(no subject)
May. 17th, 2004 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleA little bit late, this is for the A/B/C ficathon, surely the most specific ficathon of them all *g* This is giving me a horrendous case of the plot bunnies.
Title: The Secret Life of Us
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Buffy/Angel/Cordelia
Rating: PG-13
Notes: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
writinggoddess, request was angsty fluff, an attraction to another person causing problems.
More notes: Set in early season 2 AtS, but completely and utterly AU. Basically a PWP. Only it doesn't have plot, but it doesn't actually have sex either. Er… :tries to think of some redeeming feature:
Buffy's final Friday class was Psychology - thankfully, since Maggie Walsh's death, taught by someone who wasn't a test study for psychosis - and she daydreamed her way through the two hours, eyes glued to the clock at the back of the room. There was obviously an evil time-slowing demon at work, because it was at least a week before the Professor wrapped up.
"Remember, you have a week left on your term papers." Groans from the class, though Willow's eyes lit up. "Have a good weekend."
Buffy couldn't help but smile. She turned it into a fake cough. Will was already big with the suspicions; she knew that there was more to the break-up with Riley than she'd been told, and she knew something had happened this summer in LA, and she had to have seen that since then Buffy had been… different. Even her mom noticed the glowiness. Dawn, always the brat, said that maybe she'd converted to Scientology.
They gathered up their books and headed out into the quad, Buffy automatically turning onto the path to Stevenson hall before she remembered she was in a single dorm room, now, over in Tennant. Living roommate free since Willow had moved in with Tara was an adjustment, but it made it easier to hide things. Like the middle of the night phone calls, or the couple of times when she'd spontaneously cut class and caught the express to Los Angeles.
"Me and Tara are Bronzing it tonight, you wanna come with?" Willow gave her a sideways look that was probably meant to be sly, probing, worthy of a Sixty Minutes investigative reporter, but that just came off as Willow being cutely obvious.
"Nah," she said casually. "Giles says it's quiet. Think I'll spend the weekend in LA."
Her best friend's eyes went bigger. "I knew it! Well, it was on my big list of things that could be making you so happy lately - not that I was trying to snoop if it was something you wanted to keep a secret - but you're back with Angel, aren't you?" She suddenly looked worried, and Buffy knew she had to be thinking of last time. "Buffy, that's great, I'm all supporto-Willow, and I know you said the curse is fixed now, but…"
"Will, it's okay," she assured her. "Really. It's not what you think."
She was absolutely, positively, eight hundred percent certain of that.
**
"Buffy, hello."
The smile Wesley gave her as she bounded down the steps into the Hyperion's lobby was warm, but cautious. She guessed that was fair. Like Willow, he only had secondhand stories about what had happened that summer when the three of them, Angel and Cordy and Buffy herself, had been trapped in the Glaldlth demon's lair. They'd had to retell it over and over, about the fight, the vision, about the weeks that had passed for them in the seconds that Wesley and Gunn were trying to get to them from outside the portal. They always skipped over the exact circumstances surrounding how Angel's soul had become permanently bound, not to mention the extensive road testing they'd done once back in the real world. Wesley, she knew, wasn't convinced that there was no chance of Angelus coming back, so these Friday night drop-ins didn't make for a happy ex-Watcher.
She told herself it was revenge for how stuffy and mean and not-Giles he'd been when he was a pre-ex-Watcher, and didn't feel so bad.
"What's up? Any visions, bad guys, that evil law firm doing… evil law things?"
"Actually, it's been very quiet. How are things in Sunnydale?"
She counted off on her fingers. "Giles is buying the magic shop, Harmony and her vampire minions kidnapped my sister, and for a while there we had two Xanders. Anya was very excited."
"Ah," Wesley said. "Just an average week, then."
"Harmony has minions?"
Buffy turned, looking up at the second-floor balcony where Cordelia was leaning over. "Hey, Cordy."
She was down the stairs in a minute. "Wait, Harmony's a vampire? Does no-one ever tell me anything? What else have I missed, did Willow join the circus?"
"I'd better be getting home," Wes said, obviously keen to avoid getting stuck hearing the latest from the Sunnydale grapevine. "If anything comes up…"
"We'll call, sure," Cordelia said. Buffy was just trying not to think too hard about the double intendre.
For at least ten seconds after the door swung closed behind him, neither of them moved. Then Buffy was tugging Cordelia to her, and what was supposed to be a nice, casual, happy-to-see-you peck somehow mutated into a hot, moaning, how-did-that-desk-get-there? kiss.
Eventually the need for air and the pencils poking into Buffy's back became an issue, and they broke apart. Cordelia sank into her chair. "Wow."
