Buffy only waited for about an inch or two of water to fill up the bottom of the porcelain tub before she started to undress then went ahead and climbed in. Grabbing one of the bottles of bubble bath she kept in the corner pocket, she poured in a healthy amount, finding herself instantly surrounded by the light smell of honey and sweetness.
Once she got the mini champagne shaped bottle back into its place, she bent her knees back up, pulling them about halfway to her chest before draping her arms around them loosely. She let out a large sigh that was only drowned out by the sound of rushing water pouring in around her.
Today had felt impossibly long. All day she'd just kept picturing herself coming home, pouring herself a glass of time then taking a long soak in the tub before going ahead and calling it an early night with hopes she'd have more energy come tomorrow. However, now that she was here, the bath was starting to feel exhausting, too.
Splashing some water on her face, Buffy tried not to start thinking about everything she didn't get done at work today and had waiting for her come morning but it wasn't working out so well. They were down two team members for at least the next two weeks and that was putting a lot of pressure on the rest of them, which is exactly what she didn't need more of.
Staying in only a few minutes longer than it took for the water to fill up to the top, Buffy leaned forward to release the plug again and climbed back out. Wrapping herself up in a towel, she turned the light on to the adjacent walk in closet, eyes scanning until she found some comfortable looking pajamas to throw on. Reminding herself she really needed to take some time this weekend to organize the mess this room had become, she flicked the light back off.
Just as she was finishing with the tie string, her mouth ticked up into a smile as the sounds of some classic rock music just barely reached her ears. Reaching her hand out for her toothbrush, she couldn't help but say a little thank you to the universe that he was such a creature of habit, a lot like her actually. Somehow all of these small little things that she knew about his routine had managed to become damn near comforting for her and she couldn't even begin to explain why that was.
But, as she brushed her teeth then her hair, she felt content knowing he was there.
Turning the light off to the bathroom, she continued out into her bedroom, the music just a hitch louder in here. Her lips mouthed along with the words she could just barely make out with some good concentration on her part as she crawled into the awaiting bed.
She knew next to nothing about her mysterious neighbor next door but what she had managed to pick up brought her some much needed comfort in this world. He, Angel, as it were, and her shared a set of connecting townhomes that mirrored one another to the dotted i's and crossed t's. Or at least that's what she'd been told. There were only a handful of the doubles in the entire little village community, most wound up being four in a row, but the two of them managed to wind up paired together.
She barely ever heard a peep out of him to be honest but she did always know when he got home by that radio kicking on, usually she could tell when he was running a vacuum, too, over there, and if she were close enough to the mud room she'd usually be able to tell if his machine machine was going. Given how loud she knew her monster of a vacuum was to her own ears she didn't question whether or not he had to hear her, either.
At first her paying a little too much attention had more to do with her trying to assure herself that she was safe and just be aware of her surroundings a little but she wasn't so sure when that seemed to change into a little bit of something different that she couldn't entirely put her finger on. She rarely even saw him either, but she sure didn't hate it when she did. When she had first moved in maybe, just because she had well too much to deal with and was still trying to get her own shit together, but as soon as she really gave herself a chance to look him over she'd been a little surprised at how handsome he actually was.
It'd sure caught her off guard, staring a little too long one day when she was getting ready to head to the store but got sidetracked watching him arrive home and take a little stroll to check the mailboxes before returning back to the house. Her eyes widening, wondering if he had always looked like that and here had she been this whole time apparently.
Despite rarely actually seeing him though, she was pretty familiar with his schedule. During the week the two of them usually left within mere minutes of one another, she knew that he got home in the evenings at most an hour after she did. Every other Saturday he'd leave at nearly the same time in the afternoon and be gone until a little after midnight, otherwise his weekends seemed to be spent at home for the majority of the time.
When she had first moved in it'd been just a few months after he had, and at the time he'd had a roommate living there as well, but he'd since moved... though he seemed to be one of the few frequent visitors next door.
Her two favorite interactions however, out of the few to begin with, would have been when he came outside to use his giant grill one afternoon not that long ago when she was out planting a few extra flowers along the outer side to the house. Ever since Riley, she'd found herself incredibly anxious whenever someone was watching her or giving her any sort of attention but not that day for some reason. She might have even admitted to a couple butterflies fluttering in her stomach when she noticed the way his curious eyes would drift back over her way.
