A Compendium of Lost Moments
By: dharmamonkey & Lesera128
Rated: T
Disclaimer: We're still waiting for that special envelope to come in the mail announcing that the creators of the Bonesverse and Angelverse have signed over their rights to us, but alas, all we seem to find when we check the Dharmasera mailbox are Bed Bath & Beyond coupons, Lands End catalogs and bills from our cell phone providers saying they're losing money on our unlimited data plans. We don't own jack. But we sure do rock what other people own.
A/N: Ever since we first mentioned Mérida in the story "The After Party," the image of Angel and Brennan's brief sojourn together in that picturesque city in southern Mexico has been evocative for us as writers and, we think, for a lot of you as readers. The episode has been mentioned a few more times in the series since then and we thought it was time to flesh out what that period was like for our couple. So, without further ado, here goes...
Chapter 4: Mérida
Mérida, Mexico ~ May 6, 1929
Angel stood in front of the sink and looked half-attentively into the mirror as he drew the straight-edge razor over his jaw in short, precise strokes, dipping the blade into the sink basin to rinse the tiny specks of crisp dark hair off of the edge before he brought it back up to his face and resumed shaving. He held his rounded chin high and pulled the pockmarked skin of his neck taut as he stroked the razor under his square jaw, taking care to avoid the prominent bulge of his Adam's apple.
The radio crooned softly from its place on a rickety bookcase in the sitting room that Brennan had picked up in a second-hand shop to hold ancient looking leather bound tomes on the Mayans and Spanish conquest of Mexico. Works such as Bernal Diaz del Castillo's The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, Edward King's Antiquities of Mexico, and a copy of Ernst Förstemann's 1892 photochromolithographic of the Dresden Codex, a work dating to the Mayan culture of Chichén Itzá in the late eleventh century—a work that was also, coincidentally, the oldest known book from the Americas to have survived to the modern day—littered the shelves of the small bookcase crafted from pucté, a hardwood indigenous to that part of the Yucatán.
The sounds coming from the radio had a tinny edge to them which normally wasn't too noticeable when Brennan kept it tuned to one of the two stations that they could pick up in Mérida. The one that she preferred—a channel that played very little music, instead filling most of its limited number of broadcast hours with news commentaries, farm reports, and weather forecasts—tended to drive Angel crazy when he spent hours at home listening to it while she was gone during the day. So, instead, whenever he could, he flipped it to the other station that played half-hour sponsored music broadcasts. On this particular morning, the wistful voice of the soprano Dusolina Giannini crackled over the airwaves as she sang the song 'Cielito Lindo.' Angel whistled along to the tune between his teeth as he shaved, stroking his thumb along the underside of his jaw to make sure he got everything. It had been 176 years since he'd been able to see his own face in a mirror while shaving, and in that time, shaving by feel alone had become second nature to him.
Angel paused for a moment, resting his hand on the edge of the sink as he thought of the years he spent in London. He remembered how, for a month during the winter of 1872, he'd tried growing a moustache, sideburns, and a goatee, but after a fortnight of relentless teasing about how 'ridiculous' he looked, and a significant amount of not-so-subtle complaints from Brennan about him chafing her delicate skin, he'd given up and shaved it all off. Even after that, he used to shave only every other or sometimes every third day. But after the first night he'd spent with her in Chicago—the night she took him in, fed him, gave him a bath, a haircut, and a deliciously sensual straight-razor shave—and knowing how much she liked the feel of his smooth, freshly-shaven cheek against her skin, he'd made it a point to shave each evening before she came home from her errands. He knew she'd see his clean shave, smell his aftershave lotion, take his perfectly smooth face between her hands, and kiss him, moaning passionately into his mouth. It was then that Angel decided that, as much as he disliked shaving, if it got her to kiss him like that, he'd shave twice a day if he had to.
The song ended and the radio moved to the next tune, a waltz that Angel recognized as 'Dios Nunca Muere' ('God Never Dies'). The particular radio station in Mérida that played the music he liked was very small and had a correspondingly small collection of recordings that cycled through in an endless repetition. After hearing the same songs over and over again, he'd begun to memorize the melodies and, though he didn't always understand all of the words, the lyrics themselves:
Sé que una nueva luz
Habrá de alcanzar nuestra soledad
Y que todo aquel que llega a morir
Empieza a vivir una eternidad...
