Site: http://meghan.35.com
Summary: Oh to be a puppet! Set in Angel season five Smile Time.
Notes: Some dialogue ripped off from the transcripts. Thanks dlgood for the link. http://www.buffyworld.com/angel/season5/transcripts/5x14_tran.php
Many thanks to Sarah for betaing. Rating: PG13
Pairing: Buffy/Angel

Angel looked at himself grumpily in a hand held mirror. Continuously he shifted his visage between vampire and human and growled at what he saw. Placing the mirror down he got up and walked into the bathroom finally ready to see just how bad things got.

In the bathroom, Angel took a deep breath and dropped his pants avoiding looking down at all. Instead he focused on the wall above the sink gloomily. Eventually he found the courage to look and nearly wept in despair.

His manhood was gone.

Completely.

He was no longer anatomically correct.

How was he going to go after Buffy now? Not only was he made of felt and his nose could come off, oh no, things just got better; he now had lost his dick.

Buffy would find him irresistible now, he thought sarcastically. Yeah. Right. What woman would let herself be wooed by a dickless puppet?

Being a puppet sucked.

Zipping his pants up Angel left the bathroom in his suite and took the elevators back down to his office. The situation was bad before but now it was embarrassing. All he needed right now to make the moment even more perfect was Spike. God, he could just hear that peroxide blond name calling him.

Even the thought of it made him bristle. He was not in a good mood. Not at all. Here he'd been trying to get everything off of his schedule as quick as he could so he could run after Buffy. He had to see her again, try to make things work between them. Andrew couldn't be right about the way she feels. He just didn't believe it. Couldn't let himself believe it.

When the doors opened Angel alighted from the elevator and crossed the room to his desk. Just as he was almost to his chair it spun around leaving him frozen in shock at the person sitting there. Spike was looking at the closing doors of the elevator and frowning and he obviously hadn't spotted him yet.

Quickly shaking off his current state of astonishment Angel dove to the ground. Crawling on hands and knees he pulled himself away from the vicinity of the desk aiming for the board room. He was almost there when Spike called out his name.

"Angel, look, I haven't got all blasted day. I need a car for the night. The last one got totaled. Angel? Mate? Where the fuck are you?"

Dropping flat to the floor, he held his breath, praying Spike couldn't see him.

"Angel?" he called out, eyes darting around trying to spot him, "This is annoying as fuck. Come out of hiding."

Angel didn't move. He didn't dare. Salvation was feet away in the dark meeting room and if he made a dash for it, he was sure to be found out. Of course, if he didn't move Spike might look down or come out from around the desk and he'd be just as spotted as if he'd ran for it. Wiggling like worm, Angel worked his way forward. So close, so close. Almost there--

"What are you doing in here?" a familiar called out from the doorway.

Go away, go away, go away, Angel prayed, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Buffy? God, pet, it's been an age since I last laid eyes on you!" Spike barreled towards her and swung her up in his arms, circling once before letting her down. "Man, it's good to see a Scooby. All the prat's sidekicks are way too dull."

"Spike, you're alive!" Buffy exclaimed. "How?"

"Stupid bloody amulet, that's how. I got trapped inside the blimey thing."

"Where's Angel?"

Spike waved a hand, dismissively. "He's probably out gallivanting with his new girlfriend, Tina or something. She's a werewolf, you know."

"Oh," Buffy said sounding miserable. "I see, well okay, I was only here for something trivial anyways. Guess I'll be leaving then."

Just when he thought things were in the clear, Buffy turned around and spotted him. Angel went lifeless in a second, being as still and as limp as he could. She stooped and lifted him off the ground scrutinizing him.

"Why does he have a puppet version of himself?" Buffy asked aloud, showing him to Spike.

The blond vampire shrugged. "Beats me."

"Isn't he just so adorable?" Buffy cooed, standing up cradling him in her arms and walking over the chairs before his desk.

"No, the little bugger doesn't look a bit like the blighter."

"Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes." Buffy sang, giggling as she made the Angel puppet touch those body parts.

Angel, meanwhile, was desperately glad that he couldn't blush. He'd be beat red otherwise. It was that embarrassing having Buffy play with him in front of Spike. If Spike would only leave, it would save him a world of humiliation and taunts.

Buffy mercifully stopped singing, twirling a lock of his hair around her fingers. "He doesn't really need you does he?" she whispered. "Can I steal you? Think he'd notice?"

"Yeah, Buffy, I think Angel would notice."

"Wasn't talking to you, Spike. I was talking to mini-puppet-version Angel."

"Get a grip, slayer, it's only a bloody puppet!"

"How does Angel withstand sunlight?" Buffy asked, steering the conversation away from her newly acquired Angel puppet.

"Just like me, I suppose," Spike answered, lighting a cigarette.

"And how is that? Are you both human or something?"

"No, no, nothing quite so miraculous. It's tempered glass. The old bosses stuck some in for the great git. It's all over the building."

Buffy digested that for a moment. "Oh, well then how can he have a girlfriend?"

"Oh, Angel, can have more than just a girlfriend, sweet cheeks, he can also have sex with them."

"But that, that isn't possible," Buffy stammered, looking ashen, forgetting Angel all together for a moment.

Spike started ticking names off of his fingers. "There was Kate, Lilah, Darla, Cordelia, Eve- I'm sure there was more. Tina will probably be on his menu soon."

"But-- what about the curse?"

"Don't suspect it matters anymore. What with the Shanshu prophecy about us."

"What prophecy?"

Spike drew deeply on his cigarette, and blew out a long trail of smoke. "The one he tried to hide from me. A vampire with a soul will be a part of some end of the world battle or another, prove himself a champion, and become human because of it."

"Why, why hasn't Angel told me about any of this?" Buffy asked, setting the puppet on the desk where it fell flat on it's back.

"How would I know? He keeps secrets from me all the time."

"And apparently me as well. Can you believe I came up here to tell him that what Andrew said was a lie? That I do trust him. Only now, now I don't think that I could."

There was a long stretch of silence where Spike watched Buffy through a haze of smoke and Buffy studied her nails with a practiced unconcerned look on her face.

"Don't trouble yourself on that git, pet, he ain't worth it." He finally said, breaking the steadily growing tension.

"No, no, he isn't." Buffy said holding check a hysterical laugh as she stood up. "I have to go. Don't tell him I dropped by, okay?"

As she brushed past him, Spike grabbed her arm and swung her around. Their gazes locked for one intense moment before Buffy shook him off and walked away. Right when she reached the door, Angel finally snapped, unable to hold silence anymore. Spike be damned, he'd live with the aftermath of his consequences later. He couldn't let Buffy go without knowing the truth about him.

"Wait! Buffy!" Angel shouted, scrambling to his feet on top of the desk.

"Holy bloody cow! You're-"

"Don't say it."

Spike chuckled. "You're a bloody puppet!"

Angel snarled, "I'll deal with you later, Spike."

Buffy blinked a few times trying to come to grips with what she saw before her. Angel, a puppet? But how? And why didn't he speak up sooner?

"It's a long story," Angel explained, seeing the look on her face.

"Make it short."

"Television show. Comatose smiling kids. Demonic activity. Metal egg. Blast of light."

"And now you're a puppet?"

"I just can't get over it; you're a wee little puppet man!"

"Get out, Spike. Now!" Angel barked.

"Aww, but it's just getting to the good part!" the vampire complained.

"Spike!" Buffy and Angel shouted, glaring at him.

Spike raised his hands in the air, walking to the door. "All right. All right. I'm going."

"So? Now what?" Buffy asked the minute Spike had cleared the doorway.

"Now we try to figure out how to change me back."

"Why? Your being a puppet doesn't bother me."

Angel gave her an astonished look. "Being a puppet sucks."

"I'm not seeing a downside."

