DISCLAIMER: No, don't own them. Wish I did.
SPOILERS: Nothing in particular, but into season 4
SYNOPSIS: Buffy and Angel try to find a name for their new cat.
DISTRIBUTION: On my site (when I get the coding and uploading done): . Anyone else, just ask.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Happy Birthday Christina! (And just FYI - I haven't actually SEEN season 4, so please excuse any errors - and don't ask me why Cordelia is in Sunnydale, but that's what the challenge asked for so she's there.)
FEEDBACK: Please...
RATING: Ummm, PG-13 for language and sexual references? (I don't really understand the US rating system at all and I'm guessing.)

"How about Stupid?" Buffy said in disgust.

She was standing at the kitchen door with her hands on her hips, glaring at the newest addition to the family with an expression that would have killed anything with a lesser sense of self-importance.

The small gray cat ignored her completely, finishing off what had been supposed to be for dinner with what could only be described as a self-satisfied feline smirk.

"Or Naughty," Buffy added. "Or Greedy."

"What's she done now?" Angel came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his embrace. She leaned back against him, astounded all over again at the feeling of his warm breath on her neck.

It was three months since their miracle, six weeks since they'd moved in together, and Buffy still couldn't quite believe it was all true. She'd wake in the night sometimes, in a panic, sure it would all be over. She'd need to cuddle up to him, feel his warm, living skin against hers before she could relax enough to go to sleep again. Sometimes he would wake up and they would talk - but never about that. Mostly though, he'd stir in his sleep and pull her tighter into his embrace without waking and she'd go back to sleep again with her head resting on his chest, listening to his heartbeat, comforted.

"What does it look like she's doing?" Buffy complained. "She's eating our dinner."

Buffy glared at the kitten some more, even through Angel couldn't see it. Leaning over her shoulder, he fixed the cat with a steady look - what would once have been a vampire-stare - and said in a firm voice, "Down!" The cat looked up, gave him an abashed glance and obediently jumped to the floor, immediately starting to rub herself around his legs.

"See," he said, bending his head to nibble at Buffy's neck. "You just have to show her who's boss."

"Hmph," Buffy grumbled, sparing the cat one last, irritated look before turning in Angel's arms and capturing his lips with hers. She immediately gained his full attention, just as she intended.

The cat tried rubbing her way around the male's ankles one more time, but he didn't even notice her, all his concentration taken up with his female. The kitten considered leaving some nice, long scratches on her perfect legs, but decided it probably wasn't worth the effort and went off to find some furniture to claw instead. That would be much more fun.

When they were both finally forced to come up for air, Buffy was in a much better mood. Until she remembered all her dinner plans were ruined. She opened her mouth, not really sure what she was going to say, but Angel promptly closed it again with another kiss.

"Don't worry about it," he said several moments later. "I'll ring for pizza."

Buffy chortled. "Victory!" she exclaimed happily. "I've turned you into a junk-food junkie in under three months."

He refused to rise to the bait. "Hawaiian or Supreme?"

* ** *** ** *

In the end they chose one of each and Buffy went to pick them up. Angel wasn't entirely sure about letting her loose on her own in his convertible, but all she had to do was look at him with that begging, pouty look and he didn't stand a chance. And she was so proud of the fact she'd finally got the hang of this driving thing that he couldn't even insist on going with her when she assured him she'd be fine.

He just hoped both she and the car would arrive back in one piece. _How is it_, he often wondered, _that I can stand firm on the big things and make really stupid decisions about what is supposed to be best for both of us, but she just has to look at me and I let her walk all over me about the little things?_ It was a question he hadn't been able to resolve, and if he still asked himself it occasionally, he'd given up trying to find the answer. In fact, he was beginning to suspect there wasn't one. That was just the way the world worked.

But he had got her to agree about getting the cat. Now they just needed to find a name for her that they could both live with. So far, that was proving to be the biggest challenge their relationship had ever faced.

Buffy arrived back - without any squealing of tyres or ominous crashing sounds - to find him lying on the sofa with the TV playing quietly in the background and the cat curled up and purring contentedly on his chest. He turned around, as much as he could safely without dislodging the kitten, and smiled at her. "Hi."

