Title: The More Things Change

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I own zilch.

Rating: R to NC-17

Feedback: Questions, Comments, Complaints? scwlc@yahoo.ca

Distribution: Just tell me where you take it.

Notes: Okay, this is a response to Challenge 15 at Kelly Rowe's site 'Always'. I've done my best and owe much to my friend Jennifer for making this something other than a morass of plot holes. I beg forgiveness of those who speak German for the demon name I made up, and for those who speak Greek if I used the wrong word. Finally, if you want to read the rest of my stories and essays, they're up at http://www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=157452.

Summary:

Buffy moved away from Sunnydale before her 17th birthday to live with her dad. They move to Washington and she looses contact with the gang. Ten years later Buffy is an agent with the FBI and is assigned to a case in Sunnydale.

Musts:

Buffy going undercover at UC Sunnydale as a student - Beth Winters.

Angel (now human) teaching a class Buffy is enrolled in.

Angel instantly recognising her.

Buffy pretending that she doesn't know him.

Angel following her everywhere she goes.

Buffy finding out her case has to do with demons.

Buffy going to Angel confessing all and asking for help.

Buffy reuniting with the scarabs and fighting a big evil.

Buffy and Angel rediscovering their feelings.

Options:

Buffy having Angel dreams while in class.

Buffy doing the sexy dance (When she was bad).

A FRAT party.

Buffy shooting a demon with her gun and Giles saying, "I see we have progressed from the crossbow."

Couples:

B/A, W/O or W/T, X/A and G/J

Prologue

Buffy was entirely certain her mother was being unreasonable. They were standing in the living room as her mother waved the evidence that (okay, so it was a little damning) had set her off.

"Buffy! He's in his twenties! What were you thinking?" Joyce Summers gestured emphatically with the photograph again.

The teenager muttered under her breath, "I'm gonna kill Willow for taking that picture."

Her mother raised an eyebrow, "What did you say?"

"I can't believe you would actually assume that I-" Buffy cried, trying to make her mother understand this was all a huge misunderstanding.

Joyce would have none of it, "I am holding this picture of you and ... and you can't possibly expect me to think otherwise." The brief but dreamy smile on Buffy's face didn't help matters any. In fact, it only served to add to the parental rampage. "You honestly expect me to believe that you didn't sleep with your history tutor."

Buffy just glared at her mother as she said, "I didn't."

"I don't care at this point whether you did or not. He's too old for you, and you're clearly not going to break things off with him." Joyce prepared herself for the storm. "I'm sending you to live with your father. He's moving to Washington so I can be sure you won't accidentally run into one of those friends of yours."

"What?"

Buffy's horrified face only served to further convince Joyce that she was making the right decision,

"Your friends are encouraging you to spend time with that man, I don't have any idea what your relationship to the school librarian is but it's bothering me too, you're getting into more fights and trouble here than you did in LA, and I keep getting calls from your teachers saying you skipped classes along with your friends."

"Mom!" Buffy didn't have a chance to defend herself as her mother steamrolled over her objections.

"I've packed enough of your clothes to get you by for a couple weeks while I pack the rest of your things up. You'll be going to a boarding school weekdays, and living at your father's new apartment the rest of the time. You're leaving right now."

A car horn honked outside, and Buffy realised that her mother had made certain she couldn't contact her friends in any way before she left. She picked up her jacket, and with a final glare at her mother Buffy left Sunnydale, trying desperately not to cry as she went further away from her friends, her watcher, and Angel.

Part 1

August 2007

Tomas Cruz, who never wanted to hear another Tom Cruise joke in his life thank you, handed the file over to the young woman sitting in front of him. The simple fact that she looked as though she were in her late teens not her early twenties would make the job easier. Of course, the real reason she had been assigned to the case was her familiarity with the area. She was the only agent on staff who had ever been to Sunnydale, California. It was to be hoped that her familiarity with the town would help her in tracking the child abduction ring.

She looked up from the file and Cruz was certain that he had seen a flash of panic before she pulled it all under a professional mask again. "I assume that I'm to play the role of ingenuous student?" she asked.

"Yes. What we need to accomplish here is catching these bastard before they take any more children. There is reason to believe-"

She interrupted, "I read the report. What I want to know is if there are any sources I should contact, leads I should know about, or anything that was not mentioned in the report for any reason."

Cruz looked at her with renewed respect, she had only just graduated to full status as an FBI agent and he hadn't been expecting someone quite so well-prepared for the realities of working in the field. Then again, she had come incredibly highly recommended with several commendations for outstanding performance beyond the call of duty. "The only information that is not in the report is the unusually high gang activity in the area. The locals claim they're on PCP, and I see no point in interfering with them unless you come across a lead that they are involved in the kidnappings."

They stood and Cruz shook her hand and said, "Welcome to the team Ms Summers."