Without even a word, and keeping his distance, he had even sat out a couple garden tools and a large watering can for her to use, then had left her a plate of the food he'd been making sitting in the little plastic patio chair at her backdoor. She'd tried to return his things once she had finished her little project but he'd simply told her she could keep them.
The other held a wider variety of emotions but she doubted it would ever be forgotten. Not long after she had moved in she started having an issue with her heat kicking back on properly and had gone to Lorne about it, who had been nothing short of amazing and had come to look it over himself before saying he would get someone out to repair it for her. Which, he absolutely did not have to do but had been endlessly thankful for. However, when the man had called her the following day to inform her he was on his way and would be there in twenty or thirty minutes she'd started to panic a little bit.
Walking back over to the main office, which sat just catty cornered from her, she'd gone to find Lorne to ask him if he might be able to come wait with her during the visit. Keeping her voice low as she noticed Angel and another one of their neighbors she was even less familiar with in there as well, she'd asked, explaining how she was feeling a little weary over being there by herself when he came.
She didn't exactly know Lorne that well at the time either but he was the closest person she could think of to go to. He was also a friend of Willow's and that's how she wound up over here in the first place so she gave him some benefit of the doubt over that as well, and he'd never given her any sort of bad vibes and he was really just what she had to work with so she'd just gone with that.
It was maybe two or three days after that event when she'd just been about to leave the house when a noise on the other side stopped her in her tracks. Carefully she'd looked out the peephole, seeing Angel standing there. Squinting her eyes more, she watched as he taped a few things to her door before walking back away. Waiting the proper amount of time before opening it, her eyes fell to a couple of flyers for some self defense classes and things of that nature he'd put there.
Another day later he had spotted her just as she was coming out to check her mail and had started apologizing in case that had crossed some sort of line now that he was thinking back on it but she had smiled and assured him she thought it was a very kind gesture and she had already started looking into a couple of them. Scratching at the back of his head nervously for a moment, he also suggested maybe she look into an additional security system or some sort of camera set up and she felt hints of embarrassment and shame flood in, remembering the mess of person she had been when she first moved in. She hoped he wasn't going to ask her about all the marks and bruises she'd come to town with, but he never did, dropping the whole conversation and telling her to have a good evening.
Something about that whole interaction had struck her something funny and after that point she'd always mentally thought of him as one of the safe people, like Lorne, like Oz, Willow's boyfriend, or Xander, one of Willow's other friends, that she had sort of around in her little universe. She might not be able to say she really knew Angel by any means but there was something comforting about him being close by, like she knew somewhere deep inside of her if something terrible were to go down she could count on him to help. And she wasn't going to kick that gift horse in the mouth too much.
Closing her eyes again. Buffy snuggled deeper into her bed, pretending to not fall asleep with her thoughts drifting to the man next door.
OoOoO
Buffy had run with everything she had in her to get away from Riley. She had been so sure she was going to die that night, if not the both of them with how hard she was left having to fight back. Once she had gotten a little more settled and a lot further away from where she had been, she had finally dared looking up to see if there was anything in the news or anything like that about him or about her. He hadn't been moving any more when she fled out the door, both of them broken and bloody, but she wasn't about to stop to make sure he was still breathing or something, that was for damn sure. She'd just taken the opportunity and ran as fast as she could for the door.
There hadn't been anything she could find about him, dead or alive, or anything about someone maybe looking for her and little by little she'd stopped obsessing over it so much. She truly hoped he would just go lick his wounds and accept shit for what it was and leave her the hell alone for the rest of their time on this planet, that was all she could ask for.
As time continued on, she felt a little less concerned he was going to pop up out of nowhere but she knew better than to completely let her guard down. It was a hard balancing act she found herself never perfecting.
Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined finding herself in that situation, not in the first place and certainly not finding herself dealing with it for almost two years after it started. But then it had. That turned very much into her reality, little by little until she wasn't sure how to get the hell out.
The first time he'd lost it, she had left. No thank you, I don't need that she had told them both, she knew better to be with someone willing to act like that. But she didn't, because he came to apologize and say all the right things she needed to hear and every shred of logic seemed to leave her damn head. Then it happened again and again and again. The loving words changed over time to nothing but threats, her independence was slowly diminished without her realizing it until it was too late, how closed off she had become from everyone and everything...
