ba_lyric_wheel FIC: A Whole New World (Buffy/Angel, PG)
Deadline's actually tomorrow, but I'll be gearing up for my trip to Miami with my -- apparently -- extremely attractive BFF. Not my best work, but I hope you enjoy it.
TITLE: A Whole New World
RATING: PG
FANDOM: BtVS
PAIRING: Buffy/Angel
SPOILERS: “Prophecy Girl”
SUMMARY: He takes her to the dance, and it’s a whole new world.
PROMPT: Written for the ba_lyric_wheel. My songs were “Mess” by Ben Folds Five and “It’s Gonna Be Alright” by Ween.
Her dress is still wet. Before she can shiver, Angel is removing his jacket and draping it around her shoulders. Buffy buries her nose into the soft material, the smell of him, and slips her arms into the sleeves. They fall too long, like little girl dress up, and Buffy pushes the cuffs up so she can take Angel’s hand.
He takes her to the dance, and it’s a whole new world. Normally their touching is so hesitant, so restrained; he’s older than her, and a vampire, and they shouldn’t. It’s a hundred different ways a bad idea, and they just need to get used to the fact. But tonight he’s on her constantly; his hands on her waist, his body flush against hers, the two of them one harmonic movement on the dance floor. When she steals away, briefly, to dance with her friends, Angel hovers in the periphery, close enough to touch, and she feels him on the back of her neck and in the pit of her stomach like when she’s patrolling and he’s somewhere in the shadows watching. Keeping her safe, just out of reach.
They dance until the Bronze kicks them out. Angel walks her home. She wears his jacket again. Her neck doesn’t hurt anymore, and she feels strangely calm. She thinks there are other things out there she should be feeling, but she just can’t reach them.
Buffy’s house is sleeping, but her mother left the porch light on.
“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Angel says, but his face is a question, the request for an invitation. She should know better than to invite him in.
She takes off her shoes, and climbs the tree leading to her bedroom window. Angel trails behind her. The bark is rough against the bare skin of her arms, the bare skin of her feet, and the fresh, green smell of the leaves seems so heavy she can feel it enter her lungs. Funny; she never notices the smell during the day. She says something to Angel about it, and he tells her that some things bloom at night.
She never knew that, before.
She waits for Angel on the roof, the shingles cool and coarse beneath her feet, her shoes in her hands. Angel moves so gracefully, even climbing a tree, navigating the branches and the tickling leaves, that he might still be dancing. When he touches down beside Buffy on the roof, he does not make a sound. Buffy hands Angel her shoes, and pulls up the window to her bedroom. She collects the spare fabric of her dress in her hand, and steps over the threshold. Her skirt brushes softly against the smooth flesh of her calves; she needs her hands for Angel. He is graceful, and does not need her help to get from the rooftop to her room, but she wants, bone deep, to be there to catch him, and so she puts her hands on his waist, his shoulder, supporting him as he enters.
Angel looks at her for a long time, his eyes nearly black in this nighttime darkness.
“Buffy,” he says, and then stops. Little muscles by his mouth quiver.
Buffy closes the window, and she takes her shoes from Angel. She takes off Angel’s jacket.
“I’m going to get ready for bed,” she says. “Turn around.”
Angel offers no resistance. Buffy puts her shoes away, and carefully folds Angel’s jacket and lays it atop her desk. She takes off her dress, and hangs it up in her closet. For all it’s been through tonight, it looks as good as new. Buffy puts on pajamas, watching the broad expanse of Angel’s back as she dresses. She isn’t checking to make sure he doesn’t peek; she knows that he will not. She just can’t stand to look away.
In her pajamas, Buffy pads to Angel at the window. She takes his hand. It will be morning soon, and her mother is sleeping down the hall. He should go.
“Come on,” she says.
She remembers taking Collin’s hand. And the little child shall lead them. Buffy leads Angel to her bed, and she’s sure that he will stall, or say something about how this isn’t a good idea, but instead he takes her in his arms, and he lays her down beneath him, and he kisses her. Buffy closes her eyes, and all that exists is this moment. She has been born again, in this simple act. And she has never wanted it before, not even alone in night in her bed, thinking of him, her hands beneath her pajamas, searching out her secret flesh. But in this moment, she wants to unfurl beneath him, to open up and lead him into her secret passages. She has lost so much tonight, her innocence all but faded, but she wants to give him something, something he can never give back. Something worthy of his doting, of the love she sees him carry for her like a heavy pendant around his neck.
Before she can says something, Angel stops kissing her. It is a natural break, if they were both human; if they were both human, it would be a pause, a break for air. But Angel doesn’t need to breathe, doesn’t need to stop, and she can tell by the pregnant nature of the pause that it is not natural. Everything is not all right. Angel lays his head in the hollow of her neck, where her neck meets her shoulder, and she puts her hands on him. He feels, suddenly, heavier, and then she feels wet on her neck.
He does not make a sound when he cries, either.
“It’s gonna be all right, love,” she wants to say, but then her fingers reach up and find the wounds on her neck, and something hollow in her condenses, and she feels the grief like a weight in her gut, and she knows that there is no all right. Things will never be the same.