(I know that a new light
Will reach our loneliness
And all those who happen to die
Begin to live forever...)
As he continued humming to himself, Angel pulled the stopper out of the sink and watched the foamy water swirl down the slightly grimy faded white porcelain basin before he opened the spout and rinsed the last bits of hair down the drain. After a minute, he started to legitimately sing along with the music with a sloppy grin on his face, knowing his low tenor was grossly out of key but not caring.
He reached for the dark green glass bottle of sandalwood-infused skin tonic that Brennan had bought for him as a going away present before he'd left Chicago for New York six months earlier. He'd used it sparingly in her absence, only wearing it when he felt particularly homesick for her absence or when he was actually with her. He dribbled a couple of drops in his chafed palm, rubbing his hands together before massaging it into the skin on each side of his smooth, freshly-shaven face. His hands had developed calluses on them as a consequence of his newest recreational pastime: ice hockey. Although the spring thaw had melted the ice from the ponds where he and his demon friends would play by lantern-light, the calluses remained. Brennan had given him an emollient lotion of beeswax and avocado oil to soften his skin, but he'd stubbornly refused to use it—his resistance encouraged in no small part by the way she sighed and moaned when he'd take her deliciously round and heavy breasts in his callused palms and would tweak her tender flesh between his rough thumb and forefinger.
He washed his hands and dried them on the towel next to the sink, then walked towards the armoire, opening the door and staring at its contents dumbly for several moments as he realized he'd forgotten to finish their laundry that day. He frowned, not at the notion that seeing to the laundry had fallen to him—for the past five years, he'd been the one to hand over their dirty clothes and take delivery of the clean, pressed ones from the twice-weekly laundry service Brennan used there—but that he'd forgotten and would have more of it to do tomorrow. He'd punched a fellow's front teeth out in Chicago for calling him "Mr. Angel Brennan, house-husband"—though the scaly-skinned Delba demon had had it coming to him anyway, as far as Angel was concerned—but the fact of the matter was, he didn't mind helping her keep house if it meant he could wake up with her in his arms every day.
He was standing there in front of the armoire wearing only a towel around his waist when she walked in.
"Angel?" she called out to him from the entryway, setting her totes of mercado purchases on the floor in front of the icebox before walking into the bedroom.
A wide smile broke across his face the moment he saw her. Brennan was utterly breathtaking in a knee-length white cotton sundress that she'd purchased in the local market, hand-embroidered with a floral pattern in ivory thread around its simple scoop neckline, and it was so airy and flowy she seemed float into the room. She wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with a sprig of fresh cream colored tea roses tucked under the hat band, and on her wrist wore the bangle of hammered silver Angel had bought for her the night before from an artisan at the Cinco de Mayo fiesta in the plaza in front of the Catedral de San Ildefonso.
In the months since he'd left Chicago, he had missed her terribly—so much so that he felt a tangible ache in his chest each time he thought about her, which was more or less all the time. He knew he would have to leave her again, and that Mérida represented a temporary respite from their difficult but necessary separation, but after a flash of dread washed over him, he pushed away the thought that he would have to leave her again.
Angel greedily drank in the sight of her, standing still and silent for a long moment, selfishly enjoying the sensations the sight of her evoked in him, before he finally approached her.
"Hey there," he said, his voice low and velvety as he reached up and carefully removed her sun hat, gently tossing it on the small dresser against the wall of what had become their impromptu bedroom as he felt her slender fingers skim along the edge of the towel that he'd secured low and snug around his hips. "Mmmm," he murmured. He felt his body awaken with the want of her that never really left him, subsiding like the ebb and flow of the daily tide, as a warm feeling tingled low in his belly and coursed through his limbs at feeling her touch. "I missed you," he mumbled as he leaned in and kissed her lips softly. He curled his fingers around her hip as he pulled her in for another, deeper kiss, and for a moment, they each were lost in the dizzying taste and feel of the other's mouth as their bodies crackled with want. "Very much," he murmured against her lips.
"I missed you, too," she said with a chuckle as she pulled away from his grasping lips. "But we need to stop that."