"Wow," Buffy echoed, extracting various office supplies from beneath her and tossing them onto the floor.
"Y'know, I get that the first time we were buzzed from the big spell and everything, but that was, like, months ago. Shouldn't that buzzing stop? Shouldn't we be in a buzz-free area?"
Her lips were tingling. Her heart was racing, and the skin on the underside of her thigh where Cordelia's hand had been just a second ago felt hypersensitive, as if she could feel the imprint of her fingers still there. "Maybe it was never the spell," she suggested. "Maybe it's just us."
"So it'll always be like this?" She shook her head. "Okay, I'm in great shape, but trying to keep up with the two superheroes, that's gonna kill me."
"We'll take it easy," Buffy said solemnly. "We'll only do the crazy lustful sex thing half of the time."
"I vote for not when Wes is in the office. He so suspects something. He came in early today and saw me coming out of Angel's room."
"What'd you tell him?"
"That I had an early vision and Angel wasn't answering his phone. Which was hardly even a big lie, 'cuz Angel's been sleeping, like, fourteen hours a day. I think he has vampire Epstein-Barr." She shrugged at Buffy's look. "My mom used to claim that for everything. Regular, though, not the vampire kind."
"Is that where he is now? Sleeping?" The two of them could think of some interesting ways to wake him up, she thought.
"In the office."
Buffy looked at the door, a little hurt that he hadn't come out to say hi.
"Ignore him," Cordy counselled, opening the desk drawer that Buffy knew without looking contained heavy-duty painkillers, the latest Vogue and enough make-up to Maybelline an army. "Angel's being weird today. He was even mean to Wes earlier, and Wesley can't just threaten to not have sex with him."
"Poor Wesley," Buffy said. "All not part of the hot girl on girl on boy stuff. He needs a girlfriend."
Cordelia was reapplying her smudged lipstick. "Or a boyfriend." She blotted her lips on a Kleenex.
"Ooh, point. Riley's still single," she plotted aloud. "He's hot, smart, nice…" Also, as far as she knew, not even slightly interested in guys. But then, she'd never thought of herself as having a thing for girls, and look at how her foot had come out of her shoe all on its on and was rubbing against Cordy's leg.
"Do not let Angel hear you singing the Riley praises, please." She rolled her eyes at the closed office door. "He's trying to beat his own personal record for endurance brooding and, yeah, that might just push him over the edge."
Buffy frowned, stopping the flirtiness. Something was wrong with Angel, and she couldn't stay out here having fun while the man she loved was hurting.
Even if the woman she maybe-possibly-sorta loved looked really hot in that skirt.
"Okay," Cordelia said, smiling ruefully as she got to her feet. "Go talk to him. I'll make us some coffee."
But before she did they tried again for that quick, affectionate kiss. On the fifth attempt, they got it almost right.
**
"Hey."
Angel had been poring over the books and papers spread over his desk, but he looked up in surprise when she spoke. "Buffy." He didn't exactly smile but he did that Angel-thing he always did with his eyes - he made them softer, or did something else that made her insides forget that she wasn't a dumb sixteen-year-old any more - and she smiled back.
"Working late?"
"Must've lost track of…" He checked his watch, his eyes widening a little. "I didn't know it was so late."
She crossed the room, picking her way between more books on the floor, and squeezed herself between him and the desk, leaning down to kiss him.
By the time Cordelia came in with coffee (three mugs) and blood (just one), Buffy was almost wrapped around him, and they hadn't done any talking at all. Feeling a tad guilty about that, she disentangled, although she stayed sitting across his lap. He had an arm around her waist, and she watched as his other hand automatically entwined with Cordelia's.
She searched herself closely for any jealousy, something she'd been doing a lot lately, and was pleased when she couldn't find any. She wished she could be with the two of them all the time, but she didn't resent that they got to spend their whole weeks together.
If the Hellmouth stayed quiet for a while, she fantasized, if Riley and the gang could take over half of the patrols, maybe she could transfer to UCLA. While they drank in silence, Angel softly stroking her side, she let herself imagine what that would be like. Going out on missions with Angel and Wes and Gunn. Actually being there to hold Cordy when she got a vision, and not having to hear it about it down a phoneline. Living here in the hotel, and Cordelia would officially move in too because everyone would know. Okay, that would mean her mother finding out, but Fantasy Joyce was the most understanding mom in the world and even shed a happy tear for her lucky, well-adjusted daughter.
Back in reality, she sighed. Never going to happen, any of it. She couldn't leave Sunnydale unguarded, any more than Angel and Cordy could come back there. They had their mission, she had hers. But they had times like this, the three of them together, and it was enough.