Angel held up his puppet hands and ticked off on the six fingers he had in all. "I'm short, my nose comes off, I have a hole in my backside, I look ridiculous, my vampire visage is even worse, and I don't have all my parts."

"Parts? As in your wandering pee-pee?" Buffy said, mimicking the French baron from Intolerable Cruelty, and bending her finger. "Nope, doesn't bother me at all."

"Spike was mistaken. I did not sleep with all of them."

"But you slept with some! Angel!"

"We're not dating, Buffy! You ran off to Europe to bake!"

"And you clearly, were too impatient to wait! Whose Tina?"

"Nina. And she's no one. We're not dating. I have no intention of dating her. And if I`m not mistaken you had your share of sleeping around."

"I wasn't the one who left because being with me was too damn dangerous for him to handle. I wasn't the one under a gypsy curse! For a guy who left me because he couldn`t risk getting happy, you sure do get it a lot!"

"It wasn't like-" Angel started hotly.

"No. Don't," Buffy hissed, denying his protest. "Don't pull that macho guy bullshit. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Don't, don't you fucking tell me that it didn't mean anything, because it did. It did mean something, Angel. To me."

"Buffy-"

She shook her head, "Look, obviously we're destined to always bring out the worst in each other, so let's just drop it okay?"

"We used to bring out the best in each other," Angel stated softly, his eyes overly large and wounded.

Buffy's hands flopped listless to her sides. "The operative words were used too, Angel."

"It doesn't have to be that way," he said plaintively.

"I'm still not cookies."

***

Buffy left him shortly after that. He didn't bother to follow, instead he went back to the elevator and went up a floor to his suite, where he now sat on the floor in his bedroom stuffing a sock with other socks until it reached the appropriate size. Then taking needle and thread he stitched the top closed and bit off the extra thread. He peeled down the tape on the back side of a piece of Velcro before adhering it to the sock and pressing down firmly.

"There!" he said proudly, holding the stuffed sock aloft.

Quickly pulling down his pants, Angel stripped the other side of the Velcro tape off and press it to his groin and holding it there firmly. After a minute, he carefully arranged it in his leather pants before zipping them back up.

"All done. Wandering pee-pee, ha! I'll show her!"

***

When Angel came down later she was gone, nowhere in sight, but he could still feel her presence. It was lunch time though, so maybe she was in the cafeteria eating. Looking up he caught Harmony looking at him strangely and bristled.

"Boss?" she asked, leaning over her desk, "Is that you? What happened! And why did I see Buffy run out of your office a while ago? She seemed pretty upset. Did you tell her about Nina?"

Angel gave her a crossed look, his brow furrowed. "No, I didn't say anything about Nina. There's nothing to say about Nina!"

Harmony humph and collapsed back into her chair. "That's not what the rumor mill is saying. Why are you a puppet? And what the heck is in your pants? Never mind I don't want to know."

"Harmony, just get me Wesley."

"Fine. Fine. Don't tell me anything."

Angel didn't reply to that. He turned and went back into his office to wait for Wes' arrival. While he waited, he brooded, and brooding led to thoughts about Buffy. Complicated thoughts to which he was jerked out of when Wesley ran into the office carrying a stack of books.

"Angel, Harm told you were a puppet! What happened?"

"Have you seen, Buffy?"

Wesley shifted uncomfortably and changed the subject. "Clearly some sort of hex... or a—a powerful warding magic."

Lorne waltzed through the door took one look at Angel and chuckled. "Maybe it's some type of puppet cancer."

"I do not have puppet cancer!" Angel yelled, looking furious. "And I was talking about Buffy. She was here in the office a little bit ago. Did you see her? Is she still here?"

"What about the kids, Muppet?" Lorne asked, ignoring the frantic speech as he folded himself into one of the leather chairs facing the desk.

"It's not like I'm Kermit the Frog, Lorne, or for that matter a Jim Henson Muppet. I got turned into this horrendous form by a smiling egg-shaped metal thing at Smile Time."