She dropped the car keys and the pizza boxes on the coffee table and leaned over to kiss him. "Hi yourself."

He moved to sit up and got kitten claws in his stomach for his pains, making him hiss in surprise and tickle the little cat under the chin. "How about Spitfire?" he suggested, disengaging the cat more carefully and setting her on the floor. She gave him a dirty look and started washing her paws.

"Yuck," Buffy said succinctly as she opened the first box and appetising aromas started filling the room. The kitten looked up again, interested, and Buffy waved her fingers in the little animal's face, immediately getting swiped at with small paws. "What about Needleclaws?"

Angel helped himself to pizza. "I don't think so," he said firmly.

Buffy pouted. "You're no fun at all."

He gave her a lazy smile. "Really?"

"Really," she insisted around her own slice of pizza and made a point of changing the subject before he got her to answer differently. "So what are you watching?"

Angel had completely forgotten the television was even on. He'd never owned one before and still wasn't really sure it was a required piece of furniture. But it was as far as Buffy was concerned and within days of her moving in he'd found himself the proud owner of a latest model, large screen, super-expensive TV.

After a moment, Buffy began to laugh.

"What?" he demanded. trying unsuccessfully to sound offended. "I'm studying the twentieth century. You keep telling me I'm out of date."

"Twenty-first," Buffy pointed out. "It's the twenty-first century now. Hey," she said, suddenly distracted, "that means you've lived in four different centuries and you're only 250 years old. That's not bad."

"You've lived in two and you're nineteen," he pointed out.

"Oh." She waved that away and reached for her second slice of pizza."Anyway, you're watching Sailor Moon!"

Angel mock-growled at her. "Do you have a problem with that?"

She shrugged, trying not to laugh. "I guess not. I won't tell your guilty secret if you don't tell mine."

"What guilty secret?" he asked, looking at her more closely.

She shook her head, laughing at him. "I'm not telling you that."

"Hmm..." Angel pretended to consider, finally turning to the kitten for advice. "Do you think I can get it our of her? I think I can."

The cat purred in agreement and before Buffy knew what to expect Angel had lunged across the couch towards her, attacking her in the most vile way possible.

Buffy shrieked and backed up until she hit the arm of the sofa and couldn't go any further. Angel was relentless, assailing her in all her most sensitive, vulnerable places. "I'm not ticklish," she insisted between gasps and giggles. "I'm not. And I'm not telling."

"Really?" Angel purred and his fingers slipped up under her top and found what he knew was a particularly responsive spot across the bottom of her ribs. Just to press his advantage, he bent his head and kissed one of her breasts through the cotton shirt. Buffy's eyes closed and she went limp beneath him and he smiled against her, knowing he'd won this round.

He lifted his head and ran his hands up her sides until he reached her bra. "Well?"

"Don't stop," she breathed.

"Well?" he repeated without moving.

She opened her eyes. "Oh, all right. You win. My secret viewing vice is..." She stopped suddenly, her gaze going past Angel and her expression shifted into a glare. "Dammit!" she said crossly and sat up abruptly.

Angel was propelled backwards and found himself suddenly tumbling off the couch to sit on the floor. "_What_?" he muttered. Things had been going so well, too.

"Dammit, cat!" Buffy's voice could have frozen water, but it didn't have much effect on the kitten who happily continued picking the ham out of the pizza topping. "That's the second time tonight you've eaten my dinner," she went on. "You do know you're in trouble, don't you?"

Angel scooped the kitten off the lid of the pizza box and set her on his knee. "Your timing really sucks," he told her with a sigh. "You do know that, don't you?"

Buffy leaned over and pushed the cat off Angel's knees. "Go on cat, scat." She stood up and picked the second pizza box up from the table. "I think we can get past the interruption. If we try." She sashayed off towards the bedroom, carrying the pizza box on one palm like an Italian waiter.

Angel gave the kitten another push. "Sorry, Kitty. She wins."

