This was a little drabble I came up with after watching one of the many bits in Buffy where Angel comes back and they start with the angsty kissing and listening to Meatloaf. This can be set anywhere in cannon (well you know anywhere after Angel's left) I guess it's kind of OOC cause it's hard to make song lyrics into natural speech but anyway I hope you enjoy :)
The wind was so cold as I made my way through the dark streets of Sunnydale. It was strange for it to be so cold; Sunnydale being quite a warm town usually. I could vaguely feel my fingers going numb but it was a strange sensation for me, like something that I had forgotten long ago but the memory still lingering. Having no blood pumping round my body to keep me warm it wasn't as if I even noticed the cold or that it would particularly bother me if I did. But I knew it would bother her. Buffy never particularly liked the cold and she didn't take well to it.
I shouldn't be thinking about Buffy – it wasn't healthy and it certainly wasn't smart but it was hard to fight the urge to. It was kind of a given that every time I came back to Sunnydale my thoughts would immediately turn to Buffy; it was the town that our entire relationship was based around. It was here that we first met, shared our first kiss, first made love. But it wasn't always the scene of good times. It was the place I had to watch her die in, it was the place she killed me in and it was the place that I couldn't seem to stay away from, no matter how hard I tried, even though I had left to make things easier for her.
It had been hard to forget about her when I left Sunnydale and went to LA but somehow I had managed it, which is why it always felt like such a mistake coming back. I always tried to justify my reasons for coming back to myself but they always felt forced, it was always because I wanted to see her. That was the reason I kept coming back here. As soon as I saw her everything that I had tried to forget, everything that I had forced myself not to think about all came rushing back to me.
Tonight was no different when I rounded the corner to the entrance of the graveyard and saw her standing there. She was facing in the opposite direction to me and she hadn't realised that I was there yet. I found it ironically funny; I always used to turn up behind her out of the blue and make her jump. She hated it when I did that, always saying that she could have killed me but I knew that some part of her always knew it was me. She just didn't like feeling vulnerable, having someone sneak up on her from behind. This time I almost succeeded as well but I stepped on a twig a few feet away from her and as soon as she heard it snap she rounded on me, steak raised and ready to strike. She lowered it and her guard when she saw me.
"Oh, it's you." she stated but she gave me a smile nonetheless. I chuckled softly.
"Hello to you too." I stated. "You could be a bit nicer with your greetings, you know that right."
"I'm sorry," she said taking a step towards me. "I was just expecting a fight. You know; alone at night, out in front of a graveyard and all, sort of expect some kind of hell beastie to pop up and start trouble. Although trouble would be kind of apt for us as well I guess." she added after a pause.
"It wasn't that bad." I stated.
"You did try to murder everyone I love right after the first time we slept together." she shot back but she was still smiling all the same.
"I didn't have a soul." I replied defensively. I couldn't help it."
"If you say so." she laughed softly. We fell into silence before I sighed. Now this was making me feel nostalgic.
"We had some good times together though." I said.
"Yeah we did," she admitted putting her steak back in her pocket. "but we did have some bad times too."
"That's living on the Hell Mouth for you." I laughed. If there was one thing I had learnt over the years it was that living on the mouth of Hell was going to put a dampen on any relationship, no matter what you did to try and make it otherwise.
"When I stabbed you through the chest, now that was pretty spectacular." she smiled shaking her head as she remembered.
"Well in your defence I was trying to suck the world into Hell." I shrugged. "It wasn't as if I left you much choice and let's face it, it probably wasn't the best idea for us to be dating in the first place."
"True. You didn't have to leave the way you did though." she muttered after a pause. "You could have at least said something rather than just up and leaving like that."
"Buffy I wanted to," I told her lamely. "I tried to, I really did, but I just couldn't stand to see you get hurt."
"So your response to that was to just leave without a word?" she asked. "No phone call, no letter, not even one of your blood on the wall messages."
"You got through it though." I told her.
"Yeah," she shrugged. "but still."
"Ok it wasn't the best idea I'd ever had," I admitted. "but I thought it was the best way to deal with it. I thought it would be the best way for you to deal with it."
"I did deal with it." she said looking down at her feet. "I finished crying in the instant that you left. I can't remember where or when or how but I somehow managed to get over you once you weren't around anymore and I didn't have to be reminded of the fact that we once had a sort of plan together."