It was a damn miracle Willow, an old friend from high school, had gotten in touch with her online, all very much in secret from Riley and had become the one person she felt she had in the world. She had started hiding whatever type of funds she could gather... selling things off here and there, agreeing to walk someone's dogs for a couple of afternoons when she knew Riley would be at work, and anything she could do under the radar. She tried to put an escape plan into place though it had been far from worked out by the time she needed to do something and do it fast.
She had no idea how she would have survived had it not been for Willow and could never thank her enough for saving her life and helping her find this second chance.
It hadn't always been easy, especially from her emotional state standpoint of having to recover from the hell life had been for her the past few years, but she knew she'd gotten lucky and not everyone wound up granted the same amount of help and opportunity to get away from someone like that.
But she was here now. She had a very small circle of people she loved, a job she found she actually enjoyed most days, a place to call home. She felt okay at least again, for the first time in a very, very long time.
OoOoO
Angel really hadn't planned on moving into anywhere permanent right away but life had brought him here all the same, not caring too much about where his opinions on the matter lay. After finally accepting that enough was enough when it came to all things Darla, he had ended it with her once and for all. He'd walked out of the house with only what he could fit into his car, doing his best while packing up to not engage with her as she screamed and cried and carried on at him the entire time.
He'd been crashing over at his best friends' place until the two of them started having issues of their own and both he and Lindsey found themselves shit out of luck when Eve decided she and Linds needed a break.
His next idea had been going to his friend Lorne to ask him about some apartments he might have available but somehow Lorne had talked Lindsey into taking a tour of one of their newer developments and everything kind of spiraled out from there.
He had to admit the homes were nice though, and a fucking steal for the price. However, buying a place had not been on his agenda no matter how amazing of a deal it was… but here he was.
Before he even knew what was happening, he was signing contracts and putting money down on the two story house, moving he and Lindsey into one of the corner pods. He'd taken the downstairs as mostly his own and let Lindsey have free reign of the entire upper part of the townhouse but before long, just as he expected, Lindsey was following his dumb heart and even dumber dick back to Eve leaving him alone with the place.
OoOoO
They had been one of the first dozen or so people to move into the little village which he sure hadn't minded either. He was friendly enough with everyone but only really knew the older couple down the road, Jenny and Giles. He hadn't really cared to get all buddy buddy with anyone or find himself overly interested in any of the new neighbors… but then everything got flipped on its head when the tiny blonde showed up and moved in next door.
She'd looked like hell had run her over, put it in reverse, then hit her again. You could tell whatever had happened had been several weeks ago at least at that point but she was still in rough shape the first time he'd ever laid eyes on her. Worse he thought that the beating she'd obviously gone through was the fact he'd never seen someone look that fucking spooked before.
He had always been pretty good at minding his own business but that only went so far, especially if there was an obvious cause of concern for someone, which put him in a rough spot with the stranger.
He had no idea what she might have been involved in or who might have wanted to go after her like that but he'd tried to keep an eye out just in case the wrong person she seemed to be hiding from found her and had kept his distance not wanting to freak her out any more than what she seemed to be.
He couldn't deny that something intrigued him about her though.
OoOoO
Buffy had an even stricter schedule she followed than her neighbor man over there, hardly leaving the house unless she absolutely had to, but with a little pushing on behalf of Willow she was starting to loosen up a little. Plus, that paranoid part of her brain started to think about a number of what if's recently and that wasn't helping a damn thing.
She still mostly only worked and came home though, most of her time spent alone in the too big house. She'd been weary of having so much space to herself when she was first shown around but she'd learned to embrace it a little. She still hadn't found uses for each room yet but she was working on it. The openness of the downstairs made her fall in love with the house, the bedroom set up made her feel cozy and contained with everything close together, and the large kitchen was everything you could have ever asked for. She and Riley had moved any number of times, usually running from reports made or those times he'd fall behind on payments and skip out in time for the eviction process, and this was certainly the type of place she always dreamed of being able to call her one one day… so when the opportunity provided itself she couldn't turn away from it so easily.
She joined a gym that wasn't terribly far from home but once she set the upstairs up as kind of a makeshift home workout area she didn't go there as often, signing up for some online classes, but when Willow brought up going she didn't hesitate to meet up with her over there. A couple of weekends recently she'd even gone to a trivia night with Willow and Oz and had to admit she had a pretty good time and was looking forward to the next one. She really wanted to see Oz's band play but their gigs usually took place at bars around town and she dreaded the idea of being around that many people still, let alone a bunch of drunk ones, the whole idea made her want to start panicking so baby steps it was.
