloured grey except the two of us, and the furniture - the apartment itself - looked blurry around the edges.

"I don't know anything," he said, in a tone that caught me with its absolute desperation. "Where I am, who I am... there's just... darkness."

"You're Angel," I said, fighting to keep my voice steady, because this was fairly decent panic material, "out there you fight evil, in here you're with me, and I..." I cut off and swallowed hard.

"Tell me..." he breathed. I could feel his need rise up around us like a black, hungry spirit, and I fought to stop from responding to it.

"I love you," I said.

He reached up, faster than I could stop him, and kissed me, harder than he ever did when we were together, when he was always unfailingly tender. The only time reminiscent of this was... Angelus, kissing me at the school, just after he turned.

But I was kissing him back, matching the violence of his kiss easily, reveling in this one contact more than a hundred soft kisses with Riley... it was like drinking bitter coffee after a year of sugary milk. If you were a big coffee drinker.

Bad metaphor, okay.

Bad thing to be doing, sure.

I pulled away, right away from him, scared at how easily I'd returned his abandonment, how fast the slayer in me had answered his demon, and I was pretty certain those were what was in charge.

He practically shrank back, and that almost horrified me more. To see this big man so confused... I'm usually the one who gets looked after in our relationship, or I was, but now I wanted to wrap him up in cotton wool, shield him and protect him jealously from everything. Mother him - but as a lover, if that makes sense.

I scooted up to him on my knees (God, to have a mind that doesn't live in the gutter), putting one hand on his knee and shaking gently. He looked at me guiltily, and I couldn't stop myself from leaning forward and giving him a gentle, caressing, kiss on the forehead. He breathed out and leaned his head into my lips.

"Probably not a good idea, 'kay?" I said, trying to keep my voice as non-judgemental as possible.

"I'm trying to stay," he said, his voice muffled against my chest as he pulled me into the chair to squash with him. That seemed like comfort, so I let him wrap his arms around my waist and slipped mine around his neck. The contact seemed to calm him.

But strictly in a non-sexual way.

"Stay here?" I said.

"He doesn't want to keep any connections," Angel explained obscurely. "So it's just the hunt."

"You can't live for the hunt," I murmured, talking as much to myself as him.

"What else is there?" he said, sounding a little stronger, more disdainful.

"People," I snapped back, then composed myself, "love. Hope that one day it'll be better. That there's still some decent stuff on TV. I don't know. You have to find your own reasons."

"No reason at all," he muttered, sounding sad, another rapid volte-face. "Just nothing."

There's really nothing to say to him in this sort of a mood. Just hide the stakes, and be around unobtrusively at dawn. Once I might have tried to tease him out of it, or distract him, and he would have smiled, lovingly but wanly and submitted; and no doubt gone straight back into it when I left. Now there didn't seem to be any point - not only would I be leaving, I wasn't really here. Plus I kind of respected his right, and his reasons, to be feeling this way, more than I had then. I respected him too much.

"I want to stay here as long as possible," he said. He sounded sad still, regretful, but stronger. Some of the fighter coming through, though I think that's his major problem; the fighter coming through to the exclusion of the feeling-person. The demon coming through to the exclusion of the man? I hope not.

"Talk to me," he commanded, "give me a focus."

See? Pro-active. That's a good sign.

Probably.

"Okay," I said, "I met my very first troll this week."

"What an experience," he commented, staring at me intently. I shifted slightly, trying to evade his eyes, knowing I was still completely in his eyeline. His gaze made me uncomfortable - like he was stripping me not of clothes but of everything else, like he could see all my thoughts and exactly what I was feeling. Everything that makes me who I am.

Another Angelus thing.

"It was," I said, with a little laugh that seemed to sink into the dull, almost uniformly featureless void around us. Next time I *have* to initiate this - it's weird, but I felt that the room was sapping me of my strength, making me drowsy and slow.

"Anya's ex-boyfriend who she turned into a troll when he cheated on her and then got turned into a vengeance demon because he was such a good troll," I continued. I'm sure Angel couldn't have understood me, but he watched me and hmmed like he did. "Then Willow screwed up a spell and brought him out of this crystal where he'd been trapped and he had himself a little rampage."

"Willow brought Anya's ex out of a crystal?" he said. "It's a small world after all."

"Well, we keep bumping into each other," I said, kind of hoping about a word into the sentence some power would have mercy and stop him hearing me.

"We don't bump, we plan," he said flatly, "and that's because I couldn't stand to even put a state between us."

Damn, he heard. But that is kind of romantic, in a stalkerish way. I felt some of my rejection issues fall away, and I'm not sure why because surely I'd realised what it meant that he'd only run two hours away from me before stopping. Maybe it's just that he's never said it before.

I decided to put that last exchange on virtual rewind and carried on with my dramatic tale.

"He made the Bronze fall on us, then he said Anya and Xander would never work, I kicked his ass and Willow sent him to an alternate universe."

"Are you okay?" he said. I think he was referring to the Bronze part. His eyes swept me again, but I didn't mind this one; it felt almost warm, like a slow caress.

"Fine."

"What about Riley?"

I examined my fingernails. "Still gone."

"But you're coping?"

"Yeah." My tone made it clear this wasn't a subject I wanted to pursue. I mean, come on; even if I had been desperate to unload, Angel wasn't exactly the ideal person to spill to.

"There's probably an alternate universe where we worked out together," he said, apparently just musing out loud.

I couldn't breathe for a second. How the hell does he sound so casual saying that? Even just the thought... it made me want to cry with regret and shout with jealousy and scream with rage. I felt a wave of anger at him. I'm supposed to be the one who's moved on here. But he's the one who can lightly bring up the chance that somewhere there's a couple of us-es being a couple, without even seeming to entertain the thought it could be us, or should be us, and why it isn't us.

"There's probably an alternate universe where Dawn never showed," I snapped, trying to get past his announcement without betraying how affected I was by it, "but not even the Watcher's Council knew why, or who Glory was. Giles went to see them."

"Did he enjoy being in London again?" Angel asked.

"I don't know," I said, surprised at the weirdness of what he focused on.

"I'm sure you don't," he said, confusing me yet more.

"What does that..." I started, then hesitated when he looked up and past me.

"I have to go," he said, and got up, falling fearlessly into the grey without another word.

"Angel!" I called, on reflex... going so suddenly, he probably woke up or something.

(That sounded really strange.)

I woke up late, and I had to fight not to pick up the phone.

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