"Tell her about the dreams," Cordelia said.
Buffy said, "Dreams?"
**
Angel didn't want to tell her any of this. He kept glancing at Cordy as if pleading her to let him off the hook, but she just… Buffy furrowed her brow. Tossed him back in the sea? She wasn't very good with fish metaphors.
In the end, she had the whole story, about how Angel had been having dreams about Darla. Scarily real dreams, though she suspected Angel didn't find them scary. They sounded pretty porny, actually, what with the hours of rampant sex.
Okay, that she felt justified in being jealous at. He'd said the dreams only happened on nights when Cordelia didn't stay over, so maybe it was nothing more supernatural than sexual frustration, but, god! Couldn't he dream about one or both of his two amazingly hot girlfriends? Because adding Darla into the mix would probably qualify them as a harem.
Her sulky mood melted, though, when she saw how weirded out Angel was by all this.
"It's okay," she told him softly, stroking her finger down his face, temple to jaw. "We'll figure out what's going on."
"They feel so real," he said, for maybe the third time.
Cordelia said, "Is there a type of sex-demon that feeds on people in their sleep?"
"Succubi," he said, gesturing at his books, "but this doesn't match up to anything I've been able to find."
"If you'd tell Wesley…" she sing-songed, obviously an old argument.
"No," he shot back in the same tone.
Stupid boys and their macho pride, Buffy thought. She was glad she had a girlfriend. Between them, Angel didn't have a chance to get away with something this dumb. "Angel, tell Wes," she said. "Don't tell him everything if you don't want to, but let him know what's going on. I can get Giles on it."
Angel opened his mouth but she shut up his protests with a kiss. Not breaking contact with him, she reached out and caught Cordy's hand, linking the three of them together. The kiss was brief, practically chaste, or as chaste as they got. She pulled away and kissed Cordelia in exactly the same way, and she watched Cordelia and Angel kiss in turn, as if it was a ritual between the three of them. Maybe it was - rituals didn't have to be old, she decided. They could make one up.
"So these dreams," she said, starting to smile, "they only happen when you're sleeping by yourself?" She looked at her partner in crime, signalling her intent with a wicked grin. Cordelia smirked back.
Angel looked a tiny bit frightened.
"We could just keep you up all night," Cordelia suggested, and the two women pounced.
END
Title: The Secret Life of Us
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Buffy/Angel/Cordelia
Rating: PG-13
Notes: For
writinggoddess, request was angsty fluff, an attraction to another person causing problems. More notes: Set in early season 2 AtS, but completely and utterly AU. Basically a PWP. Only it doesn't have plot, but it doesn't actually have sex either. Er… :tries to think of some redeeming feature:
Buffy's final Friday class was Psychology - thankfully, since Maggie Walsh's death, taught by someone who wasn't a test study for psychosis - and she daydreamed her way through the two hours, eyes glued to the clock at the back of the room. There was obviously an evil time-slowing demon at work, because it was at least a week before the Professor wrapped up.
"Remember, you have a week left on your term papers." Groans from the class, though Willow's eyes lit up. "Have a good weekend."
Buffy couldn't help but smile. She turned it into a fake cough. Will was already big with the suspicions; she knew that there was more to the break-up with Riley than she'd been told, and she knew something had happened this summer in LA, and she had to have seen that since then Buffy had been… different. Even her mom noticed the glowiness. Dawn, always the brat, said that maybe she'd converted to Scientology.
They gathered up their books and headed out into the quad, Buffy automatically turning onto the path to Stevenson hall before she remembered she was in a single dorm room, now, over in Tennant. Living roommate free since Willow had moved in with Tara was an adjustment, but it made it easier to hide things. Like the middle of the night phone calls, or the couple of times when she'd spontaneously cut class and caught the express to Los Angeles.
"Me and Tara are Bronzing it tonight, you wanna come with?" Willow gave her a sideways look that was probably meant to be sly, probing, worthy of a Sixty Minutes investigative reporter, but that just came off as Willow being cutely obvious.
"Nah," she said casually. "Giles says it's quiet. Think I'll spend the weekend in LA."
Her best friend's eyes went bigger. "I knew it! Well, it was on my big list of things that could be making you so happy lately - not that I was trying to snoop if it was something you wanted to keep a secret - but you're back with Angel, aren't you?" She suddenly looked worried, and Buffy knew she had to be thinking of last time. "Buffy, that's great, I'm all supporto-Willow, and I know you said the curse is fixed now, but…"
"Will, it's okay," she assured her. "Really. It's not what you think."