"No, you're a Gregor Framkin puppet. Started out in his basement creating puppets and landed on a puppet gold mind. Smile Time is number one in it's demographic and time slot," Lorne told him.

"Great, we got a lead. Get on it. Oh, and take Gunn. Let Mr. Framkin know that we're onto him."

"Righto, Pumpkin."

After Lorne left Angel faced Wesley again and glowered. "And Buffy? What happened, you got that guilty look."

"I- uh- I-"

"Spit it out, Wes."

"She came down to my office and we got to talking about curses-on- certain-broody-vampires," Wesley stumbled through, repositioning the stack of books on his desk.

Angel stared at him flabbergasted. "You didn't. Wes, you know why we can't, I can't, she-we- you know."

"99.999-ad infinitum percent of the best relationships in the recorded history of the world have had to make do with acceptable happiness."

"But it's not like that with us! She so much as tells me that she loves me and I'll be fangy and dangerous!"

"Right. Should have known you'd hide behind Angelus."

"It's not going to happen, Wes, and I can't believe that you gave Buffy that impression that there could be anything!"

"Why? Isn't it what you wanted?" Wesley demanded, raking his fingers through his hair.

"Why!? Because, I'm not that guy! That guy is charming and funny and... emotionally useful. I'm the guy in a dark corner with the blood habit and the 200 years of psychic baggage! And now, now I'm a bloody puppet!"

"Didn't you go after her when we heard rumors about The First? Didn't she tell you to wait until she was cookies? Are you blind, deaf, and dumb? Buffy will never be cookies! You're suppose to tell her you like cookie dough!"

"Why are you yelling at me?"

"Because! Angel, if there's a woman out there... who you find truly attractive, who you think about, let's say, most of the time, who represents even part of what you think makes the world worth fighting for and who doesn't view you as an entirely sexless shoulder to lean on...you have to do something about it!"

"We're talking about Fred now aren't we?" Angel asked insightfully, a slight frown marring his brow as he stared down at his tiny puppet hands. "When did romance get so fucked up?"

"Long before we came around that's for certain," Wesley sighed, rubbing his forehead. "I love her and she could care less. You have something, Angel, and you continue to let it get away. I don't understand that."

***

Angel found Buffy later in the day pouring over a video tape of the program with Wesley, Fred, and Spike in the meeting room adjacent to his office. They were excited about something when he walked in, everyone was shouting out to Wesley who was controlling the remote.

"Mute the T.V., English," Buffy yelled.

"No turn up the volume!" Fred argued, waving her hands empathetically.

"Give me the remote, Popover," Spike demanded, aggressively wrestling it out of Wes' hands.

"Go swallow peroxide, you illiterate ignoramus imbecile!"

"Hey!" Angel shouted above the din. "What's going on here?"

"We found something," Buffy said swiftly, grabbing the remote from Spike and hitting the mute button.

Spike crossed his arms over his chest. "The boy puppet doesn't sing with the others."

"Play it again, Buffy," Fred urged, "This time with volume."

Buffy hit the rewind button on the remote. The image on screen was shot with white static lines until they reached the beginning of the song. Hitting both the play and the mute button with her thumb, brought the song back in full force, revealing the boy puppet to be lip-synching.

Fred said, pointing at the screen excitedly, "It's a hidden carrier wave masked by a spell that turns the TV into a 2-way conduit with direct access to the viewer."

"Yeah, but what's that mean?" Angel asked looking back and forth between Fred and Wesley.

"It's how Framkin's been draining energy from the children, and judging from the strength of yesterday's signal…"

"Framkin's ready to take out the whole audience," Buffy finished grimly.

Wesley turned to Angel. "The object you described in that secret room is most likely a repository for the children's life force. We'll have to break the binding magic on it."

"Which should free those children and... reverse your puppet problem…" Fred clarified.

Gunn popped his head into the room. "It's not Framkin. It's the puppets. It's the puppets. They're demons. The show is possessed. Smile Time's ratings hit an all-time low last year. Framkin made a deal with some devils to bring it back to number one."