On the plane down to Sunnydale Buffy studied the details of her undercover persona's dossier. Her name was Beth Winters and she was a second year student just transferring from UCLA. Her major was humanities and she was planning to take her education credits later to become an elementary school teacher.

The thought of being stuck in a room all day with a bunch of hyperactive children made Buffy shudder, but she would have to suppress the reflex if she was to play the part effectively. It allowed her to take on a role that was singularly unthreatening and unremarkable which should keep the kidnappers from noticing her.

The rest of her dossier covered details like that her family was from a small suburb of LA a lot like Sunnydale and she had transferred to Sunnydale to be in a place more like home. All in all the girl Beth Winters was a sweet unassuming character that seemed to have almost nothing in common with Buffy Summers. She would have to make certain to be careful around people. The last thing she wanted was to attract attention by being out of persona. She reflectively touched the new dye job she had gotten. It was a new colour for her, and not many people in Sunnydale would associate blonde Buffy Summers with the auburn-haired Beth Winters.

Something about the case bothered her though. The fact that the kidnappings had been traced to a university in Sunnydale was bad enough. But there was something else she couldn't put her finger on that just rubbed her the wrong way. It had to do with the way the children had been taken. Each time the kids were taken out of homes from the same kind of neighbourhood, out of homes with extensive security, but most curiously, each night when they were taken was the same.

Not that they were all taken on the same night, but each time the children were taken there was a loud thunderstorm, lightning, rain, thunder, the works. Then, there would be three brief power outages, and everyone would go to bed. Each time the parents were interviewed they would say the same thing. Whether they had slept well or poorly the night before, had had a long day or an easy one, had desk jobs or had physically active ones, they felt exhausted all of a sudden and went to bed and didn't wake up until exactly ten o'clock the next morning. No one seemed to think much of it, but Buffy kept feeling that she was missing something important there.

The only evidence they had in regard to the group was that there was melted candle wax, and the consistent appearance of a red circle with an odd orange and blue spiralling design in the centre. It was coloured so intensely it practically vibrated. The pigments used were not identified as yet, although it had been determined that they were not artificial in nature. They appeared on the victim's bed as well as on the wall beside them. It was assumed the kidnappers were a cult of some sort.

When the plane landed Buffy made her way to the dorm she would be living in for the next several months. Her roommate was a tall goth with more metal in her body than a medieval knight carried into battle. The girl breezed past Buffy and placed her sixth monster movie poster on the wall. "You my roomie?" she asked.

"Yeah," replied Buffy hesitantly.

The girl looked the Slayer up and down and said, "Damn! Of all the people at this university I get a preppie valley girl."

Buffy sighed inwardly and fantasised briefly about terrorising this girl with the broadsword she carried in her suitcase but decided against it. So, she simply started putting down the bright colours and fluffy stuffed toys on her side of the room. "So," she said, trying to sound cheery, "Have you been in town long?"

"Why?" the other's voice was sullen and mistrustful.

Buffy was tempted to try to draw her out but refrained. Beth Winters would have been intimidated by the abrupt answer. "Well, I just thought you might know somewhere fun to go." She backed away.

"How did we wind up being roomies anyway?" the goth demanded.

"I don't know, but we might as well make the best of it. My name is Beth Winters, what's yours?" Buffy didn't want to be at odds with her roommate for the whole school year so she decided to be as friendly and non-threatening as possible. The Beth Winters method of coping.

"Jessica. Jessica MacKenzie, and I don't want to be friends. I'll be out late a lot and I have no desire to put up with some whiner complaining about me breaking the rules. Got it?" she glared.

In no way intimidated, Buffy cowered nonetheless. It was best if everyone, especially Jessica, thought of her as being too timid to be anyone of importance.

"Y-yes." Buffy was also happy about her roommate after all. If she was going to be out at all hours, it meant Buffy could be too and the other would be none the wiser.

They finished decorating their respective halves of the room in silence. Beth would have been too frightened to speak, and Jessica was clearly far too contemptuous of the person Buffy was pretending to be to deign to converse with her. When they finished Buffy decided it was a good idea to look around the university a bit and get the lay of the land. She could also get in a quick patrol as it was after sunset.

"Sunnydale, I hope you haven't forgotten me. The Slayer's come home," she muttered as she hit the walkways on campus. She was intending to wander across the campus, check out where her classes were, and then head down into town to hit the Bronze. If it was still there.

When she had left Sunnydale ten years earlier she had managed to keep up her work as the Slayer. Things hadn't been as bad outside of Sunnydale, but there had been a fair number of demons over the years. Buffy had learned how to make contact with various levels of the demonic underground and her best friends were a family of Anomovics out in New York. She was going to have to ask Laurie how the new baby was doing.

She was startled out of her thoughts when she saw someone coming. Buffy ducked into the shadow of a tree and waited, every muscle alert. When she saw who it was her heart almost stopped. "Angel," she whispered. It shouldn't have alerted him but he stopped and looked directly at her. Buffy prepared herself to run. He couldn't possibly see her face but he might be able to distinguish her outline against the tree. Then again, he shouldn't have been able to hear her either. He paused for a moment then continued on his way. Buffy let out a silent sigh of relief.