The cat watched him follow his female out of the room and considered shredding the couch upholstery, just to relieve her feelings. Then she remembered those enticing, still unpacked boxes no-one would let her explore. It looked like they were going to be distracted for a while. She went box-hunting.

* ** *** ** *

Angel found Buffy sitting cross-legged on the bed, the pizza box now open and lying on the covers. She looked up and gave him a seductive smile. "First dinner, then desert."

Angel looked at his clean, pristine bedclothes. Then he looked at the piece of pizza Buffy was eating that was threatening to spill greasy cheese all over the sheets. Finally, he looked at his girlfriend. "Buffy," he began patiently, "how many times have we had this discussion about not eating in bed?"

She shrugged and swallowed the last bit of the pizza slice. "I don't know. Too many? You need to stop being such a fuddy-duddy." She looked up at him through her long lashes, smiling again, slowly and seductively. "If you don't eat your dinner, you won't get any desert."

Really, there wasn't any way he could argue with that and he certainly wasn't stupid enough to try.

* ** *** ** *

Angel woke in the early hours of the morning, to find himself alone in the big bed, except for a small cat who was taking up more than her fair share of space. There was no sign of Buffy, but if he listened hard, he could hear soft voices coming from elsewhere in the house. For a moment he was frustrated by his reduced hearing - still better than that of a normal human perhaps, but much less than the acuity he had had when he was a vampire. Then he thought of all the things he had gained and shook his head. The exchange was worth it.

But the most precious thing he had gained was missing right at this moment. He pushed the cat aside, got up and went looking for her.

He found her sitting on the couch, eating reheated pizza and watching the television. That was the sound of voices he had heard.

She looked up when she came in and grinned. "We never did eat our pizza," she said. "I was hungry and you said I shouldn't eat in bed. Besides, you looked so cute asleep I didn't want to wake you."

"So you're up here eating and watching..." He took a closer look, not quite able to believe what he was seeing. "...wresting?"

She shrugged. "Well, now you know my guilty secret too."

He joined her on the couch and watched for a while, but he was shaking his head within moments. "This is pathetic."

Buffy gave him a challenging look. "Oh yeah, I supposed you could do better, mister?"

"I'm sure I could. Want to try?"

She abandoned the pizza and the TV and turned to face him. "I'll have you on your back, begging for mercy," she promised in a husky voice.

Angel laughed, feeling his heart race suddenly. "I can think of worse fates."

* ** *** ** *

"Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!!"

The loud, angry voice had Angel awake and out of bed in an instant, running purely on instinct. The cat, previously blissfully asleep tangled around his ankles, went flying in the opposite direction as he leaped out of bed, landing on the floor in a defensive crouch.

As his brain cleared, he recognised the voice as Buffy's, the tone more upset and annoyed than indicating any kind of danger. So he paused long enough to drag on a robe and went looking for her. The kitten followed at his heels.

He found Buffy in one of the empty rooms where they had been storing boxes of her stuff until she found the time and inclination to finish unpacking them. Right now it looked like a small hurricane had passed through. One of the boxes had been overturned, another torn open at the side and the floor was covered with a rain of - Angel looked closer, finally realising they were photographs, spread across the floor like a freshly fallen layer of multicoloured snow.

Buffy rounded on him the moment she heard him come in. "It's that cat," she said furiously. "She's been through all my photos - she's even ripped a whole lot of them up." She glared at the kitten, who immediately took cover behind Angel's legs. "Dammit cat! Can't you leave anything alone." She looked back at the scattered photos and sighed. "That's what we should call you - Dammit. As in, leave my stuff alone, Dammit."

That was an argument Angel had no intention of getting into right now. "Maybe it's not so bad," he said soothingly. "Come on, I'll help you clean up."

He started gathering up photos, turning them all right-side up and stacking them in piles and after a moment Buffy joined him. It was only when he came to the first torn one that he was forced to pause. It was beyond saving really, well-savaged by kitten claws. A more careful look suggested a young man's face, round and pleasant and wholesome, but it was hard to be sure after the cat's destruction attempt.

"Who's this?" He held up the pictured and Buffy looked over.