"You sure of that?" Angel asked.

"Dead sure. Every contract signed with the lower planes is filed in the Library of Demonic Congress. You just got to know where to look. Pretty tricky legalese, too. Framkin must have missed some of the fine print."

"Which allowed them to take over everything," Buffy guessed.

Gunn nodded. "Including Framkin."

Buffy looked over at Angel, then at Spike. "Ass kicking time?"

"Ass kicking time," Angel affirmed.

***

Angel pushed himself up off the floor and found that height had returned to him. It was a bit disorienting but he got his feet under him pretty quick. It felt great not to be a puppet anymore. For one thing he had five fingers on each hand. For another his nose no longer came off, and he could see more of the area surrounding him. Lastly and most importantly though, Angel had his cock back, but the sock was damnably uncomfortable.

Buffy touch his back, giving him whiplash in the process of turning around. She stared mutely at him for a moment then ran her hand from his back down the buttons of his shirt to the waistband of his pants. Angel arched his hips towards her, forgetting momentarily about the sock when her hand plunged beneath them.

"Ow!" Angel yelped, jumping back.

Buffy was smirking at him waving the sock in front of his nose. "Next time you attempt to give yourself any missing attributes make sure you make them proportional to your body. You looked like you had a hemorrhoid on your leg. Either that or a tumor."

Angel had the grace to look sheepish. Soon though he was laughing with her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as they ambled off the set. Spike came up and possessively wrapped an arm around Buffy's waist, which made Angel growl softly. Both Buffy and Spike ignored him and together starting ribbing Angel about his time spent as a puppet. Spike was being more aggressive in his digs, which irritated Angel to no end, but he refused to let it show.

It wasn't long before the gang clamored into their respective cars and headed back to Wolfram and Hart. Spike had offered to drive Buffy, to which she turned down, saying that she knew his track record with cars and that it wasn't good. Instead, she got into his car and buckled her seatbelt, waiting for him to rush to the other side with a patient look about her. Angel started the car in silence, pulling out and following the rest of the cars out of the parking lot.

"Can you swing by the airport, Angel?" Buffy asked when they were at a light behind the others.

"What for?" he asked, sparring her a look.

"I have a flight to catch," she said simply.

The light turned green.

"Flight?"

"Yeah, I'm going back to Rome early tomorrow morning, figured I`d squat at the airport for an hour or two."

"What about your stuff?"

"I only brought the overnight bag," Buffy said, pointing to it.

"Oh."

"Yep."

"Isn't it a little sudden?" Angel asked desperately. "You only got here today."

"I hadn't planned on staying with Dad or anything, besides I came here to tell you that what Andrew said was a lie, and now that I've said it, it's time to go back."

"To Rome."

"No, to Timbuktu. It's home."

"Home is where your heart is," he murmured inanely, changing lanes and passing Wes and Fred in their car.

Angel drove on autopilot to the designated terminal and pulled in. Taking off her seatbelt, Buffy opened the door and stepped out. He didn't look at her as she grabbed her bag and slipped it over her shoulders. He didn't see the look Buffy gave him as she bit her lip.

"Well," she finally said, bouncing on the sides of her feet.

Angel put the car into gear, responded with a quiet, "Bye."

"You know," Buffy stated hesitantly, "Dawn and I have a guest room. That-that is if you're interested. You know, you could come, umm, and stay with us." At his own hesitation she added quickly, "Anytime."

"What about the curse?" Angel looked at her pained, his hands running repeatedly over the steering wheel.

"Fix it. Then come."

"Are you cookies?"

"No, but cookie dough goes great with chocolate chip mint. Brings spoons."

Buffy closed the car door, waved once, and walked into the airport. Seconds later Angel pulled out and drove off, with thoughts of melting ice cream and warm pink tongues in his head. Just the memory made him smile. What would it be like to create new memories and reasons to smile with Buffy? He was going to find out.

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