She was absolutely, positively, eight hundred percent certain of that.
**
"Buffy, hello."
The smile Wesley gave her as she bounded down the steps into the Hyperion's lobby was warm, but cautious. She guessed that was fair. Like Willow, he only had secondhand stories about what had happened that summer when the three of them, Angel and Cordy and Buffy herself, had been trapped in the Glaldlth demon's lair. They'd had to retell it over and over, about the fight, the vision, about the weeks that had passed for them in the seconds that Wesley and Gunn were trying to get to them from outside the portal. They always skipped over the exact circumstances surrounding how Angel's soul had become permanently bound, not to mention the extensive road testing they'd done once back in the real world. Wesley, she knew, wasn't convinced that there was no chance of Angelus coming back, so these Friday night drop-ins didn't make for a happy ex-Watcher.
She told herself it was revenge for how stuffy and mean and not-Giles he'd been when he was a pre-ex-Watcher, and didn't feel so bad.
"What's up? Any visions, bad guys, that evil law firm doing… evil law things?"
"Actually, it's been very quiet. How are things in Sunnydale?"
She counted off on her fingers. "Giles is buying the magic shop, Harmony and her vampire minions kidnapped my sister, and for a while there we had two Xanders. Anya was very excited."
"Ah," Wesley said. "Just an average week, then."
"Harmony has minions?"
Buffy turned, looking up at the second-floor balcony where Cordelia was leaning over. "Hey, Cordy."
She was down the stairs in a minute. "Wait, Harmony's a vampire? Does no-one ever tell me anything? What else have I missed, did Willow join the circus?"
"I'd better be getting home," Wes said, obviously keen to avoid getting stuck hearing the latest from the Sunnydale grapevine. "If anything comes up…"
"We'll call, sure," Cordelia said. Buffy was just trying not to think too hard about the double intendre.
For at least ten seconds after the door swung closed behind him, neither of them moved. Then Buffy was tugging Cordelia to her, and what was supposed to be a nice, casual, happy-to-see-you peck somehow mutated into a hot, moaning, how-did-that-desk-get-there? kiss.
Eventually the need for air and the pencils poking into Buffy's back became an issue, and they broke apart. Cordelia sank into her chair. "Wow."
"Wow," Buffy echoed, extracting various office supplies from beneath her and tossing them onto the floor.
"Y'know, I get that the first time we were buzzed from the big spell and everything, but that was, like, months ago. Shouldn't that buzzing stop? Shouldn't we be in a buzz-free area?"
Her lips were tingling. Her heart was racing, and the skin on the underside of her thigh where Cordelia's hand had been just a second ago felt hypersensitive, as if she could feel the imprint of her fingers still there. "Maybe it was never the spell," she suggested. "Maybe it's just us."
"So it'll always be like this?" She shook her head. "Okay, I'm in great shape, but trying to keep up with the two superheroes, that's gonna kill me."
"We'll take it easy," Buffy said solemnly. "We'll only do the crazy lustful sex thing half of the time."
"I vote for not when Wes is in the office. He so suspects something. He came in early today and saw me coming out of Angel's room."
"What'd you tell him?"
"That I had an early vision and Angel wasn't answering his phone. Which was hardly even a big lie, 'cuz Angel's been sleeping, like, fourteen hours a day. I think he has vampire Epstein-Barr." She shrugged at Buffy's look. "My mom used to claim that for everything. Regular, though, not the vampire kind."
"Is that where he is now? Sleeping?" The two of them could think of some interesting ways to wake him up, she thought.
"In the office."
Buffy looked at the door, a little hurt that he hadn't come out to say hi.
"Ignore him," Cordy counselled, opening the desk drawer that Buffy knew without looking contained heavy-duty painkillers, the latest Vogue and enough make-up to Maybelline an army. "Angel's being weird today. He was even mean to Wes earlier, and Wesley can't just threaten to not have sex with him."
"Poor Wesley," Buffy said. "All not part of the hot girl on girl on boy stuff. He needs a girlfriend."
Cordelia was reapplying her smudged lipstick. "Or a boyfriend." She blotted her lips on a Kleenex.
"Ooh, point. Riley's still single," she plotted aloud. "He's hot, smart, nice…" Also, as far as she knew, not even slightly interested in guys. But then, she'd never thought of herself as having a thing for girls, and look at how her foot had come out of her shoe all on its on and was rubbing against Cordy's leg.
"Do not let Angel hear you singing the Riley praises, please." She rolled her eyes at the closed office door. "He's trying to beat his own personal record for endurance brooding and, yeah, that might just push him over the edge."