"Why?" Angel said as he looked at her with what he knew to be a very endearing 'puppy dog' pout as he tilted his head and looked at her. "I missed you," he repeated again.
Laughing lightly, Brennan smiled as she said, "And, I missed you, too, as I said, but if we start that now we'll never eat."
"So?" Angel tried again, arching an eyebrow at her. "Come on, Bren. I want to play with you."
Smiling at him, Brennan shook her head lightly. "And, I want to play with you, but not right now because I brought home dinner," she said with a crooked grin. "Or, rather, what will become dinner once you assemble it into one of your pièces de résistance..." She flicked her forefinger over his navel and pulled free of his grasp, turning around and walking out into the kitchen, twirling her skirt with a flourish as she glanced back at him over her shoulder.
"You're an evil, wicked cocktease, lass," he said with a laugh, plucking his towel open and letting it fall to the floor as he watched her smirking from the kitchen. He smirked as he stood there for a moment, tense and half-aroused, wearing not a single stitch of clothing. "I swear, you're trying to drive me crazy or make my balls turn blue and fall off."
Brennan glanced at him, a faint smile on her lips as she let her eyes roam approvingly over his naked form, but she said nothing, chuckling as she began to unpack her purchases.
"You'll be punished later for that," he told her in a mockingly ominous tone as he slipped on a T-shirt and pulled on a pair of light khaki cotton trousers. He watched her bleed the plucked chickens, draining his dinner into a jar before she took one of the birds, wrapped it in butcher paper, securing it with a string before tucking it into the icebox along with a cork-stoppered bottle of what he presumed was pig's blood, bought off the carnicero at the outdoor market a few blocks away from the pensión.
Angel couldn't help but smile at seeing the glass bottle of pig's blood. He'd never once asked her to buy him blood, but she knew without asking that, while he appreciated the animal blood she could transfigure from red wine, he preferred the taste and the belly-filling feeling of drinking real blood. In Chicago, he would buy his blood on a daily basis from an Italian butcher, Salvatore Costanzo, who never questioned the odd, dark-eyed Irishman who came in first thing each morning before the twilight gave way to dawn and paid cash for blood that Sal had planned to throw out anyway. But on his arrival in Mérida, he didn't have to seek out a carnicero to sell him blood, because Brennan had already worked out an arrangement with Manuel Jiménez, the butcher at the mercado, to sell her whatever blood he drained out of the animals he slaughtered each day. The thought that she had done all that without him needing to ask warmed his belly and made him adore her even more than he did before.
He pulled his black suspenders over his shoulders and added with a snicker, "But because I'm a nice guy, I'll feed you first, so that you'll have the energy to keep up with me when I commence said punishment."
Arching an eyebrow at him, she smirked in return. "How kind of you. But, in the meantime, until such punishments commence, are you going to stop yammering at some point and get in here and start cooking?" she asked him, smacking his bottom as he walked into the kitchen, rubbing his hands together as he surveyed her purchases arrayed on the counter in front of him.
"All that, lass, and you still can't keep your hands off my ass for more than three seconds," he snickered.
She made a pffffft sound and stuck her tongue out at him, unwilling to respond because, at some level, she knew there was some truth to his quip.
"Step away from the stove, woman," he said in a broad, low voice, bumping her hip with his as he reached for the knife and the scarred, lightly bleached wooden cutting board. He washed his hands in the sink and began working the blade to cut up the chicken at the joints.
Brennan watched him as he rocked the heel of the blade across the connective tissues that held the legs and wings to the body and quickly separated the bird into pieces. "I never would've guessed a man such as yourself would be such an enthusiastic cook," Brennan observed wryly as she poured herself a glass of the spicy, full-bodied Casa Madero wine. "Never mind an excellent one."
"Right," he guffawed with a knowing nod of his head. "I'll try not to get too offended at your insinuation that the only skills I have at home are the ones in the bedroom," he said in feigned indignation.
"That's not what I said, sweetness," she said with a roll of her eyes.
"Sure," he grunted, grinning at her as he finished cutting up the chicken and threw all of its parts, except for the head and organs, into the pot of boiling water. "It's okay, lass. Just remember, hmmm? I'm a constant surprise." He rinsed the knife and cutting board in the cold water that splashed in the small kitchen sink and then started chopping the white onion, green cilantro, brightly plump red roma tomatoes, and shiny red, green, and yellow peppers she'd picked up at the mercado.