She hurried off to continue her patrol/exploration, confused emotions swirling in her head. Buffy had never forgotten him, not even when she had given in to the inevitable and started dating other men. The problem with them had always been that unfinished romance between her and Angel. Sometimes she wondered what things would have been like if her mother hadn't found the photograph. Whether they would have worked out as a couple and whether Angel would have been her first lover instead of that guy in the military from Iowa. What had his name been? Randy? Riley? She let out a somewhat bitter chuckle. It didn't matter who he was because they had broken up over her unresolved feelings for a guy she hadn't seen in two and a half years. Three by that point. Angel had just captured her imagination and sometimes she had an urge to drop everything and rush off to Sunnydale just to find out what might have been. She didn't because he was a virile man who had no doubt forgotten the innocent schoolgirl who had a crush on him ten years ago.

Still, a small voice in her head kept saying, *Maybe he did forget the schoolgirl, but he wouldn't forget the woman.*

As Angel headed for his apartment he thought over that brief moment when he could have sworn he heard someone say his name. The fact that his heart had insisted it was Buffy had only intensified how lonely he felt. It wasn't that he lacked friends or female companionship, quite the opposite in fact. He and Giles had bonded over Buffy's abrupt disappearance ten years before, and he always had an easy time finding women who wanted a one night stand. He wasn't a monk after all, and sex had never been one of those things he considered depriving himself of.

But Buffy had been more than merely someone to ease away the loneliness. She had been the one to give him hope that there could be more for him than grief and despair. The moment when he first saw her he had felt something almost completely unfamiliar. It was a feeling that had occurred once when he was human. That was a pale flicker in comparison with the blazing sunlight he had felt on seeing her. Buffy had been his inspiration as both a goal and as an ideal to achieve.

His one wish had been to be worthy of her. In spite of the love she had shown him, he had known he didn't deserve her. So, he had attempted to earn the right to claim her by following her stellar example. Then she vanished one day leaving no trace of where she'd gone. They had all searched for her, Xander and Cordelia checking every hotel they could think of, Jenny Calendar and Giles both dipping into their respective considerable knowledge of the occult, and Willow searching repeatedly on the internet for her.

Angel had spent literally months trying every avenue of investigation he knew. Giles had contacted the Watchers' Council and had been told in no uncertain terms that they had no more of a notion of where Buffy was than anyone in Sunnydale. Her mother had packed up and left, refusing to take anyone's calls, or answer any questions. He had held hope of her eventual discovery far longer than the others. Eventually though, even he had to give up. By the time Willow had enough magical skill to trace Buffy, they had reached the conclusion that she must be dead. Her mother's abrupt departure was most likely due to that, and she had been too grief-stricken to care about anyone else. Funny how, when he had first been told about the spell to make him human, his first thought had been to tell Buffy. Willow had been hunting through Giles' forbidden spellbooks when she found a spell that was incredibly simple to change a vampire into a human. The only reason it wasn't used before then was that a slayer's blood, was needed to complete the spell. It was just one of those things that no one had thought would interest a slayer and not many people were gutsy enough to try and take some by force. They had called Kendra up from where she had been, Africa somewhere at the time, and had gotten some of her blood for the ritual.

Becoming human had been one of the most difficult experiences of Angel's considerable life. The ritual itself had been simple. Becoming used to needing food, to the far more numerous ways a human could die, and the myriad other differences between being human and vampire. Not to mention the things he needed to do and learn that had not been issues the first time he was human. Just the sheer number of times one had to prove you were who you said you were had boggled him. The hardest part though, had not been reaccustoming himself to needing to go to the bathroom, but being unable to share the rediscovery of his life with Buffy. There had been so many days when he had thought she would be proud of his achievements only to remember that she was, most likely, dead.

The notion of Buffy dead quashed the last of what little good mood he had left, and Angel settled in for the evening at home with a bottle of port and the most maudlin romantic poetry he could find. The eighteenth and nineteenth century authors matching his mood perfectly.

Even though he had a class to teach the next day, he decided to wallow in misery for a night. After all, it wasn't as though Buffy was around to be disappointed if he showed up for his first class completely hung over.

Part 2

The next morning, Buffy got up early and headed off to the cafeteria for some breakfast. She had gone through Sunnydale the night before and had found almost nothing different from the town she had lived in ten year earlier. The few differences were cosmetic, the styles of cars driven, the decorations in the windows. The atmosphere and the people were the same. She had rescued five people from vampires that night, and every single one had babbled something about the 'gang on PCP'. Apparently it was a new phenomenon. Buffy had resisted the urge to thunk her head against the wall.

