Title: Music of the Night

Summary: Angel ruminates on his favorite symphony. Placed early season 2 before Surprise/Innocence.

Author: Bashipforever

Prompt: Stages of love through the five senses: Hearing

Word Count: 461

 

 

 

After several decades of solitary confinement, the sound of Buffy was a feast for his ears. The way she spoke, the emotion she carried in her sighs, it was all a symphony to him.

 

She brought sunshine into his day every evening while she babbled brightly about her life. He even enjoyed the little stories she told him about Xander and Willow.  They were parts of her life he’d never be involved in but somehow she pulled him in and made him feel as if he were.

 

He loved the way her voice got breathy and petulant when she pouted over some slight either imagined or real from Giles, her mother or a teacher. It was moments like that he could see the separation between slayer and girl.  He couldn’t deny that the demon in him howled at this vulnerability. It was a much bigger struggle with Angelus on the nights Buffy was vulnerable. It was one he thought worth the effort.

 

He loved the teasing, lilting tone her voice took on when she was flirting with him.  It had a purr to it that was somehow completely seductive and at the same time entirely innocent. He could never untangle the woman and the girl during those moments and even Angelus was seduced.

 

The predator in him roared when her voice took on that cat and mouse edge while she bantered with the demons she slayed. He could slip a finger down the sharp blade of her tone and slice it open.  He loved the confidence she exuded, the superiority she oozed. She was going to win and she knew it. Her confidence was the sexiest stanza in her symphony.

 

 

His favorite part of the production came at night while he crouched outside her bedroom window like a graceful guardian. She didn’t know he was there and that made the music all sweeter. He perched with his head cocked listening to the thrum of her heart beat thump thump shhh and the whoosh of her breath as she inhaled and exhaled. He’d find himself breathing unnecessarily in rhythm with her and he knew if he had a heart that beat, it would have kept the same cadence as hers.

 

It started the night she drowned. He had to be there. He had to listen. He had to make sure she took that next breath. She left for the summer and he got used to sleeping without that music.  When she returned, like an addict he’d fallen back into the habit of sitting outside her window. Eventually he returned to his apartment to lie in his bed and repeat her song in his head until he could fall asleep.

 

He’d never tell her that he couldn’t sleep any other way. She’d never know she was his lullaby.