Part Fourteen

"Buffy, aren't you ready to go *yet?* " Angel asked through the bathroom door. 

"Just a moment!" came the same answer he'd been getting for twenty minutes. 

With a sigh as over-dramatic as he could make it – just to be sure Buffy heard – the vampire turned away and went over the to couch, where the twins were already in their carriers and ready to go. "Your mother is incorrigible," he told them, scooping Amber up and lifting her high into the air, while she squealed in delight. "Even today of all days she can't be on time." 

"I heard that!" shouted the bathroom door. 

Angel laughed and put his daughter back down and waited. The apartment was already almost empty for the day. Tara and Willow were out casting spells in the woods all weekend, and Anya was working at her new job at the magic shop which, as hard as it was to believe, Giles had bought just after New Year's. Cordelia was at rehearsal for the University's spring production of Les Miserables. 

"So how do I look?" 

Angel turned around and grinned, pulling her into his arms. Buffy's curves felt so good under his hands, warm and supple. Her petite frame solid and strong, yet gentle and yielding when she wanted to be held close. Soft golden curls framing that deceptively angelic face. A few short months of training and slaying had put her right back in fighting form. Though not without some changes which Angel happened to find rather appealing, like the slightly wider set of her hips,  the fullness of her breasts, still larger than before from months of feeding. 

Angel had never had sex with a woman who'd been a mother… he just hoped he'd get the chance to do so in the near future. Their dating for the last few months had been just that – dating. Going to movies and dinner. Holding hands. Spending evenings snuggled on the couch in front of the television. Taking the twins out on cloudy days, and long evening walks on the beach. They did a lot of talking, too. More than ever before. That had been the hard part at first, talking. Being open did not come naturally to Angel, but he had tried, and it definitely paid off. 

"Well, are you going to answer me or not?" His love chuckled lightly. "We're wasting our day alone." 

"I'll bet no one could tell you had twins six months ago," he replied honestly. "You look sensational." 

"Sensational?" Buffy stretched up and kissed him briefly. "I like that." 

"Mmmm, me too," Angel purred into her ear, wishing fervently that they hadn't agreed to take things slowly…. though only for a moment. "Lunch is packed. Ready to go?" 

"Absolutely," Buffy smiled and picked up her purse. "Oh, I left my sunglasses by the sink, could you—" 

"Consider it done," Angel kissed her cheek and slipped into the kitchen. As he reached out to pick them up, something flashed briefly out of the corner of his vision. *Being clever today are we?* He spun around—and stopped. Buffy was seated on the couch, cleaning drool off Liam's chin. *Must be paranoid this morning.* He picked up the glasses and left the kitchen. Maybe they'd picked up a ghost somewhere. Or maybe he was just being silly. Whatever the case, he wasn't going to let his plans be altered by a moment of confusion.

The day was bright and sunny, with a warm breeze that teased Angel's hair as it passed on its way to where ever it felt like going. Days like this had been few and far between this spring, as southern California had been plagued by an unusually extended period of winter rain. The mid-May sunshine seemed to be making up for all the days that it had been upstaged by clouds. 

The vampire couldn't have been happier the day he discovered he could go outside in direct sunlight. He'd been sitting in the shade of a tree in the park near the apartment, reading a book on a nice cloudy March day, and hadn't noticed the weather clearing until it was far too late. Angel would have happily waited for the sun to vanish behind a cloud again, or even go down, except that his plan was ruined by a sudden gust of wind that send a four year old girl tumbling into the man-made ornamental lake. His protective instincts kicking in, Angel was already handing the child to her hysterical mother before he realized the import of the moment in relation to his own state. Cordelia had arrived minutes later having had a vision of Angel steaming in sunlight… only to find him happily chatting with the girl's mother in a sunny patch of grass. 

Since then his taste buds had begun to change as well. Foods that he remembered so fondly from the day that had never happened began to taste right again. He was now living only halfway on blood, and half on a regular human diet of plant and animal products and the requisite junk foods. 

"Eyes on the road," Buffy broke him from his reverie. "Just because you'll live through a crash doesn't mean the rest of us will." 

Angel reached out and took her hand, intertwining her slender fingers in his. "Would I risk you, or them?" he asked, nodding slightly toward the back seat. 

Buffy smiled. "I know you wouldn't. Enjoying the sun aren't you." It wasn't a question. "You *are* starting to look a little less….. dead. Oh, you know what I mean!" 

She thought she might have hurt him. Angel laughed softly. "Yes I do, and thank you." 

Over the last hill the Pacific Ocean fanned out before them, a sheet of turquoise in the midday sun. The sand shimmered like flecks of golden flame chipped from the glowing orb itself. Angel had purposefully avoided the public beach, wanting their outing to be quiet, and private. When he proposed, everything had to be perfect. 

Perhaps that was what had been making him so jittery today. The flashes out of the corners of his eyes had continued during the entire ride out of Sunnydale. There seemed to be no logical rhyme or reason to their appearance, but they refused to leave him alone. Of course, if he was traveling in the car and it was following him, it probably wasn't a ghost. 

Or perhaps he just needed to get his eyes checked. 

