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DISCLAIMER: Nope, not even one of them.
TIMELINE: Future, written mid AtS5 so consider it AR.
SUMMARY: B/A. Buffy is having trouble sleeping.
WORDCOUNT: 729
DEDICATION: For Stranger1 (sorry it's late) and everyone who believed that Midsummer Nigth's Dream was what it wasn't.
LATE AT NIGHT
by Leni
It’s always late at night - while everybody else is sleeping - when Buffy
remembers why she doesn’t like coming to L.A..
It’s also always at this time that she chuckles because in these years Angel has
learned to ask pretty please and every time he asks her to come, Buffy is so surprised
that she immediately agrees.
But late at night she regrets it each and every time.
It’s not that she dislikes the city. She grew up here and she still retains a certain
nostalgic feeling towards it. Sometimes she drives down the street of her old house and
she stops in front of the now blue&white front and pretends that she can hear her mom
yelling at her that dinner was ready while Dawn threw raspberries at her behind their
mother’s back.
She enters the kitchen and opens the refrigerator door. Yes, Buffy thinks, she really
likes L.A..
It’s not that she minds the hours long travel to get here. She has gotten used to
long trips in the last years, in the beginning tagging along with Willow or Giles when
they found a Slayer, later going on her own – sometimes with Dawn – to visit the
world. Buffy can’t count anymore the times she’s stood in amazement before the
Pyramids, or Eiffel Tower, or Macchu Picchu, unable to believe that she’d saved those
wonders from a little town whose name nobody even remembers anymore.
No, it’s not the trip itself, Buffy muses as she brings out the milk carton and
rummages the cupboards for a clean glass. In fact, it’s one of the parts she most
enjoys, what with Angel being able to offer the most comfortable options that she could
never pay on her own.
It’s not even the fact that she has to stay in Angel’s quarters, right in the
middle of Wolfram & Hart. It gave her the creeps at first, and she still doesn’t
venture far from the offices and corridors she knows. But slowly she’s becoming used
to this place, and knowing that Angel runs this place gives her a feeling right between
worry and pride which makes her know that she’s still madly in love with him.
She can’t change Angel’s destiny, Buffy knows that. But as she pours the milk
into a little pot and heats it, she also knows that she will try to become part of it.
Even if it means getting used to sleep under the roof of a formerly very evil firm.
No, her motives for not precisely liking L.A. late at night – while everyone is
sleeping – isn’t any of those. Buffy even likes being here to a certain extent,
because she knows that it makes Angel happy. Buffy has seen him here and she has to admit
that he doesn’t look as sure of himself anywhere else. Not even in her little
Londoner apartment where they spend the other half of their time together.
She even knows that it’s not only the fact that here Angel doesn’t have to check
for open curtains when he steps into a new room. It’s not even the certainty that her
self-decorated apartment is merely a niche compared to the luxury W&H offers him.
Buffy knows for a fact that her lover has had worse, and so she must admit to herself that
he simply feels better here, where he can act the king of the castle and have the power he
can’t wield outside these walls.
Sure, Buffy knows – even understands – that. Buffy also knows that if Angel
wants to be a king then she will always be his lady, and that thought still makes her
smile even as she drinks the warm milk.
Buffy will come back to L.A., even if she knows she’ll always wake up in the middle
of the night – while everyone else is sleeping – to regret her decision.
Because Angel feels more secure here.
And he feels he has nothing to hide in his private suits.
And while Buffy sips slowly the milk, just as her mother taught her to do when she had
Apocalypse-related insomnia, she thinks that there must be a way to tell Angel that
feeling at his safest is no reason to snore so loudly so late at night - while everyone
else but her is sleeping – and, surely there is a way they can get through it?
The End
06/04/04
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