"We had a plan?" I asked.
"Yeah; save the world together and not die." she stated.
"Seems like as good a plan as any." I replied.
"I was glad when I got over you," she continued after a pause. "so I banished every memory you and I had ever made, that's why it's kind of hard seeing you again."
"You're a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for." I stated. I didn't really know what else to say. I knew I shouldn't have come back here; there was no reason for me to come back here. Well I did have a reason and it was a purely selfish reason. I had wanted to see her. I had let myself think about her too much and I had found myself needing to see her. So I came back and found her.
"I guess." she muttered. "I felt really low when you left me so made myself strong again, somehow. I told myself that you were gone, that you weren't coming back and that there wasn't really a future between us anyway so I never wasted any time on you since then. It sort of helped me move on but you keep coming back to town and that's really not helpful." She added the last part with a soft smile and I knew she didn't mean it.
"Can you forgive me?" I asked after a pause, taking another step towards her and closing the distance between us a little bit more. That was a dangerous move. I knew it was a dangerous move because the closer I was to her the more I could think about the last time we were together and the first time we were together and every other time in between that. Whenever I was around Buffy all the memories, the heart-ache, the flesh and the fantasy all started rushing back to me. It made me want to grab her and kiss her but then I knew that it would make it even harder for me to leave her once it was all over again especially if I acted on it.
"What?" she asked looking up at me, confused.
"For leaving the way I did." I clarified. "Can you forgive me and we'll just forget I ever ended things like that between us."
"Ok." she shrugged. "We could try giving this being friends thing a go."
"That may take some getting used to but I'm willing to give it a try." I laughed softly. Buffy let out a similar laugh.
"Are you telling me that you're a two hundred year old vampire and you've never run into an ex before?" she asked.
"I have." I replied a little defensively, partially because her tone made it sound like I couldn't handle being friends with her and partially because I knew she probably didn't want to hear about the stream of woman I had from before I regained my soul. No matter how over me she could say that she was I knew it was weird for her and she didn't like to hear about it so I didn't mention it. "I just usually ripped their heads off and drank all their blood." I half joked. I don't know how to deal with the emotional side of talking about that so I make jokes about it, it makes it easier. That was pretty spectacular. Although she didn't seem to mind as she laughed lightly.
"Well I guess your last ex, save me, was from before you had a soul so that would kind of be a given." she stated.
"Yeah," I replied shuffling awkwardly. "It was all kind of gone with the wind once I got that back. Well," I added after a pause. "that was until I met you."
"I'm glad I could leave such a lasting impression." she smiled in that Buffy way of hers and I couldn't fight it any longer. I wanted to reach over and kiss her. It was an impulse I knew I should fight but we were now so close, it was even more difficult. She seemed to notice it as well and we both looked at each other, suddenly deeply self-conscious. It seemed ridiculous; me a two hundred and forty year old vampire and her a powerful vampire slayer who have both tried to kill each other on occasion suddenly feeling shy around each other, but then when you considered our history it was hardly surprising. I coughed, clearing my throat.
"Um I should get going." I told her and began to turn away when I felt a hand clasp around mine, it was warm and soft and felt wonderful. I turned to stare at her and she was looking at me with those beautiful eyes of hers and if my heart had been beating it would have been going a mile a minute (sometimes I was thankful for the fact that I was dead, it made situations like this a lot quieter when you couldn't hear your heartbeat pounding in your ears).
"You never told me," she tailed off as she looked at me before she let go of my hand and suddenly seemed to come back to herself. "er, I mean you never told me what you came here for."
It didn't matter what I said now, I was too far gone to realise that I should just walk away and she'd know I was lying anyway. I knew that it was a mistake to come back here in the first place and I just made things worse for both of us by doing so. It was when she touched me like that, even though it was just a simple touch, everything that was lost long ago was all coming back to me. It was dead long ago and I could barely recall but it was all coming back to me now. I placed my hand on her neck and cupped her head and gently pressed my lips to hers. She kissed me back immediately and it felt as if I was alive again as everything came back to me all at once.
"Sorry." I murmured against her lips as I pulled away from her. She smiled up at me and shook her head.
"Don't worry about it." she said before leaning back in to kiss me this time.
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