She took her tray to a table that had a reasonably good view of the whole room, and settled in to think about what she'd learned the night before. For one, the warehouse district was teeming with activity both legal and illegal. As always, much of the illegal activity was merely covering up paranormal activity that was also illegal. She was going to have to spend some serious time going through there just to find possible locations.

There were also some rumours floating around about some old abandoned (and haunted) houses being put to various uses. She was going to have to check up on the local property turnover in recent months as well as the dark haired man who looked remarkably familiar who had seated himself just five tables over.

Buffy took one look at the familiar guy, and before giving either of them an opportunity to identify the other, she got to her feet and bolted down her breakfast as she hurried to the exit. No point in blowing her cover to Xander or whoever it was.

Angel glanced up as a short auburn-haired woman leaped up from her seat and carried a half finished meal over to the doorway gulping it down as she went. He looked after her, perplexed, then shrugged, deciding she was probably just late and hadn't realised it until then.

Still, there was something familiar about her, and Angel frowned slightly as he sipped his coffee trying to place her. Was she one of his students? He had been teaching for a couple years now and he always took on at least one tutorial. Well, it wasn't important. As he left for his class the nagging feeling persisted that it was.

Buffy settled into a seat in the middle of the lecture hall. It was, in her experience, the best place to be overlooked by both professor and fellow students. Not too close to the front, where everyone could see her, and not too close to the back where people would notice her reluctance to be seen by the teacher. The room was bright with sunlight, large skylights comprising much of the ceiling, and a row of windows around the top of the wall.

She was grateful for the light. At least it ought to keep her awake while she took this required course. It was a history of sociological perspectives on major scientific developments of the last three hundred years. Translated into English that meant what people thought of scientific discoveries at the time they happened. That specific course wasn't specified as the requirement, it was simply the best choice out of the list of options for that type of course. Science and Society, the name of the course, was cross-listed as either a science credit or a sociology credit. The notion that such a study existed had baffled the Slayer, but she was taking it and hoped it was less boring than the name suggested it would be.

She was flipping through her datebook, working out some details of where she was going to fit some homework into her very tight schedule of slayage and investigation, when the professor cleared his throat into the microphone at the front of the hall. She looked up and froze. Her mind began to babble, *No! It's not him. He's just a guy who happens to look exactly the same down to the smile.* Their eyes locked, and the smile fell from his face. It was definitely Angel.

Angel stared into her eyes and tried not to make a scene. She was here. Buffy was here, a student in one of his classes. The colour of her hair registered in his mind and he noted that she must have been the auburn haired woman he'd seen earlier in the day. He opened his mouth to speak and found himself saying the class introduction he'd written the night before. Then he was handing out the syllabus, all the time unable to take his eyes off her.

After those first few shocked moments though, she refused to meet his eyes. In fact, she seemed to act as though she didn't recognise him at all. He longed to head up to where she was sitting, but he couldn't draw attention to her. For one thing, it was illegal for a professor to have an affair with a student, and for another, he had to do his job.

So he gave his lecture on the opening topics of the course, and at the end of the lecture started purposefully toward where she had been sitting diligently taking notes. Unfortunately he was accosted on his way by students with questions about the final exam. He stifled the urge to ask them why they couldn't put off asking these questions until he had some vague notion of what was on the exam, it was the first day of class for chrissakes, and answered the queries. He was helpless to stop Buffy when she got up to leave without a single backward glance.

Buffy couldn't get out of that room fast enough. Angel had been staring at her all class, and it had taken every bit of her willpower to maintain the facade of Beth Winters. It was insane. She couldn't talk to him, that would blow her cover. Beth would never jeopardise her future by having what would be a both high-profile and illegal affair with a professor. *It wouldn't necessarily be illegal,* her mind said sweetly, *After all, you're taking this course as a cover up, not because of any need to take it. Once you drop it you'll be able to go after him full throttle.* Buffy squelched all notions of going full throttle anywhere with Angel and firmly reminded herself that she had to remain in persona.

She was just going to have to avoid him. Which meant never finding out how he had become impervious to sunlight. More, when it was that he had gotten the qualifications to be a professor of social history. It also meant she couldn't look up anyone else. Word would get back to Angel. She was just going to have to convince him she wasn't Buffy.

Her life sucked.

For the next month her plan of avoidance worked perfectly. Angel hunted up and down the campus for her, and never managed to find her. She would go to class, but would usually leave the moment he stopped speaking, thus preventing him from catching her long enough to talk. During class she refused to meet his eyes, sat dead centre in the row of seats so that he could not have a chance to talk to her while handing out assignments, tests, quizzes, or notes, and generally avoided being seen by him.

Her attempts to avoid him were helped by the fact that she had to continue her investigation of the kidnappings. Instead of being in any of the usual student hangouts, Buffy was to be found either patrolling in the residential areas, or down in the warehouse district tracking news of gangs setting up hideouts. They were, for the most part, vampires, but sometimes it was demons, and once it was an actual gang.