Buffy sat beside him, totally oblivious to his plan to make her his permanently. The last five months had made him even more positive that he wanted her, not just now, but forever. Angel could no longer believe he had once thought leaving her was best. Then he had never dared dream that they would be together again, and he not-quite human, but not fully demon either. Now… he dared. 

Buffy changed out of her t-shirt and shorts while Angel laid out lunch and set up the beach blankets and the umbrella to keep the twins from getting overly burned. Or him and Buffy for that matter. Especially him. Lunch was sandwiches – tuna for her, beef for him, -- potato salad, oatmeal cookies for dessert, and drinks – peach iced tea and O-positive respectively, with plenty of ice water besides. 

Having slathered the infants in baby sun screen, and setting out the food, Angel stripped down to his own swim trunks. Totally unlike his usual wardrobe, they were a deep shade of blue as opposed to black. Every woman in Buffy's apartment had insisted that he could *not* wear black swim trunks to propose on the beach. 

Angel absently wondered what the difference was between being seen in public in swim suits, as opposed to walking around in public in his boxers or Buffy in a bra. Then again, some of the women's fashions he'd seen in the last decade seemed to be that and just about nothing else anyway. 

When Buffy came out from behind the sheltering cliff, his eyes almost fell out of his head. 

Her swim suit was a diffused lavender, seeming touched by pink or sky blue depending on the angle with which the sun hit her. Even more appealing was the fact that it was a tastefully cut bikini. Her hair was swept up in a careless ponytail, baring her neck from delicate ears to sculpted shoulders. The Claddagh hung from a thin chain, glinting just between her breasts. 

Angel covered his infant son's eyes, and grinned, openly letting his own wander slowly over his girlfriend's body, and hoping she didn't kill him for doing so. "Sorry, kid. You're not old enough." 

"And my daughter is?" Buffy asked, though in a – thankfully -- playful manner. 

"She might as well get her mother's fashion sense while she's young," he quipped back, fully aware of her own inspection of *him.* He could feel his abdominal muscles constricting, even as his mind told him to relax. 

Buffy laughed. "Relax, you passed. Are you aware of just how sexy you are in that?" 

"You mean almost entirely naked?" 

Her grin turned almost feral. "Exactly." Buffy came forward and sat down beside him on the blanket. "Now let me put some lotion on you before you start crisping." 

Buffy took her time rubbing the lotion into his skin, and Angel basked in the selfish joy he felt at having her all to himself, as well as the firm and tempting play of her hands across his back and shoulders. There was definitely a very fine line between pleasure and torture… and it was quickly blurring. 

Angel opened his eyes when Buffy's hands stopped moving. "What is it?" 

"Over there," Buffy pointed over his head. "What is that thing?" 

Across the large expansive of low-tide exposed sand, nearer the rocky cliff faces than the shore, one of the sea shells appeared to be walking toward them. Angel's enhanced vision easily picked out the creature. "I think it's a hermit crab." 

Buffy stood and darted across the hot sand, hopping lightly to avoid scalding her feet, then clambering across the rocky shore beyond. Angel watched her make her way to the creature, crouch, and stop. Several minutes passed, with Buffy moving no more than a foot or two. Finally she glanced over her shoulder and motioned to him excitedly. 

Gathering the twins in his arms, Angel followed Buffy's trail of sand-hops across the beach. "What has you so hypnotized?" he asked as he came up behind her. Then he saw it. A tide pool had formed in a small cleft in the rocks, and it was full of sea life: a star fish, several crabs, a few strands of algae, and a school of small fish. 

Amber squirmed, and Angel lowered her just enough so that her little fingers could brush the water. She giggled. "Fi-fi." 

Buffy smiled. "That's right. Fishy." She gently removed one of the starfish from the rock wall. "This is a starfish." 

Liam took one look at the creature and started screaming. 

"Oops. Bad idea," Buffy laughed and bent down to return the creature to its home. "Oh my God!" Her mouth fell open, and she stared into the pool. 

"What?" Angel bent over again. He didn't see anything unusual. Below the wavering reflections of sky, cliffs, and bodies were the same fish, sea weed, and rocks that he had seen just moments before. "I don't see anything." 

"You didn't notice it?" Buffy regained her voice. "Angel, what do you see?" 

Sighing, the vampire looked again. "Fish. Rocks. Water. Green stuff." He paused and looked up again. Buffy looked as though she thought he was crazy. Maybe he was. Or maybe she was playing some twisted prank. "The sky, the twins, you, me, the clouds, the cliffs. What am I supposed to be looking for?!" 

"You're reflecting you idiot!" Buffy jumped up and shoved his head down toward the water. "There. *Look!*" 

Angel had to clutch tightly to avoid dropping his offspring. The flashes out of the corner of his eyes all day made sense now. He'd been seeing *himself!* It was surreal, like he was dreaming, or drugged. He hadn't seen himself since that one brief day of humanity, and then only briefly. He'd been preoccupied with… other things, at the time. Not enough time to look at every line, every detail. His artistic side traced the dimensions of his face, torso, stomach, legs…. 