After another minute, he looked up from his chopping and paused, grinning at her as she leaned over the other edge of the counter, holding her wine glass at a lazy angle.
"Feeling okay over there, hmmm?" he asked her, arching his eyebrow expectantly. "You look a little wobbly."
"What?" Brennan's brows furrowed deeply at his question. "Of course, I'm fine," she said with a wave of her hand. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Angel laughed and cocked his head to the side. "You kinda tied one on pretty good last night, Bren," he said.
Shaking her head, Brennan quickly retorted, "No, I didn't."
Snickering, Angel said, "Bren. Come on. You know you did. You were trying to keep up with me. You should know better than to try to keep pace drinking tequila with a full-grown male vampire."
Waving him off, Brennan scoffed at his statement. "Oh, please," she snorted in mock disdain. "I am not hungover." Seeing the skeptical, unimpressed look he gave her, she rolled her eyes. "Angel, I'm not."
"Okay, fine," he conceded reluctantly. "Maybe you're not hungover, but you were definitely drunk last night."
"No, I wasn't," she stubbornly insisted.
"Yes, you were," Angel retorted with a sharp chuckle. "The way you were downing those stupid 'tequila daisy' things that Manuel kept making for you..." He smirked thinking of how quickly she drained five of the cocktails—a powerful mix of tequila, lime juice, sugar, and Cointreau—as they made their way through the plaza. He felt his groin tighten as he remembered how, after her fifth one, he'd managed by some miracle to get her out of the plaza before she'd shoved her hands down the front of his trousers, and he'd hurried her down a side-street back to the pensión.
"I may've become slightly intoxicated," she hedged, a crooked smile on her lips as she recalled how she'd teased him on the way back from the fiesta and how his self-control had snapped the moment the door of the pensión had closed behind them, "but I wouldn't say I was—"
"Oh, come on—you totally were," he laughed, remembering how she'd felt in his arms as they danced the night before, her body so pliant and warm against his as she let him lead, which was more than a little out of character for her. "But you're really cute when you're drunk."
Brennan's nose scrunched up in a grimace. "Cute?" she asked with an edge of the obvious distaste that she felt at the application of the adjective to her person present in her voice.
For his part, Angel merely gave her a good-natured shrug. "Adorable," he said. "You, toasted on tequila, were very adorable—and very, very sexy."
Brennan pursed her lips for a moment and then shook her head, a familiar move that Angel recognized as one that meant she was going to dismiss his compliment by attempting to change the subject. Since he more interesting in making certain that she remained in an amenable mood to his amorous advances than in necessarily teasing her, he let the subject drop when Brennan was quiet for a moment and then changed the subject as expected.
Pointing at the cutting board where the onion and peppers that he'd chopped up lay waiting, Brennan said, "You know, I never really was one to think that after all the time we've been together, you'd just now be cooking for me...or that I'd agree to it since you're going to do it without even tasting what you're making me."
Angel arched a sharply skeptical eyebrow. "Oh, come on, Bren," he needled her. "You know I've been wanting to cook for you for a while. You just wouldn't agree to it before I caught you off-guard last night."
Brennan frowned, but then said, "Be that as it may, let it not be said that I don't honor my commitments. You got me to agree to let you cook for me, and I ate it this morning, didn't I?"
"Oh, yeah," he grinned. "You did. But I think that maybe the only reason you really did that is because your still-drunken but not hungover state in the wee hours this morning had something to do with me persuading you, mmm?" he suggested. "Or are you saying that because you weren't hungover you willingly, ehhh, acquiesced to a demonstration of my fine culinary skills, lass?" He grinned and shot her a narrow-eyed look. "So which is it, hmm? Because I'm a little bit confused."
Brennan snorted a laugh. "The nominal quantity of intoxicants in my system might've lowered my inhibitions to the point I agreed to your generous offer you made this morning," she admitted. "But, you know I never back away from an agreement I've made, Angel. A deal's a deal, so you know I always honor a bargain I make."