She shrugged. "How can I tell. Probably someone highly important, likeWills or my mother."

"It's a guy." He handed it over and she looked at it more closely.

"Oh," she said, sounding a little surprised. "That's Riley." She picked up another of the ripped pictures from her own pile. "This one's Riley too. Hang on." She scrambled about the floor, collecting only the ripped pictures.

She sat back and looked at him. "They're all Riley," she said finally.

Angel was very careful not to smile, deciding he now liked the cat even more than he had before. Instead, he pointed towards the curtains, where one more torn photograph lay, this one every more mangled and munched than the rest. "What about that one?"

Buffy leaned over and picked it up. "I suppose it must be," she agreed. "I can't really tell - this is beyond ripped, it's totally destroyed." She looked at it a moment longer and suddenly her whole body went still. "Oh," she said very, very softly. "Oh. This one's Parker." She looked up at him. "I wonder how I missed burning this one. I burned the other two."

She gazed at it at moment longer, then stared at the pile of ripped Rileys beside her and, to Angel's surprise, she began to laugh. "You know something, cat," she said finally, "Maybe you're not so bad after all. You've certainly got better taste in men than I do. I guess we won't call you Dammit after all."

The kitten carefully came out from hiding behind Angel and strolled over to Buffy without a care, as if they had been friends forever. She climbed daintily into Buffy's lap and settled there with a happy purr. Buffy watched her for a moment, then looked up at Angel with a smile. "So what _are_ we going to call her?"

Angel shook his head. "I don't know. I think it's time to ask for help."

* ** *** ** *

Giles handed out pieces of paper and pencils. "Okay, everybody write down your suggestion and give it back to me. I'll read them all out so we know what the options are, then they go in the hat and Buffy or Angel can pick one out."

Angel, firmly trapped in his seat by the cat purring on his knee, shrugged. "Buffy can do it. I'm kind of stuck here."

Buffy tickled the kitten under the chin and got a blissful, gooey look in return. "Okay with me."

Giles had produced a black silk top hat from somewhere - no-one quite dared ask why he owned it - and it was sitting on the coffee table, waiting for the names. When everyone had finished writing he collected all the papers and unfolded the first one.

"Hypatia." He smiled. "The librarian at the Great Library at Alexandria."

Willow nodded. "I always liked her. And I think it's a nice name for a cat."

"Fang."

Spike smiled lazily, making a point of showing his own which easily answered who'd picked that one.

"Griddlebone" Giles looked up at them. "Oh, that one's mine."

"Never heard of it," Buffy said helpfully.

Giles sighed at yet another indication of American ignorance. "T. S. Eliot. _Old Possum's Books of Practical Cats_." He shook his head. "Haven't you at least seen _Cats_?"

"Oh, you mean the musical," Cordelia said suddenly. Her expression turned confused. "You mean it was a _book_?"

"Next name," Angel interrupted. Giles was looking faintly homicidal.

"Ah, yes." He opened the next piece of paper. "Critic."

Buffy and Angel exchanged a private, amused look. "That's because she's got good taste in men," Buffy said with a grin.

"Peaches." Giles looked at the paper again and repeated himself. "_Peaches_?"

"Well, its tummy is peachy coloured," Xander said defensively. "I couldn't think of anything else, okay?"

Giles shook his head and turned to the next paper. "Gucci."

Everyone turned to look at Cordelia. "What?" she demanded. "Someone in the household needs to have some class."

Trying not to smile - Cordelia was always Cordelia - Giles opened the last paper. "Caredd." He looked at Angel. "Did I pronounce that right?"

Angel nodded. "The double D gives you a TH sound. It means heart." Xander gave him a look and he added, "In a nice way, not a literal way."

Giles refolded all the pages and dropped them into the hat. He gave it a good shake, then held it above Buffy's head for her to pull one out. She did, managed to resist the temptation to open it herself, and handed it back to him.

He took it, unfolded it and read it without letting his expression change at all. "And the winner is..." Giles held up the piece of paper so everyone could see.

The cat yowled in protest, but it was too late.

So what do YOU think the cat got called?

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