She ran the real gang out of town, knowing that the Sunnydale PD was still far too incompetent to do anything to them. Unfortunately, she still hadn't found anything on the kidnappings. Then Angel finally found out which dorm she was staying at, and Buffy woke up one morning to the sight of a very irate Angel at her door.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded.

Buffy froze. She debated rapidly with herself. Should she tell him the truth, or should she maintain her persona. Emotions she had long suppressed welled to the forefront, and for a moment Buffy was tempted to just tell him everything. Then her common sense reared up, and Buffy buried her feelings as far down as they would go, and fell into character. "I'm sorry? You're professor Byrne aren't you? I didn't realise... I mean, am I doing something wrong in class?"

Her wide eyed innocence clearly took Angel aback, "Buffy, I don't know what you're playing at, but I want to know why the hell you disappeared without a word ten years ago."

"I'm sorry sir. I think you've mistaken me for someone else. I've never been to Sunnydale before." Buffy carefully flinched before his fury, and quietly begged whatever powers were listening for him to not make a scene.

His eyes narrowed as he looked at her, then he seemed to realise he was standing in a dorm hallway for anyone to see. He aimed a final glare at her that told the Slayer he didn't believe her in the slightest, then spun on his heel and headed down the hall. Buffy shut the door and sagged against it in relief. At least he would leave her alone now. She got dressed and went down to the cafeteria to get breakfast. When Buffy sat down she felt someone watching her, and casually looked around only to find Angel in a corner glaring at her. He followed her for the rest of the day. This meant that Buffy was forced to play Beth Winters to the hilt with virtually no reprieve. It also meant that when she went out to see if there were any more leads that evening, she was forced to go sloshing through the sewers in order to lose him. To make matters worse, when she got back to her room, her superiors were waiting for an update on her progress. "Or complete lack thereof," Buffy muttered as she settled at her computer to send her report. Just in case Angel was watching, Buffy turned her computer to face away from the window.

When she got ready for bed that evening, she changed into the nice silky nightgown one of her coworkers had given her as a gag birthday gift. It had nothing to do with the fact that Angel might be watching, and everything to do with her other nightclothes being dirty. As she climbed into bed after posing in front of the mirror for a minute, the snarky voice in her head remarked, *Who do you think you're fooling anyway?*

Angel was watching through the window when Buffy came walking back into the room with a small silky nightgown on, and he gulped to himself when she began to make sexy little poses in front of her mirror. Especially when she turned and bent over letting him see down the front very nicely thank you.

Then she turned off the lights and went to bed, leaving Angel to go tramping back to his apartment. As he got farther away from the enticing picture of Buffy dressed in nothing but silky lingerie Angel began to focus more on what little he had discovered from tailing her that day. She was pretending to a shyness and general sweetness that he had never even imagined her to be capable of, and she seemed to be studying to be a teacher.

She had gone out that evening, and clearly had tried to lose him. She hadn't succeeded, though he had dropped enough out of sight as the night wore on to trick her into believing otherwise. The warehouses she had visited were not those generally frequented by demons, much like the bar on the east end of the town, normally a biker haunt. He had gone checking out leads on demons often enough with her ten years earlier to recognize what she was doing.

The real question was why she was looking into human scum rather than demon. As he pondered that, Angel made his way to the Giles residence. Since the watcher had gotten married the year previous, he was usually up at that ungodly hour. Of course, he would be irritated at the interruption until Angel explained, but he would be awake.

When the ex-vampire knocked on the door, he waited, deliberately not looking at the door, as he heard the muffled sounds of people shrugging into the nearest clothing to hand. Then an irate Jenny Calendar ("Jennifer Giles just sounds ridiculous," she'd said) yanked the door open, "What!"

"Buffy's one of my students at the university," Angel replied.

She stared at him for a moment, then pulled the door further open and let him in. Inside, Giles had managed to pull his clothes more or less together, and he was looking at Angel with every evidence of interest.

"She's alive? Why didn't she write or-"

"She's pretending she doesn't know me, so I have no answers." Angel cut him off.

Jenny looked at him and asked, "What do you know?"

So Angel related the little information he had gleaned, and the computer teacher rolled her eyes and went to get her laptop. While she was off, incidentally taking a couple minutes to get decent, Giles asked, "Does she look alright? I mean, is she..." he trailed off.

Giving what he hoped was a reassuring smile, Angel said, "She seems well enough. I don't think she's here because she's being chased by anything either," he paused, considering, "Buffy is here because she's looking for something, and for some reason she doesn't want us to know she's here."

Giles would have asked more, but Jenny reappeared with her computer, and promptly began hacking into the university's database. "I honestly can't believe you haven't looked her up," the woman said irritably, "I mean, you have the passwords and so on to get into the system." She finished her move past the university's security and began to take down all the information to be had on Beth Winters.

"You were right, she is apparently studying to be an elementary school teacher," said Giles, reading over his wife's shoulder, "She's from a town not unlike Sunnydale, and she seems to have quite an excellent GPA."