"Right," he said with pursed lips. "But, you still seemed a bit drunk this morning," he chuckled. After a moment, he thought about what he'd said and thought back to what she'd said a few moments earlier. "Besides," he said, taking his knife as he resumed his chopping. "It's not that I haven't taste-tested my cooking because I don't want to...it's just that my taste buds aren't worth a shit and everything other than blood pretty much tastes like wood pulp when you're a vampire." Brennan gave him a skeptical look that caused him to add, "Besides, it's not like I'm not doing this without any gauging of what my efforts are putting forth, lass."
Arching an eyebrow at him, Brennan asked, "Oh?"
"Yeah," he replied. "Well, my sense of smell is still good, so that's how I'm doing it."
Still doubtful, she asked, "So, you're telling me that my dinner is being put together by your sense of smell?"
Grinning at her, Angel nodded, "Yup. Indeed. I'm cooking by smell, more or less." He punctuated his final words with a waggle of his eyebrows. "Impressive, huh?"
Brennan laughed, unable to help herself at his grin. "Maybe," she said, rolling her eyes exaggeratedly. "More or less," she added with a shrug. She leaned over the counter and watched him for a minute as he finished dicing the peppers, then asked, "So, what sort of fine victuals are you preparing tonight?"
"Caldo de pollo de Angel," he answered, using the dull grey spine of the knife to sweep the minced herb and diced tomatoes, onions and peppers into the boiling 4.5 quart Dutch oven pot. He grinned at her, then said, "It's the usual caldo de pollo, I suppose, with a little Angel twist." A cocky grin hung off his lips as he began shucking the ears of sweet pale white corn she'd bought, breaking them into thirds with his bare hands before dropping them into the pot. Angel then reached into the bag and retrieved a handful of jalapeños and assorted chile peppers, then laid them out on the cutting board and began to chop them, too. "So, you really like my cooking?" he asked her, his voice wavering a little on the edges.
"Well, I did like it when you made me breakfast this morning despite the fact that you had to trick me into agreeing to let you cook for me," she said with a reassuring smile as she walked back around into the kitchen and snaked her slender suntanned arms around his waist as he scooped the sliced jalapeños and diced chiles into the pot. "So, I assume I'll like your dinner just as well, despite my teasing of you," she finished. She gave him a little hug before she then asked, "So, how long does it need to cook, mi Angel?" She pronounced his name in the Spanish style, with a soft 'g' and a twinkle in her eye.
"Mmmm," he murmured as he took one last glance at the pot of broth, which had gone from boiling to barely a simmer after having the chicken, corn, onions, and peppers added. "A little while," he said vaguely as he turned around, wiped his hands on his trousers before cupping her face between his hands and pulling her mouth to his. "Why?" he asked, brushing his lips against hers, hesitating for a moment before kissing her lightly. "You don't have any ideas of how to pass the time while the caldo cooks, do you?"
"Mmmm," she grinned back at him. "Yes, I might have some ideas," she said quietly, sliding her fingers underneath his suspenders as she tugged at them gently.
"Hmmmm," he replied with a throaty chuckle as he felt her lips press light kisses along the bottom edge of his jaw and chin. "Do you now, señora bonita?"
Brennan gave him a coy look and pulled away. "What about the rest of dinner?" she asked. "All you're making is soup?"
"Well, there'll be rice," he said. "But that needs to wait until the caldo is ready. And I have some nice flour tortillas, too, but I made those up before you got home.
"So I don't merit fresh tortillas?" she asked teasingly. "I'm hurt, Angel."
"They're a half-hour old, Bren," he said with raised eyebrows. "If you'd bought them at the mercado they wouldn't be any fresher than that."
"Maybe," she said. She then flashed him a grin. "So, you baked for me, hmm? I love it."
He chuckled a bit as he took a step closer to her. "I just bet you do." Reaching for her hips and pulling her close again, he then added, "I think you love my hot body, too. So, tell me—should I go in there and put my towel back on? I know you can't resist me when I'm wearing just a towel, huh? I mean, I can't blame you really since I'm such a damn sexy devil, but even still..."
She didn't answer him with words, but gave his suspenders another, slightly sharper tug before she grabbed his hand and turned around, dragging him back to the bedroom without so much more than a glance back at the pot that simmered in the kitchen. She tugged him through the doorway into the bedroom and released his hand as she made her way towards the bed. She didn't make it very far before she felt his big hands grab her by the hips and twirl her around again, his long, thick fingers curling around her waist, his fingertips pressing into the soft flesh of her rear end as he pulled her towards him.
