Rating: G

Fandom: Btvs

Pairing: Buffy/Angel

Summary: Set a year or so in the future. Buffy’s still in Rome. Angel sends her care packages.

 

 

 

I throw open the door to the fridge and look inside. There’s pasta and cheese and fruit. I grab a pear and stick it in my mouth. I shuffle around the living room in my sweat shorts and tank top. I start to turn on the TV but in the end don’t bother. I know the only thing on it will be Italian. I know Italian for the most part now. I mean Dawn and I have been here for three years now. I sorta got fluent about a year and a half. 

 

            I poke my head out the door and grab the mail from the box. A smile spreads across my face at the sight of a package from Los Angeles.

 

            Angel and I haven’t been talking on the phone but he’s been sending me packages, one every couple of weeks. The first one was a necklace, just a simple amethyst heart. There was a note that said A for Adoration, nothing else. The second one was a teddy bear, very soft, very squishy and almost Angel Sized. It also smelled like Angel. There was a note that said B for Beautiful. I’m pretty sure this package will be C.

 

            I tear open the brown wrapping paper and pile it on the floor. I can’t help but smile. It’s a large box of Godiva Chocolates. I crack open the box and find his note. C for my Chosen.

 

            I contemplate calling him, but somehow that would ruin our game. The last time I talked to him was after his apocalypse in LA, the one with the dragon. I have to say I was impressed. I mean I’ve never gotten to actually fight a dragon. There was that one, from when I died, but it just flew around. I didn’t fight it.  I was also really mad at him for not calling me. I’ve got an army of slayers, what else am I gonna do with it except fight an apocalypse.  Angel gave me a big speech about not being able to risk me. I knew my words would come back to haunt me.

 

            Then we spent a few minutes fighting about The Immortal, Mortie as I call him. Like I’m going to run around calling my boyfriend The Immortal, I don’t think so. Angel was all jealous and menacing and arguing that he wasn’t jealous. He kind of got quiet when I asked if he had been girlfriendless. I kind of tried to act like it didn’t matter if he hadn’t been.  I had Mortie. Angel deserved to have a girlfriend too, at least until I’ve found out who Buffy is.

 

            That’s what the whole baking thing was about, finding out who I am. For the longest time if I wasn’t the slayer I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t realize I could be Buffy without the vampire slayer attached to it. For an entire year after cratering Sunnydale, I didn’t slay a vamp. Now I slay, I walk, I talk, I shop and I know, or at least I think I know, who Buffy is. She’s a girl, just a girl like every other girl in the world. It’s nice not to have to be special or chosen or destiny-ied. Being a slayer is a part of me, but it’s not all of me just like having blond hair doesn’t define who I am. It’s just a part.

 

 

            So two years later, Angel’s sending me packages and I’m sitting here with a life sized teddy bear eating chocolates and wearing the necklace he sent me.  I wonder if he intends to go through the entire alphabet because if so, I’m gonna clean up on the gifts.

 

            Eventually I have to get up and get dressed. Dawn and I are meeting Willow and Xander at a nightclub. Willow is here a lot but Xander is visiting for the first time in three years. I think he needed to find out who he was too.

 

*

 

            It’s been a month since Angel’s last package. I’m beginning to wonder if he decided C was as far as he was going to go. I was kind of hoping he’d go through the entire alphabet and end with “Z plane Z plane, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I have to come see you Buffy.” Silly I know since I’m pretty sure Angel never watched Fantasy Island and wouldn’t get the pop culture reference.

 

            I sit down on the couch and lean against AA, the bear. It stands for Almost Angel.  I push play on the DVD player and set myself up for a couple of heart breaking hours with Leonardo and Claire Danes in Romeo and Juliet. I know what happens. I’ve seen the movie a dozen times and Angel read some of it to me so long ago in Sunnydale.

 

            There’s a knock on the door just as the priest is agreeing to marry Romeo and Juliet. I pause it and get up. Ten to one, it’s one of Dawn’s friends, or maybe Willow back in town for a visit. She doesn’t always call because Dawnie and I are always home.

 

            I fling open the door, not very slayer safe of me I know. My hands fly to my mouth. He fills up the entire doorway. Was he always this big? Was I always this tiny? Oh my God, does this mean the world is ending again? The moonlight makes him shine like some glorious being and he is, a glorious being. He always has been.

 

            He fumbles in his pocket, black leather jacket pocket, and pulls out a box. It’s not wrapped in brown packing paper. He falls to one knee and opens the box. Nestled there on midnight velvet is a claddagh but the heart is a diamond.

 

            “D is for Devotion,” he says.

 

            I swallow hard and sink to my knees in front of him. I don’t realize I’m crying until I slip my tongue out to wet my dry lips and taste salt.

 

            “It’s also for damned fool,” he says. “Buffy, I’m not good at this. I don’t know what this is. I know what I want it to be. I want it to be forever, I want it to be us together, inseparable no matter what life throws at us.”

 

            Devotion, D is my favorite letter in the alphabet, so much better then Z.