OoOoO
Buffy had no idea why she thought coming to the mall on a busy Saturday afternoon was a good idea, her senses becoming overloaded as she got turned around for probably the fourth time. It was supposed to be fun, she'd won a set of gift cards in a raffle at work earlier in the week and had spent the past few days thinking about what she might splurge on but somewhere along the way anxiety started rearing its ugly head.
Sighing as she passed the same jewelry shop again, she let her bags plop down to the ground before taking a seat on one of the small benches, pulling her phone back out to look at the store map on their website.
While waiting for the page to load, she happened to look up, her eyes widening as they met those of her neighbor. He looked her over for a moment before turning back to the two other guys behind him and started making his way closer.
In her head a string of curses ran on a cycle but she tried to keep calm as he approached, noting how he treaded carefully as he moved.
"Hey," he greeted once close enough. "You alright?" Buffy felt her cheeks as they reddened, wishing she could sink into the earth right about now. "You just look a little flustered, that's all," he continued.
"I am, thank you.. I just have never been out here before and was getting a little turned around," she admitted.
"Where were you trying to go?" he asked then offered to help her finally escape this little section she kept finding her way to. "That's Lindsey," he said as they got closer to his friends, she recognized him right away, "And that's my cousin Doyle." She let out a little wave and pleasantries before they all started walking, Angel explaining they were just heading off to find something to eat.
Finally seeing something new come into her sights, the small gesture was enough to cause a flood of relief to fall over her. It wasn't long before they'd reached the stairs that led down to the food court and Angel pointed out which direction she'd want to take to get to the bookstore before taking in a breath and asking her if she'd want to join them first.
"Oh, no, I don't want to be any more of burden to you and your friend, you've already done more than enough helping me get over here," she quickly told him, despite the fact her stomach was trying to grumble as the onslaught of new smells drifting their way assaulted her.
"Baby, you are perfectly fine," he said, waving her off.
He didn't seem to think twice about the little way he'd addressed her there but it made her cheeks stain back to pink.
OoOoO
Angel's eyes scanned over their options before just putting her in charge of where they were going to go. "You really don't have to do that," Buffy said softly, almost a little panicky too he noticed, when he told the lady behind the little counter to just put everything as one charge.
"It's fine," he told her, swiping his card before she could argue. He was surprised she'd even taken him up on the random offer for her to tag along over here but he was going to try and make the most of the little interaction.
Their small group walked away from the main floor to find a table that seemed a little quieter before he offered to go fill their drinks.
Tucking a stray hair behind her ear, Buffy thanked him when he returned. "What were the three of you doing out here anyway? Doesn't look like you've picked anything up," she said, noting their lack of bags when she squared hers away off to the side.
"We were over at the trampoline park," he answered and her face took on the cutest expression, clearly not having expected that answer.
"My ex-wife's son was having a birthday party," Doyle added.
She blinked and couldn't seem to stop the laugh that came from her. "Curiouser and curiouser."
OoOoO
The incredibly intense persona she was used to, or perhaps more accurately had assigned to him, was not what was coming through as she watched Angel and his friends riff on one another as they ate their food. He seemed incredibly playful and friendly as he joked back and forth with the others, offering her a piece of everything he'd ordered for himself and giving her two of the cookies he'd tacked on to the order at the end.
She decided she liked Lindsey and Doyle, too, by the end of their little time together.
Lindsey wound up leaving first after getting a call from his girlfriend then as they were cleaning up she watched him and Doyle say their goodbyes, leaving her alone with Angel. "Thank you for helping me get out of that hell maze," she told him again, seriously questioning some of the design features to this building. "And for a late lunch? Early dinner? Whatever you want to call it."
He finished his drink then walked his cup over to the trash bin and tossed it in as well. "Not a problem." He handed her shopping bags back to her and put his hands in the pockets of his shorts before asking if she was going to be alright finding the bookstore and finishing up her time out here.
"I think so, I'll probably avoid going back to the second floor though."
His head nodded once forward before he looked down at his shoes, then over to the side. "Well. Then I guess I don't have any excuse not to head off, too…" he trailed off and she felt a slow smile start taking over her entire face.
"Well, I mean… you can never be too careful right?" she answered, not ready to say goodbye just yet either.
THE END.
ButImBroken:
"Out of control and you've shivered my timbers, I'm all fucked up and the moon's just a silver, yeah, silence is golden but duct tape is silver, like the lining of the clouds that conceal the killer."