"This is so nice, being here, and being with you like this," he said. "It's almost like being back in Chicago." His nostrils flared a little as he inhaled a whiff of her sweat, still slightly tinged with the light floral scent of her nearly-faded perfume. "I'm gonna miss you when you go back...you know, out there into the jungle with your Mayan pyramids and everything." After a moment of reflection, he asked, "Roads still washed out?"
An unseasonably early monsoon had passed over the Yucatán two weeks before, bringing strong winds and torrential rains that inundated Mérida and the areas to the south and east. The vicious storm had washed out the hard-packed dirt roads that connected the city with the jungled plain where Brennan's archaeological site was located, stranding her in town until repairs could be made and the roads shored up so cars and trucks could get through without bogging down in muddy ruts or slipping into the ditches along the side of the road.
Brennan murmured an inaudible reply as their mouths crashed together in a kiss, their lips clutching at one another, lightly at first and more possessively as the space between their bodies seemed to collapse. Angel pulled away for a moment and gazed into her pale, glittering blue eyes, then tilted his head to the side, leaning in and, after a second of hesitation, covered her mouth with his again, a low rumble rattling in his throat as he felt her tongue sweep into his mouth. He hummed against her mouth as his hips bucked into hers and his hands slid under her dress and pale cream colored silk half-slip. A low, primitive growl sounded in his throat as he cupped her hips in his hands and pulled her flush against him, his fingers fanning out over the silky skin of her bare bottom.
"You naughty, naughty lass," he snickered as their mouths parted. "Going out in public without bloomers..."
"It's cooler that way," she laughed, leaning her head back with a sigh as she felt him thrust his hip into hers, leaving no doubt in her mind that he wanted her as badly as she wanted him. "I mean, it's not like I was a complete slut, Angel. I did have some foundation garments on so that people couldn't see through my dress. That's why I wore the slip. But, even still, the heat and the humidity today were so bad outside with the sun making things even worse—"
Cutting her off, he laughed a gruff chuckle at her. "Mmmm," he interrupted her.
"What?" Brennan responded with a breathy sigh.
"I'm just thinking," Angel told her. "It's a good thing you weren't goin' around without bloomers last night," he said in a deep, lusty voice that faded nearly to a whisper as his lips formed words against the tender flesh of her earlobe. "I'd have dragged your drunk, hot little self into that alley behind the catedral, pulled that pretty red dress up over this sweet ass of yours, and had my way with you right then and there. The music was loud enough, no one would've heard you when you screamed my name."
"Mmmm," she murmured, chuckling as she heard the vague hint of his long-faded brogue peeking through on the edge of his speech. "You haven't done that to me in, hell, forty-odd years," she snickered. "I wasn't sure you still had it in you."
"Huh," he grunted back. "You know I do, woman. With you, I always do." He paused as he narrowed his eyes and gave her another hungry look before he continued. "But I don't wanna talk about what I have in me," he said. "Instead, I'm more thinkin' of what I wanna put in you." A low growl rumbled in his throat. "God, I want you so badly, lass. You make me so crazy in this dress. The way you always make me crazy." His tongue darted out and flicked the bottom of her earlobe. "So gorgeous, lass, so damn gorgeous."
"God, Angel," she sighed at hearing his sensual words. She felt his mouth migrate along her jaw, nipping as he went along. "Tell me," she whispered as she savored the feel of his soft, cool lips plucking against the skin of her neck. "Tell me..."
"What?" he asked, his face flushing with want. "What...do you...want me...to tell you?" His words fell in clumps, punctuated by the light kisses he was placing along the length of her collarbone as he hooked his thumbs under the neckline of her dress.
Brennan was quiet for a moment, so long it seemed to Angel, that he almost forgot what they were waiting for besides his burning need to plunge himself inside her. But, after another moment, he finally remembered when she answered in a soft voice.
"Tell me you'll stay," she breathed as she felt a flash of desire, her body pulsing warmly with each kiss he placed along her clavicle. "Tell me you'll stay with me until I have to go back," she said quietly, a pleading thread on the edge of her voice. "I want you here with me. I don't want you to go. Say you'll stay with me. Please?"
