Work Text:
“Why do you want me?” Buffy asks, apropos of nothing. She’s pacing the length of Angel’s apartment, and the repetitive movement is about to drive him crazy, so he catches her hand as she passes and pulls his girlfriend down onto his lap.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Angel is genuinely perplexed by the unexpected query. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking.”
“I know you can’t exactly look in a mirror, but you have to know you’re gorgeous.” She fidgets with her necklace and avoids looking directly at him. “You could have any woman you wanted: women who are sophisticated, and experienced, and, ya know, not silly little schoolgirls who keep you stalled at second base. Why are you wasting your time with me?”
He stares at her in disbelief. Wasting his time? She is sunshine and vitality, all the things that have been lacking in his dark world, and she makes him almost feel worthy of it. She is an impossible mix of strength and vulnerability, carefree teen and hardened warrior, and the contradictions in her nature fascinate him endlessly. She bears the weight of the world on her slender shoulders, and most of the time she makes it look easy; the courage with which she bears up to her responsibilities inspires him to be a better man. How can he not love her, when she has looked upon his true face and kissed him like it didn’t even matter, when she has charged into battle against overwhelming odds and dropped a church on his scheming childer all for his sake?
But he doesn’t know how to say any of that, so he settles for kissing her hair before tilting her chin up so she cannot avoid meeting his eyes. “I’m right where I want to be,” he says. “I’m not interested in any other woman. I don’t mind waiting for you.”
Honestly, he would be content to have her forever the way she is with him these days. It’s more than he deserves to have her pressed close against him, warm and eager in his arms, making out like the teenager he hasn’t been in centuries. It makes him feel young again. He doesn’t need sex, but he needs her like he needs sustenance.
As it is, he knows it is only a matter of waiting. Contrary to her claims of being stalled, their relationship is progressing at a pace he’s not entirely sure he’s comfortable with. She is testing the waters of womanhood, and each night they’re together she’s curious to explore a little further. He hates himself a little for encouraging it. (He hates himself more for the fact that there’s always an undertone of fear in her scent as she pushes the limits of her comfort zone, and while the man in him is chilled by it, the demon gets off on it.) As much as he longs to make love to her, she deserves a real man, not a monster masquerading as one. But for whatever reason her heart is set on him, and he is powerless to deny her.
“But ... why?” she asks, unusually shy and insecure. Where is this conviction that he should resent her lack of experience coming from?
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He pitches his voice low and persuasive. “Buffy, your innocence is a gift, one that I’m honored you’ve chosen to share with me.”
He’s always been drawn to innocence, in ways that he hopes she will never find out; for over a hundred years he’d delighted in nothing so much as the corruption of purity and chastity (a pang strikes him with the memory of the sweet and pious girl Drusilla had been before she had the misfortune of meeting him). He doesn’t want to defile Buffy like that, but he can hardly claim to be preserving her virtue, and that thought does not sit well with him.
“A gift?” Buffy asks, drawing him from his guilty contemplation. Disbelief is clear in her voice, and her eyes are grey and clouded.
Angel pulls her closer in his embrace. How does he explain the appeal of her artless reactions, her ingenuous enthusiasm? “You have so much to learn, sweetheart,” he purrs, and brushes an affectionate kiss over her forehead.
Her cheeks flush pink, but the nervous tension in her frame has finally started to ease, so he goes on. “You don’t know what it does to me, knowing I get to introduce you to a world of pleasure, knowing no one has ever touched you the way I have.”
She buries her face in the crook of his shoulder with a little squeak, and for a minute he worries he’s said too much. He doesn’t want to overwhelm her.
But Buffy isn’t daunted for long; she never is. “I don’t know what it does to you, huh?” she murmurs against his skin. She trails light kisses over his neck, soft and teasing, before pulling back to regard him with a shy smile. Her eyes are bright again, warm with affection and desire and the slightest glint of challenge. “Maybe you should show me, then.”
Angel smiles slowly. She really is extraordinary. “Maybe I should,” he agrees, and bends to the warmth of her lips.