Angel shrugged, "Maybe we ought to try finding Buffy through the computer systems again."

Jenny gave him a look, "I am not going to bring the wrath of the government down on my head again. The only person who can do the kind of hacking you want is Willow."

Giles looked at his wife in surprise, "Is she back from MIT yet?"

She sent the two men exasperated glares, "If either of you would ever pay attention to anything I say, you would know she's going to be back tomorrow afternoon," throwing her hands in the air, she added, "Why do I put up with you two?"

As Giles wrapped his arms around her and began to nibble at Jenny's ear, Angel quietly let himself out. Tomorrow he would talk to Willow to find out what Buffy was doing back in Sunnydale. Tonight, he would have a cold shower and try to forget about how she looked in that tiny silky thing she was wearing to bed. He would also control his urge to kill the man she had bought it to wear for.

Buffy fought the urge to curse when her informant gave her the last known location of the kidnappers. It was the Master's old lair. She was going to have to tramp through the goddamn sewers to the place where she died just to check out a place for people that weren't there anymore. Sometimes her job really sucked.

She also had yet to find any evidence of her kidnappers beyond the occasional appearance of their symbol in conjunction with the wax. Buffy was getting intensely frustrated with her lack of progress, as well as the reports of other kidnappings that had arrived the night before. The only reason it was assumed this was the base of operations was the prevalence of the damned symbol.

In the meantime, she had to get back to school, take a class with Angel teaching, and continue to pretend she didn't know him. He hadn't given up stalking her over the past two weeks, and it was getting harder to evade him. It almost seemed as though he knew what she was doing before she did it.

On arriving for class, there he was at his desk, looking innocent. His topic for the day was reactions over the past century or so to Darwin's theories of evolution. Buffy suffered through the sighing comments of the girl next to her. "I just think it's so, like, amazing, that he knows all this stuff. (sigh) He's sooo . . . smart," she smiled dreamily at Buffy, who resisted the urge to crush the vapid girl's head with her binder, and instead smiled punctiliously back.

"He is that," Buffy said, looking prim given that she could not draw attention to herself by having a crush on the most droolingly handsome professor on campus, or kill this chick in a fit of jealous rage, she settled for being 'proper'.

The other paid no mind, "And he's so lickably gorgeous,(sigh)" she went on, little aware how close she was to death by a thousand wounds inflicted by staple remover. Or a hole punch, Buffy hadn't quite decided. "He's got such dark eyes, I always feel like he's looking right through me when I'm in tutorial. (sigh, giggle) I'm in his," she added unnecessarily.

Buffy was so desperate to get away from the crushing, woozy-headed student that she volunteered for something before she realised she had just volunteered to go stand next to Angel and pretend she wasn't in love with him, never mind not know him. It was too late to back out now, so she went down to the front and stood next to the male tutorial leader, who had apparently volunteered in advance of the class, listening to Angel give some speech about social norms affecting people's views on acceptable behaviour and some stuff like that, then request that no one speak about this class to anyone in the faculty.

Buffy was as surprised as the rest of the class when he suddenly kissed the (very) male TA. Buffy was fairly certain their kiss intensified as she felt dizzy and the world started to fade. Angel was not supposed to kiss anyone else, certainly not a guy, and she was going to pass out right then.

When her vision cleared and the roaring in her ears went away, Buffy assumed they must have stopped. Angel was just finishing filler about how shocked everyone was, when he leaned over and kissed her, and the world faded again. This time because Angel's tongue was in her mouth, and he was next to her, and she could feel the warm, muscled length of him pressed against her.

Warm?

Angel was warm. Angel's heart was beating. He was completely human, and he was kissing her. Buffy relaxed into the rush of being next to him.

Then the moment was over, and Angel continued his lecture after sending Buffy back up the aisle to her seat. She barely noticed the girl next to her who was now whining in jealousy over why it was Buffy had been chosen and not her. She was only certain of one thing as she hurried out of the lecture hall. She had not been imagining the look of sheer lust in Angel's eyes whenever they met during the lecture.

Angel smirked to himself as he went home. He and Buffy had kissed, and from her reaction, she still liked him. A lot. With Willow's continued inability to find anything on Buffy anywhere on government computer systems, Angel had nearly given up hope on finding out what happened to her. If today was any indication however, he would get her to tell him soon enough.

He licked his lips remembering the taste of her on them and the way she had pressed herself into him when they'd kissed. She'd felt so good, so right in his arms, that for a moment he had forgotten the class, forgotten the audience, and had lost himself in the touch, taste and feel of her. He was sure she had felt the same.

So why had she run? The question pulled him back out of his cheerfully mood, and he began to frown as he tried to put together the disparate pieces of what he knew. When she had first come back, he had thought she simply no longer cared one way or another about him and the others. Since then, he had come to realise she was trying to protect them from something.