Angel pouted his lips against her smooth, soft skin, then caressed the round edges of her shoulders with the palms of his big hands as he pushed her away. He felt his chest tighten at hearing her plea, and his gut swirled with competing desires—on the one hand, a yearning to be with her, as completely as possible for as long as he could, his ears filling with the sound of her soul thrumming inside of him, and yet on the other hand, a voice in the back of his head reminding him that she had a destiny to fulfill and that he had to be the one to pull away lest she languish in his arms and never make of herself what she was fated to be.
"Tell me," she insisted, her voice peaking as her eyes widened in response to his silence. "Tell me you won't leave me. Tell me you want me, that you want to stay with me. Please, Angel? Please?"
"Bren," he whispered, bringing his hands once more to cradle her square jaw between his palms. His deep, warm brown eyes stared into hers, and he swallowed hard, his Adam's apple dipping low in his throat as he pursed his lips. He gazed deeply into her pale eyes and licked his lips self-consciously, holding the tip of his tongue between his lips as he watched her chest rise and fall with each breath. Holding her against him, he felt her pulse quicken and he sensed an anxiety about her. He tilted his head to one side and opened his mouth to speak. "I-I..Bren, I..." He closed his eyes and sighed. "I didn't think it would be this hard," he admitted. "I mean, I knew it would be hard, but...I've missed you so much, you have no idea."
"I do," she said instantly, her head jerking up as she tilted her head and tried to make him understand what flash of emotion she felt at his words. "Oh, God, Angel—I do understand because...well, because it's...I've missed you more than I can even tell you."
"I want to be with you, Bren," he said. "I've missed you so much, and I want to be with you as much as I can." He pressed his lips together in a firm line and gave her a determined nod. "I'll stay until you have to go back," he said. "And then, you can come see me at Christmas in New York. That'll make it easier, hmmm? If we know when we'll definitely see each other again. So you can come to me, or...you can send me a cable and I'll come spend Yuletide with you down here." Her blue eyes glimmered with emotion as she nodded mutely. "I will," he insisted. "You know I can't stay here forever, but you know I will always come to see you." He drew his thumb across her cheek, wiping away a single tear that had broken loose when she blinked. "Always, Bren. We may be apart, but we'll always be together, mmm?"
"Really?" she sighed, her shoulders slumping at his words. "Do you really think so, Angel? Because I have to admit that I'd always hoped that, but I was too afraid to tell you that—"
"Shhhh," he whispered, pulling her hips back against his as he gazed deep into her eyes. "I'll always be there for you," he said, placing his hand over her heart, murmuring quietly as he felt her heartbeat throb against his fingers. "And you'll always be there for me. You and me—no matter what happens, Bren...we're forever, lass."
Brennan was quiet for a minute and then sighed softly, "I've missed you so much...so very much, Angel. It's been torture being without you. I mean, during the days it's not too bad because working at the site keeps me occupied, but at night? The nights without you are tortuous. They're never ending. And, if I'm lucky, and I fall asleep, I still dream of you, and when I wake up in the morning, it makes me even more sad. I just—"
"Bren," he said quietly. "I know it's hard, lass—I know. Believe me, I know. But we both know that you need to do this thing you must do, hmm? And until you're done, and you've done what you need to do and so will I, know and trust in us that neither one of us is going anywhere, I swear."
She stared at him for a minute, then nodded again. "Okay," she said with only a slight waver in her voice. "Okay. I know that. I believe you."
"Do you?" he asked as he studied the way her forehead crinkled and her face paled a bit as her nostrils flared, betraying her nervousness and uncertainty. "Really, Bren?"
She stared at his warm eyes for a long minute, drawing strength and reassurance from what she saw in them as she always did, and when she answered again, her resolve was stronger. "Yes," she told him. "Yes, I believe you, Angel. I do. I promise I do."
"You're part of me, Bren," he said to her, his voice quiet but firm in its reassurance. "I can't ever leave you, even if I wanted to, and I don't, you know? You know I don't want to leave you, be away from you. Not ever."
