Epilogue to Magic Snow

2: Christmas Past

"Where do you want to go?" she asked him, tentatively. Buffy figured they might both start crying and yelling and smacking each other around, but hey, they did that already tonight. She was making an effort not to imagine any good that could happen -- snowball fights, fireside cuddling, normal boyfriend stuff. Instead they did their own normal, which involved demon parts and dirt and doing the break-up two-step dance of who's leaving who this week.

Well, not demons so much, because the only thing lurking in the shadows seemed to be native Californians staring up like they'd seen the Second Coming itself, or children tracing angels in their yards. "I don't get this," she said at one point. "Don't vampires like snow?"

"Personally, I don't like getting my hair wet." He strikes her completely deadpan sometimes, and it's always just a little bit weird.

"It's not that I'm complaining for the lack of fight scenes," she went on. "I just don't get why they're all hibernating."

"Maybe they feel like they shouldn't be out here. Just know it."

"Why do you think that?" she asked.

"Because I feel like I should be."

She held his hand a little tighter. "Well," she said, easy-going as she could manage, "that's definitely another point for the you're-special-and-everyone-wants-you-to-live team."

"I know, I-" he sighed. "I'm okay now. It's over. Don't worry about me."

She looked at him kindly. "It's really pretty late for that."

He tried to smile, or didn't. Looks like that were once why God created street lights.

He said, "You're freezing." They hadn't conquered the awkward non-sequiter thing yet, but it wasn't the worst of their problems. The worst of them probably involved the way he hooked his arms around her when he bundled her into his jacket. Black over blue. "I don't need it," he said.

"Oh- right. Thank you."

Warm-weather clothing. That's something they needed to get around. She kept stopping by with no jacket, little dresses, and she doesn't know what she's thinking. That can't be a good, little thin layers of cotton separating their bodies. Maybe that was the point of the snow. A winter like this is something they should be able to handle all right. She thought, if we can just keep together under heavy jackets, then it's okay.

Angel pulled her out of her thoughts. "Maybe we should call Giles. He might have some kind of idea."

Her brow furrowed. "He might-- have an idea about our...?"

"About - this." He gestured upward.

"Right -- yeah. Mystical weather. Snowy chaos." She nodded repeatedly. "That would be good, do some research, get some exposition. Or, you know, alternately - just putting this out there - we could wait an hour or two, and call him at a less breakish time of dawn."

"We could do that."

"We could, right now... I don't know. Stay out. Do this for a while."

Warm-weather clothing, it tends to be a problem because something between them travelled by air. Sense memories sometimes got into their skin, tortured them in dreams. A penetrating kiss, or a low pain in her back where he shoved her at a wall, left her crumpled on the ground, and with her un-keen, un-vampire senses she still knew he smelled like blood not him, that other thing.

"Angel..." she said quietly, "Was it cold when you were in-?" but she broke the question off when their eyes met, and forced an embarrassed smile. Look at kooky Buffy, asking you questions about hell.

"I didn't feel it," he said. They had become very good at reading each other's minds, and lying effortlessly.

"I think we could do this for a while," she repeated again, and they walked.

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In the library Willow was saying, "It's 'cause of he's English, I guess. He said he's more used to the traditional, melted kind of rain."

"Snow does bring out the very manly terror. My Uncle Rory convinced himself he was having a heart attack from the picking up of a shovel."

Willow turned around in a giddy spin. "Buffy, you should've been there this morning. We made irregular snowmen and ate hot cocoa and had a whole second childhood!"

"Plus didn't you think Oz was, like, 75 percent more emotive than usual?"

Willow beamed proudly. "I thinked he cracked part of a smile!"

"And then my mom tried to make snow cones out of Martini mix. Dad went to the basement bar and didn't come up all afternoon. It was the best Christmas ever."

"It was pretty good," Buffy said.

Willow's smile didn't fade, but her eyebrows tilted into concern. "Where's Angel? Was- was everything with him okay?"