Xander, Anya and Willow were waiting for him at his apartment door. "Hey guys, what's up?"

"Can we talk inside?" Willow asked. Angel raised an eyebrow at the qualifier even as he unlocked the door and ushered the others in.

"What's going on?" he asked again.

Willow looked uncomfortable and started to speak, stopped, started again, and irritated Anya so much the ex-vengeance demon stated bluntly, "Buffy's working for the FBI on a case. She came here because the kidnapping ring is located in Sunnydale."

"Anya!" Willow looked perturbed by the other's bluntness, used to it though she was.

Xander shot his friend a look, "Y'know, I don't see what she did wrong, it's not as though we're telling Angel something that needs sensitivity," he smiled at his wife of five years, "Besides, she's almost completely gotten the hang of tact."

"Which is more than can be said for you Harris," Angel grinned to soften the sting of his words. He and Xander had gradually become friends once the competition over Buffy had ceased to be a factor in their relationship. They had found a surprising amount in common including a love of incomprehensible Indian films. Angel had turned out to be an even more amusing translator than Willow, and the two maintained their Sunday afternoon meetings (date indicated a romance and both Angel and Xander were emphatically NOT gay, not that there is anything wrong with that, they simply wanted it understood that they were not) to watch people break out in song because of a foot massage interrupted by a guy who looked like the Indian version of Snidely Whiplash.

Back to the story.

After Willow had told him what she had gleaned from the computers about Buffy, Angel sighed, "Well that explains why she isn't contacting us. She's trying to keep from being recognised. If one of the locals, or one of the kidnappers, was around when Buffy lived here, they would recognise her once her name came up," he chuckled slightly, "She did spend enough time around both the good and bad elements in Sunnydale to make something of a name for herself after all."

"What that doesn't explain," Willow said, "Is why she never contacted any of us when she left."

Angel leapt to her defense, "She must have had a good reason. I can't believe Buffy would do something like that voluntarily."

Xander was about to respond when he noticed Anya had made her way to the window and was looking puzzled. "An, honey, whatcha lookin' at?"

She squinted out the window and said, "There's a woman at the building's front door, and she's been standing at the call up thingy for about three minutes now. She keeps putting her hand on it then turning around to leave, then turning back."

They all came over to the window. Angel was the first to speak. "Buffy?"

Part 3

Buffy was silently cursing her bad luck again as she stood before the door to Angel's apartment building. She had come back to her dorm, only to discover that one of her contacts had left her a message on the voice mail she had gotten expressly for that purpose. She had wanted to leave to meet him immediately, but had gotten held up by her very drunk roomie, recently returned from a frat party, who turned out to be a lesbian with a thing for meek bookish types.

She had fled the scene after being forced to dump a glass of three day old Coke all over Jessica to get her to go away. Things had not gotten better, as she was accosted by four vampires, one after another, on the way to her contact's preferred meeting place, the sewer entrance at Wilstead and Humber. The vampires were not working together, but they did slow her down enough that she missed her contact, who would only wait in one place for so long in this town, which meant chasing him through the sewers, ruining the third pair of boots this trip.

When she caught up with him, she found out that he was friends with one of the parents of the missing children. The parent was a warlock who had used a spell to recreate the scene of the kidnapping. The kidnappers were a race of demon he had never seen before. Buffy was provided with a sketch, and then had to fight her way past a small crowd of Eeponomos demons. Literally 'sewer' demons. The damned things bathed in the sewer water, and Buffy had to fight them. Which meant, once they got too close for her to shoot them effectively, she had to touch them.

She had already burned the clothes she had been wearing, but hadn't had the time for a really long, hot, shower to get the last of the ick off herself. Just a quick one so she didn't look like a sewer demon herself. She was wearing the first clothes that had come to hand back at the dorm, which were a purple and pink plaid t-shirt that Laurie's second youngest had gotten Buffy for her birthday, and the dark green leather pants she had bought to match the halter top with all the Celtic knotwork on it.

With that, she was wearing moccasins, another gift, this time from some Huron Native North American Aboriginal Great Lake Peoples, she had rescued from a demonic millionaire wanting to take their land for an amusement park. She was going to go in to see Angel looking like a blind stinky freak to ask for help in identifying and defeating the demons that had taken all those children. The crowning glory of the moment was that she was going to have to explain herself to him.

Why did the gods hate her so much?

She got her nerve up enough finally to buzz his apartment. His voice immediately crackled over the speaker, "Yes?"

"Uh, Professor Byrne? You said I could come over to discuss my essay topic. It's Beth Winters," Buffy was fully as nervous as she sounded. Not only was this going to draw all kinds of unwanted attention to herself, she now had to face Angel.

There was a pause, and when the speaker came on again, Buffy clearly heard Xander's voice in the background, "But you said you weren't assigning any essays-" he was apparently forcibly hushed to judge from the "Ow!" that was shouted over Angel's response. "Sure, come in." It was with a sinking feeling that Buffy made her way up the stairs to Angel's front door.