"l know that," she said, reaching out as she cupped his smooth, clean-shaven jaw. Angel gazed back at her, his chocolate eyes shimmering with moisture as his mouth gaped open. For a moment, he looked away, averting his eyes as his brow creased slightly, which she had long ago recognized was a sign that he was doubtful about something but afraid to voice it. "Really, I do."
"Do you?" he said, as he reached down once more for the hem of her dress. "Or do you need me to show you just why I can't ever leave you?" he asked, pulling the dress and underslip over her head and letting them fall to her feet in a whisper as he revealed her beautiful body to his eager, loving view once more.
"I wouldn't mind being reminded," she smiled at him. "If you want to..."
"Oh, I do," he reassured her, caressing her soft auburn hair as he leaned in to kiss her, his lips barely brushing against hers as he nudged her towards the bed. "You know I do..."
A silence of sorts fell between them as they spoke not in words but in long, soulful gazes, soft, delicate caresses as their fingertips roamed over the long planes of naked skin, and a series of ever-louder sighs, and murmurs punctuated by soft laughs and long, low moans echoed between the whitewashed walls of the pensión's bedroom. The coils of the mattress creaked faintly as she fell back onto the bed and he quickly followed her, covering her body with his. He moved over her and then inside of her, the boundary between their bodies no longer readily discernible in the minutes of rolling motion before they shattered, one after the other as the cool blue energy crackled in the space between and around them at the moment each achieved release.
As he felt a haze of repletion settle over him like a fog, he rolled off of her and collapsed onto the bed, beckoning her to assume her favored place in the crook where his arm and shoulder met. Brennan snuggled in there with a contented, kittenish sigh, stroking his sweat-damp chest with her forefinger as a rumble of thunder outside heralded the start of another soaking rainstorm.
"Sounds like you might be staying with me a bit while longer," she murmured, turning her head to place a soft kiss on the side of his neck. "By the sound of that, all that work they did the last few days fixing the roads may be washing away down the side of a ravine as we speak."
He shrugged and snaked his arm more tightly around her waist as he raised his chin off her head to speak. "You won't hear me complaining," he said. "So long as I don't hear you complaining about my caldo de Angel." The pensión had, in the time that they'd been making love, filled with the smell of the chicken soup that simmered on the stove.
"I don't think it's done yet," she said as she drew her fingernail over his nipple, eliciting a quiet hiss of pleasure from him.
"No," he agreed in a low voice as he pulled her on top of him with a wide, toothy grin. "No, it's not ready quite yet. It still needs a bit more time, I think...and so do we." He threaded his fingers through her hair as he brushed it away from her beautiful, square-jawed face, then pulled her in for a kiss. She moaned a little as his tongue swept into her mouth, and she tasted the sharp flavor of the gold-hued anejo he'd been sipping while she was out at the mercado.
"Definitely needs more time," she agreed as she let him pull her close for another, longer, deeper kiss.
A/N: Awww. Wasn't that sweet?
See? We can deliver romantic Angel/Bren fluff when the need arises. We sure hope you enjoyed that. We enjoyed pulling together all the assorted images of Mérida that have been bouncing around the collective Dharmasera mindspace (a strange and sordid place indeed, if you pause to think about it).
As an editorial note, for those who are wondering (and also for those who weren't), the cathedral referenced is real, and the songs mentioned/quoted are also real and period-appropriate. The beverage that Brennan celebrated Cinco de Mayo with, the 'tequila daisy' is also real, the precursor to the now-ubiquitous margarita, which might just be the Official Cocktail of Dharmasera. (We already have an Official Hard Liquor, of course: Jameson Irish Whiskey, LOL.) Lest you think we'd lost our touch, haha.
We have a few more of these crossover oneshots in the hopper. The next one coming along will probably be one set in Cairo and Giza, Egypt. We'll have one where Brennan chats with a couple of the other women who have known Angelus about yet a fourth woman who has kept his company. And there might be one coming along with our new favorite odd couple, Brennan and Spike.
Please let us know what you thought of this little romantic interlude set in Old Mexico. We know you don't have to, but we'd be really grateful if you'd take a minute to leave us a short review. We try really hard to give you folks good reading material with lots of juicy details and rich texture. Let us know how we did.
As always, thanks for reading. You guys are great. Your continued support keeps us inspired to keep writing :-)