(The characters are Josh's, of course. Sigh No infringement is intended.)
She walked along the beach, pausing occasionally to kick at the sand as the water swirled around her ankles. It was night and the clouds shrouding the deserted beach matched her mood. She was wearing shorts and a man's shirt with the ends knotted under her breasts. She swung her shoes back and forth in her left hand as she absent mindedly toyed with the shirt's buttons with her right hand.
He probably didn't even remember that she had taken the shirt home after their last night together. When she had got up after they had made love that morning, she had rummaged in one of his closets and picked this one out. Although clean and pressed, somehow she could smell him when she buried her face in the fresh cotton. Maybe it was her heightened senses, but she thought she could STILL pick up his scent on the shirt.
She smiled. He had liked the way she looked in the shirt too. Just that shirt. Large enough to modestly cover her, his eyes had bounced back and forth from her legs to where she hadn't quite fastened all the top buttons. Not fastening them was a good thing. She had been able to get out of it in a hurry and it had ended up draped over the end of the bed. He had been late to a meeting and left her back in the bed with a smile and a goodbye kiss. Later, when she dressed and went home, she had automatically picked up the shirt and taken it with her.
She tensed and broke stride as the moon peeked out from the drifting clouds and shone onto the long expanse of white sand. It was safe, she was safe. Not even half-full yet, the waxing orb would not have its effect for a couple of weeks yet.
She stopped and turned to face out towards the ocean. Her thoughts were in turmoil. What was she going to do, without him? What was going to happen when the moon exerted its influence next time? She had followed the news from LA. It wasn't a front page article, but the collapse of a large downtown office building had not gone unnoticed. The story had said it looked like something had sucked the prestigious law firm's headquarters into the ground.
There went her holding cell, her refuge that kept those around her safe when the transformation took her. She berated herself. It meant HE was gone too, she knew it. Maybe. Somehow she thought she would know, but she didn't, not for sure.
But why should she know? She winced when she thought about her last words to him, when he had insisted that she take her sister and niece and go away.
"I'm not asking, I'm telling you."
"Fine, there's nothing here anyway."
She sighed. What had she expected? It didn't have anything to do with the fact that one of them was a vampire and the other was a werewolf. It had to do with the fact that he couldn't express his emotions for anything and she never tried to suppress hers at all. She had walked away, stiff-backed and angry when he was trying his best to show her that he cared for her in really the only way he could, by his actions.
He had paid more attention to what she had said about a vacation than she had thought he had. Here she was, the place where she had told him that he, and of course her, should vacation.
"You should get away. Vacation? You know that word? Go to Cabo, drink margaritas, midnight skinny-dipping, making love on the beach. Did you catch how I subtly included myself in your little vacation package?"
She repeated those words out loud even as tears filled her eyes.
"So here I am in Cabo. You DID remember what I said."
"I said something else too," a deep voice came from behind her.
She spun around. Oh GOD! There he was. No, it must be some kind of dream, some fantasy she had conjured up.
He stood there in the weak moonlight. "I made you a promise. I told you if I was still around when it was all over I would join you."
Different tears cascaded down her face. She dropped her shoes in the foaming surf and ran to him, throwing her arms around him.
"Oh God, you're real. You're here. You're... oh my GOD! Your heart..."
"Is beating," he finished softly.
"But how? When? Why?" She pulled back enough to look in his face and desperately tried to stop babbling.
"I really have no idea." He got a far-away look in his eyes for a moment. "The fight in the alley behind Wolfram and Hart, it seemed to go on for hours. I lost track of everyone else. The world narrowed down to whatever opponents were in front of me at the time. Then, suddenly there was no one else to fight. My strength ran out and I collapsed into the pile of bodies.
"When I came to, I was alone there. No bodies, not of the dragon, the giant, the demons. No sign of my friends, even though I knew Gunn was fading at the very onset of the battle. I was alone, but I was alive. Alive in every sense of the word."
He refocused on her. "I sort of wandered for a while. I'm not sure how long. I finally found my way back to my old office, my old living place. Now that didn't make sense either as it was blown to pieces quite a while ago. But there it was. I went downstairs and tried to sort things out. Eventually I fell asleep. When I woke, I knew I had to find you."
"Me?"
"You."
"What are we going to do when the moon is full?"
"Oh, well, how the Powers That Be restored me to life I don't know, but they must have known I was going to need to know how to take care of your situation. So, tomorrow we're off to visit a Central American Shaman I was told about. He couldn't do anything about a certain pregnancy, but once I have given him the information that I have he'll be able to work a cure."
Damn, every time she stopped crying for a minute something like this made her start again. As she sniffled, he cupped her chin gently in one hand and lifted her face.
"Now, that that is settled, come over here."
She followed him to a hidden place in the dunes where a blanket was spread over the sand. He produced two glasses, filled them from a pitcher and handed her one."
"What's this?"
"A Margarita, of course." They drank together. He took the glass from her hand, placed it along with his on the blanket. Stooping, he tossed her a towel.
She looked at it "And this would be for...?"
"I think the next step you mentioned was midnight skinny-dipping, wasn't it? You don't want to be frozen after that and miss the last step in your vacation plan, do you?"
She could barely breathe. In a tiny little voice she whispered, "Making love on the beach."
"Exactly."
"I love you, Angel."
"I love you, Nina." He grinned, the shadows that had always been in his eyes gone. "Now then, last one in is a rotten egg." He ran for the water, shedding his clothes as he went. With her heart soaring, she followed.
(The End)
(I've always loved Angel and Buffy together but over the final season they were so far apart. It seemed that Nina put the smile on Angel's face the few times he had one and I fell in love with her. She had no agenda other than making him happy. So I thought she deserved this.)