Buffy frowned, stopping the flirtiness. Something was wrong with Angel, and she couldn't stay out here having fun while the man she loved was hurting.
Even if the woman she maybe-possibly-sorta loved looked really hot in that skirt.
"Okay," Cordelia said, smiling ruefully as she got to her feet. "Go talk to him. I'll make us some coffee."
But before she did they tried again for that quick, affectionate kiss. On the fifth attempt, they got it almost right.
**
"Hey."
Angel had been poring over the books and papers spread over his desk, but he looked up in surprise when she spoke. "Buffy." He didn't exactly smile but he did that Angel-thing he always did with his eyes - he made them softer, or did something else that made her insides forget that she wasn't a dumb sixteen-year-old any more - and she smiled back.
"Working late?"
"Must've lost track of…" He checked his watch, his eyes widening a little. "I didn't know it was so late."
She crossed the room, picking her way between more books on the floor, and squeezed herself between him and the desk, leaning down to kiss him.
By the time Cordelia came in with coffee (three mugs) and blood (just one), Buffy was almost wrapped around him, and they hadn't done any talking at all. Feeling a tad guilty about that, she disentangled, although she stayed sitting across his lap. He had an arm around her waist, and she watched as his other hand automatically entwined with Cordelia's.
She searched herself closely for any jealousy, something she'd been doing a lot lately, and was pleased when she couldn't find any. She wished she could be with the two of them all the time, but she didn't resent that they got to spend their whole weeks together.
If the Hellmouth stayed quiet for a while, she fantasized, if Riley and the gang could take over half of the patrols, maybe she could transfer to UCLA. While they drank in silence, Angel softly stroking her side, she let herself imagine what that would be like. Going out on missions with Angel and Wes and Gunn. Actually being there to hold Cordy when she got a vision, and not having to hear it about it down a phoneline. Living here in the hotel, and Cordelia would officially move in too because everyone would know. Okay, that would mean her mother finding out, but Fantasy Joyce was the most understanding mom in the world and even shed a happy tear for her lucky, well-adjusted daughter.
Back in reality, she sighed. Never going to happen, any of it. She couldn't leave Sunnydale unguarded, any more than Angel and Cordy could come back there. They had their mission, she had hers. But they had times like this, the three of them together, and it was enough.
"Tell her about the dreams," Cordelia said.
Buffy said, "Dreams?"
**
Angel didn't want to tell her any of this. He kept glancing at Cordy as if pleading her to let him off the hook, but she just… Buffy furrowed her brow. Tossed him back in the sea? She wasn't very good with fish metaphors.
In the end, she had the whole story, about how Angel had been having dreams about Darla. Scarily real dreams, though she suspected Angel didn't find them scary. They sounded pretty porny, actually, what with the hours of rampant sex.
Okay, that she felt justified in being jealous at. He'd said the dreams only happened on nights when Cordelia didn't stay over, so maybe it was nothing more supernatural than sexual frustration, but, god! Couldn't he dream about one or both of his two amazingly hot girlfriends? Because adding Darla into the mix would probably qualify them as a harem.
Her sulky mood melted, though, when she saw how weirded out Angel was by all this.
"It's okay," she told him softly, stroking her finger down his face, temple to jaw. "We'll figure out what's going on."
"They feel so real," he said, for maybe the third time.
Cordelia said, "Is there a type of sex-demon that feeds on people in their sleep?"
"Succubi," he said, gesturing at his books, "but this doesn't match up to anything I've been able to find."
"If you'd tell Wesley…" she sing-songed, obviously an old argument.
"No," he shot back in the same tone.
Stupid boys and their macho pride, Buffy thought. She was glad she had a girlfriend. Between them, Angel didn't have a chance to get away with something this dumb. "Angel, tell Wes," she said. "Don't tell him everything if you don't want to, but let him know what's going on. I can get Giles on it."
Angel opened his mouth but she shut up his protests with a kiss. Not breaking contact with him, she reached out and caught Cordy's hand, linking the three of them together. The kiss was brief, practically chaste, or as chaste as they got. She pulled away and kissed Cordelia in exactly the same way, and she watched Cordelia and Angel kiss in turn, as if it was a ritual between the three of them. Maybe it was - rituals didn't have to be old, she decided. They could make one up.
"So these dreams," she said, starting to smile, "they only happen when you're sleeping by yourself?" She looked at her partner in crime, signalling her intent with a wicked grin. Cordelia smirked back.
Angel looked a tiny bit frightened.
"We could just keep you up all night," Cordelia suggested, and the two women pounced.
END
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2005-02-18 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-02-18 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-02-19 12:27 am (UTC)