"Oh great, now I'm going to have a vain boyfriend for the next three hundred years," Buffy gently removed the twins from his arms. "So, what do you think?" 

*I'm supposed to be capable of speech?* That was asking an awful lot of a guy who hadn't looked himself in the eye in centuries. "I think…. I think you look even more stunning in my arms than I realized." 

Much to his amazement, Buffy blushed slightly. Not something she did particularly often. "Thank you." 

Angel smiled, and looked at himself again. He looked pretty good when he smiled! No wonder Cordelia complained about his brooding. He didn't try vamping out. That wasn't something Angel was quite ready to see yet, and he'd seen enough vampires to have a pretty good idea anyway. Besides, that would ruin the mood… and he had plans. "Let's go back." 

Buffy looked a bit puzzled. "Aren't you happy?" 

"I'm… flabbergasted," Angel replied, picking his word carefully. "It's wonderful, just startling." 

Angel and Buffy walked back across the beach in relative silence, each lost in thoughts the other could only guess. The tide had turned, and had begun coming in, causing the beach to slowly vanish. 

After lunch they splashed lazily in the ocean. It wasn't really the day for a water fight, and they didn't want to get too far from Amber and Liam. Then, dripping and tired, they returned to the blankets to warm up. 

Buffy took down her hair and began to go through it with a comb in long, smooth strokes, occasionally punctuated by an "Owww!" 

Angel slipped behind her and took the come. "Let me, love." Carefully he pulled the teeth through her long mane, gently working out the knots as it tried, until it was smooth and dry and soft again, save the remaining bits of salt. Buffy leaned back into his strokes, sighing in a way that Angel could only describe as sensual. "How does that feel?" 

"Wonderful," she purred. "It's like a massage." 

*Massage eh?* That sounded good. After another minute, Angel set down the comb, and reached his hands for her coveted flesh, working firmly along her shoulders and down her back. Returning the favor she had done him earlier that day. *We'll see how you like it.* Any minute now things would be perfect. 

The sun dipped lower, sinking slowly toward the sea until they almost touched. The clouds began to change colors, peach streaks among the blue. "Buffy." 

She looked over her shoulder and smiled. "Angel." 

Suddenly his mouth felt dry… metaphorically speaking. What if she said no? What if… *Screw what if… ask already!* He fought with himself. "I…wanted to talk to you about something." 

"Me too," she turned around to face him and reached into her bag. Angel wasn't sure what to think as she pulled the chain with the Claddagh out, having removed it before diving into the ocean earlier. She opened the clasp and slid the ring off, presenting to him in the palm of her hand. 

Angel stared at it. He'd been right after all. His heart sank. Perhaps things weren't as perfect as he'd assumed them to be. Or maybe—  "If you're going to do this right, you have to take it," Buffy stated, still smiling. 

Angel was now utterly confused. "What?" 

The woman before him laughed. "A ring *is* usually required. Here," she thrust it into his hand. "Now get on your knees." 

She knew! All day he'd been doing his best to seem normal and somehow Buffy *still* knew. But then she had always known him better than he thought. Angel clutched the ring for a moment, then complied with her command. He grinned. "Almost five years ago I met you. We tried dating. We tried sex. That… didn't work too well. I went to hell… literally. Then we tried again. I was dumb. I was made human in a freak accident, in a day that no longer exists. Again, I was dumb. Then last Thanksgiving we were given another chance, thanks to another guy and a little shove from the PTB. I'm not going to be dumb this time. Buffy… I ask… beg… plead… for the honor of being your husband." 

Buffy's smile had grown throughout his speech, and now she sat…. silently. "Well…. Maybe I should think about it." 

"Buffy!" he wailed. He couldn't help it if he sounded undignified. 

"Do I actually have to say *yes?*" 

"It's traditional." Angel pleaded with his eyes. 

The Slayer laughed and through her arms around him. "Then *yes.* You can be my husband, Liam." 

Angel blinked. "How did you--" 

"Willow told me," Buffy cut him off. "She said you mentioned it that night you got drunk while I was in the hospital." 

He only vaguely remembered a good portion of that night. It was very possible. "Will you take this now?" 

Buffy held out her hand and he slipped the ring on, heart pointing in. She looked down at it approvingly. "You'd better behave when we get married." 

"Behave? Behave!" Angel growled and tackled her, falling forward with her onto the sand, and pressing his lips to hers in the rush of relieved joy that overtook him. "You're my mate. That means we won't *have* to behave anymore." 

"We won't?" Buffy's eyes sparkled. Behind her, the sun hit the water, bathing everything in a flaming red and orange glow. 

"I want my children in your womb," Angel began nibbling her neck, vampiric fangs carefully *not* exposed. 

His beloved laughed. "It's a little late for that, don't you think?" Her tone was cool and light, but her expression was warm and thick with passion. 

Angel snarled and pressed their lips together again, fighting the urge to take her right there in the sand. There would be time for that later. All the time in the world. They might never even be able to really have children together. He *was* still dead after all. But there were always chances. A thousand possibilities. He moved away just long enough to speak. "But next time, *I* want to be the one to put them there."

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