Chapter Seven

-Angel-

It's late when I creep back into my apartment. I unlock the door and pause, listening for Liv's heartbeat, the cadence of her breath. I grumble; she's still awake. I have two options, and they're both bad. I can go on in, face her wrath over missing dinner with her parents or I can go back to the office, fall asleep on the couch and face her wrath in the morning, hoping she'll be done ranting before Buffy shows up. I take option number one. I'm not ready to introduce Buffy to Liv. In my experience, current girlfriends don't accept ex girlfriends very well.

She's sitting up in bed reading. She glances over at the clock. It reads 12:15A.M. Buffy and I went walking on the beach after the coffee shop closed. I still have sand between my toes.

I yawn. "Wow, it's later then I thought." Liv isn't really aware that as a vampire I can tell time almost to the minute without a watch or a clock. It's a survival instinct for vampires.

She arches an eyebrow at me. "You're trying to tell me you completely forgot the dinner with my parents, the dinner I called to remind you about three times?"

I take a deep breath. "No, I didn't forget." I'm not positive what the purpose of the dinner was. I've met her parents, granted they don't know I'm a vampire, but that won't matter by the time we're married.

"Really? Then why weren't you there?" She sounds mad, something I don't think I've ever really seen Liv be.

I draw my mouth into a straight line. She's not going to like this. It doesn't matter. I'm not in the habit of lying to people I care about. "I had coffee with an old friend who happens to be in town for a few days."

Liv sighs. Her anger deflates. She puts her book down on her lap. "You could have told me that. We could have rescheduled the dinner with my parents. We just need to all get together sometime to discuss the wedding."

I check a growl. I'm so tired of discussing the wedding. Liv and I don't seem to discuss anything else lately. "I'm sorry."

"So tell me about your old friend. How long has it been since you've seen him?" she asks patting the bed.

I take my shirt off, toss it in the hamper, strip my pants off and toss them the same way. I crawl into bed with the goal of distracting Liv so she doesn't ask too many questions I'm not ready to answer about Buffy. She's persistent, but I've got over two hundred years of distraction techniques under my belt. I almost feel guilty later when Liv is snoring softly beside me in bed and I'm lying with my hands behind my head brooding.

-Buffy-

It's just training, I tell myself, which is why I rushed out and bought a new pair of workout pants and tank top this morning. My tennis shoes are old ones. I haven't exactly been completely lazy for five years. I run almost every day. I park the rental car, get out and take an elevator up to Angel's office. Harmony is sitting in the front office at her desk.

"Hi Buffy, you can go on in. He's expecting you," she chirps.

I thank her and push open the door to Angel's office. He's talking on the phone and pacing. I sit down in a chair to watch him, a pasttime I'm quite content with. He's dressed in a pair of black sweats and a white wife beater. It was always his workout uniform in Sunnydale too.

"Alright," Angel says nodding. He glances at me and smiles. My heart skips a beat. "Okay, me too," he says and hands up the phone.

"Business?" I ask.

Angel looks a little uncomfortable and shakes his head. "Uhm—Liv. Ready to start training?"

He really isn't comfortable with me mentioning his fiancée and honestly I'd just as soon pretend she didn't exist. Of course, if she didn't exist, I wouldn't be sitting in this chair, arms wrapped around myself trying so hard not to touch Angel.

"Yeah," I say. I could take out some frustrations of the mammoth kind. I stand up and we take a private elevator down into a basement. The doors slide open and I follow Angel out into a huge training room. He wasn't lying. This place is state of the art. The floor is covered with this semi squishy padded stuff that's hard enough to work out on but padded so landing doesn't hurt quite so much. There are punching bags, weights, training dummies, targets, and weapons galore.

"Wow, this place is great," I say as I start stretching. I'm still pretty limber, slayer genes I guess. I finish up stretching and stand in the middle of the room, a little lost as to what I'm doing here; maybe it's Angel, maybe it's that I haven't done this in five years.

Angel catches me in the jaw with his fist. My head snaps back. My hand flies to the spot he hit and I stare at him in shock.

"Is that what you brought me down here for? So you could hit me?"

"What? You wanna play the girl card? Hit me back, you're the slayer. Remember it," Angel spat.

Son of a bitch, I think and launch a vicious kick at him. He laughs and ducks underneath.

"You're gonna have to try harder then that, Buffy."

He's taunting me. Mr. do-you-have-to-talk-to-the-vampires-before-you-dust-them is taunting me. Fine, he wants me to try harder. I'll try harder. He throws a punch that I block and a smirk flits across my face.

"Gonna have to try harder, Angel."

He laughs. The sound rolls around the training room and it's a good sound. I grin at him and charge. He ducks and rolls underneath my flying kick. He comes up behind me, catches me in the small of the back with a kick of his own. I stumble forward but catch myself and whirl, catching him with a punch that's hard enough to make him stagger.

"That's my girl," he says.

I shake my head and smile. I force back tears that remember a time he wasn't so sure I was his. I cover up the tears with a leg sweep. He doesn't have time to contemplate whether I'm about to cry or not. From there I just let my mind go blank. I revel in the ballet of kicks, punches, sweeps and other fighting moves.

I can't help but think how right this feels. I might have spent the last five years running from being a slayer, but I didn't lose it. This is what I born to do, like breathing, heart beating; slaying is what my body does. It feels good to let it do it again. We're evenly matched, but I think Angel is holding back. Neither of us have made 'kill shots' to end the ballet just yet. We're both hot, panting and slick with sweat when Angel blocks my cross punch by grabbing my wrist. He flings me hard against the wall and is there before I can catch my breath, pressing my body into the wall with his. His demon face slips into place and he growls, burying his face in my neck. He just nips my skin, drawing a tiny bead of blood. His tongue snakes out, lapping up the minute blood on my skin. I can't help the moan he tears out of me.

He shoves himself away from me and turns his back. His entire body is trembling. I step forward just enough that I can see he's fighting to lose the demon face. I reach out, fingers brushing his tattoo and memory flashes through my mind.

"Do you snore?"

"I don't know. It's been a long time since anybody's been in the position to let me know."

We both jump away like we've been shocked.

"That was good," Angel says.

I smile. "You still got me in the end and I think maybe you were holding back."

Angel shrugs. "I've been training, slaying, you haven't. You'll get better."

"So there will be more training?" I'm hopeful. I hadn't actually expected to use my slayerness as a way to get to Angel. It was more feminine wiles and locking myself outside my hotel room in a towel, but hey if the slayerness gets him, not complaining.

Angel grins at me. "You said it yourself; I got you in the end." He snags a towel from a shelf and tosses me one. We start toward the elevator. I hang back to watch him, shirtless and glistening with sweat.

"In the end, you'll always get me," I whisper.