"Oh. Yeah, he's fine. We were outside and then... then we went in for a little while." She stopped it at that, somewhat guarded.

"Well, I should get points for being mildly relieved he's not dead." Xander cast a quick glance to Buffy, mostly to gauge whether he'd need stitches for continuing. "More dead," he clarified. "Again. In fact, you may never hear this again, but yay Angel. Guy should make it snow more often. I could like him making snow."

Buffy smirked. "And that would be a Christmas miracle." She looked at Willow. "In a wintery, secular, non-denominational way."

"Darn tootin'," Willow agreed.

"I'm not saying this whole peace-on-earth-good-will-towards-vampires thing won't get old by June," Xander quickly added. "You have to think about the pool and baseball industry."

"Weather people said it'll clear up by tomorrow," said Buffy.

"They also said, 'Hey, it never ever snows in California, so expect another brown Christmas.' This isn't exactly their territory."

"No, it's ours. But I say it'll clear up."

Willow chimed in, "I think the mystical forces of good would want Giles to drive to work again, eventually."

"Right." Buffy looked at the wall. "And you know, Angel's okay now. So it's not a big deal."

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She had crashed around 2:00, when the snow still hadn't let up. Running on next-to-no sleep used to throw her off balance for days, when she was younger. Now a little nap would usually cover it -- mid-day, American History class, whatever. His place was closer than hers, and that was all that was important by the time her breath became visible and her cheeks flushed bright pink. He brushed the white specks from her hair, like leaves. He'd done that before. Fall, a year ago, there was mutual scooching to the most comfortable positions in the grass, before kissing and kissing again in that determined way they had, giggling when fallen leaves prickled her neck. Her head started to hurt, from either the cold or exhaustion or that little trip down memory lane. It seemed awfully depressing and appropriate that they would ever have done that in a graveyard, tracking lines in the soil and waiting for something evil to rise.

In the snow, they found refuge under a store awning, and he blew non-oxygen on her neck, they had red sheets once, a little starchy and she didn't mind it and it drew their faces together like a magnet. Pressing and inches apart like those same-sided magnets that can't touch. "Angel, I can't make this stop," she said quietly.

His nose grazed her cheek gently. "We'll just... take some time."

Black over blue, nice comfy layers on her and he just had thin cotton under her fingers. "Right. Just that it's- dangerous."

The smallest of words exhaled onto her lips. "When we - get close."

Met him halfway and kissed him once. "And that would be... wrong." Kissed him again.

They mutually scooched into his place, read each other's minds, and lied that it was completely naturally to just lie down for a minute and get away from the cold, which certainly had never led to bad things before. "I want it to still be Christmas when I wake up," she whispered. She thought, winter clothes, layers, and just kissing faces are okay. She concentrated the same-sided magnet effect on other parts of their bodies.

At one point, when they were almost sleeping, he asked if she trusted him. She thought there was so much honesty in him asking her that, and so much dishonesty in her just saying "yes." She didn't say the whole truth of it. That yes, she trusted him with her life, but no, she didn't know if she could trust him to be there when she woke up, and she didn't trust the clouds to keep making snow and keeping him safe.

At one point, she said, "I have a present for you in my house. I got everybody..."

He said, "I didn't get you anything." The ridiculousness of the admission made her laugh. She heard him murmur, "I'm sorry I didn't."

"It's okay," she said back.

"Birthday," she heard him say softly. "Get you something nice." she turned seventeen in the mall, lightning-fast, didn't even see him until she was on the ground, and there were sprinklers drenching them like rain water and he wouldn't--

She jerked awake.

wouldn't make her warm again

"Angel?"

He hummed into her shoulder, then looked up with the slight recognition that her heart had jumped. "What's the matter?"

Moments passed, in which she ran her fingers down his arm like he was very strong, flesh-shaped glass, and kissed his hands. When she found her voice again, what came out was, "Stay close to me."

He said, "Always," and for at least that second she believed he meant it.