When he opened the front door, Angel was struck by how beautiful she looked, nervous and clearly with the faint whiff of sewer still on her she was still the most stunning sight he had ever seen. Auburn was a good look for her. "Come in," he said, stepping back to let her in. "Now why are you really here, Buffy?" he asked once the door was closed.

She took a deep breath, "I need help. I work for the FBI and-"

"We know that Buffy," Willow interrupted, "What I want to know is what you think you're doing waltzing into town after being gone for ten years and then just expecting our help."

Buffy flinched at Willow's words and responded, "I was assigned to this case because I knew Sunnydale, and I'm asking for your help because none of my resources can identify these." With that, Buffy presented the sketch to the woman who was once her best friend. "I don't expect you to help me. I'm asking you to help the fifty children they've kidnapped over the past year or so."

"Then what? You'll just take off and we won't hear from you again until the next time you can't handle something?" Xander asked bitterly.

Angel wanted to interrupt the two, but he was also somewhat bitter about the vanishing act ten years earlier. He wanted to know why she had never contacted any of them, hadn't contacted him when she had said she loved him. So he watched. Her response to Xander's question surprised all of them.

"How about we get Giles and Ms Calendar and anyone else you guys think I owe an explanation to, and I'll tell you what happened." Buffy looked each of them in the eye adding, "I think it'll be less complicated for everyone if I only tell my story once, and you guys don't repeat the same questions."

It was agreed, and Giles arrived with Jenny in tow shortly thereafter. Everyone got settled, and then Xander demanded again, "So? Why did you leave?"

Buffy gave a chuckle, "In a way Willow, it was your fault," she shook her head at the other's indignation, "I'm not saying you drove me away or anything. You guys remember that really slimy demon Angel and I killed down at the beach? The one about . . . oh a month before I left? The picture Willow took of me wearing Angel's shirt and Angel shirtless had my Mom thinking I slept with Angel." Buffy smiled in amused remembrance.

"She completely freaked. The next thing I knew, I was sent to boarding school in Washington. I was supposed to spend the weekends with Dad," her voice developed a certain angry quality, in spite of the sadness, "But that was too much effort for him, so I spent the next year and a half living in the dorm."

Giles frowned and said, "Well that does explain why you left without so much as a word, but what possible reason did you have for not contacting us?" The accusation in his eyes was too much for her to take, and Buffy started to look at the floor as her narrative continued.

"The thing is, Mom and Dad told the principal about the 'bad influences' in my life. They didn't want me to see any of you again-"

Willow interrupted again, "So you just listened to them?! We were your friends Buffy! You just dropped us 'cause you wanted-"

"I was under lock and key every moment I wasn't in direct supervision by one of the faculty members!" Buffy shouted in response, "They deliberately made certain my roommate was the biggest snitch in the school! For a year and a half I wasn't alone for a minute! I wasn't allowed off the school grounds." She finished softly remembering nearly two years of a life not dissimilar to prison.

"A computer was specifically disconnected from the internet for my use to hand in papers, and the teachers made just enough of my bad reputation that no one would do me the favour of mailing you guys a letter." Tears began to roll down her face as the sheer grief and loneliness of that time came back to her.

Angel watched Buffy crying and couldn't help himself. He moved from his seat by the window onto the couch, and wrapped his arms around her. He felt her stiffen briefly, then she began to sob in earnest. Giles looked torn between joining Angel in comforting the slayer who was once his charge, and staying where he was. The others merely looked taken aback, but they didn't speak or interfere, and by the time Buffy had regained some self possession, Willow and Jenny were looking distinctly sympathetic.

With his arm still firmly wrapped around her, and secretly enjoying the close contact, Angel hesitantly asked, "But what about after high school? I mean, by then you could have come back, your parents wouldn't have had any hold on you."

Buffy gave a bitter chuckle, "Oh I would've," that same grim laughter, "But I was so loopy after a year and a half of being shunned, that Dad got me put into an institution to 'help me past this transition period to normalcy'." She shuddered, then said, "I was there for another two years."

By then, even Xander couldn't maintain his anger. Suddenly the couch was very crowded with Willow and Xander having joined Angel in a group hug. There were a lot of apologies offered, and Giles and Jenny even stepped over to give Buffy an embrace. Anya, not knowing Buffy in the slightest held back as long as she could, but finally couldn't wait any more. "So? That still leaves six and a half years when you could've called."

Abruptly Buffy flushed and looked at the floor, "That really was my fault. You see, when I finally got out, and decided to become an FBI agent, I just didn't know what I was going to say to you guys." She looked truly pathetic as she gazed at her friends, "I mean, here I'd vanished without a trace years before, what was I gonna say? 'Oh hi, remember me? I was your friend but I disappeared. Now I'm back!'?" she shrugged, "I had no self esteem, and by the time I had really pulled myself together enough to come back, it really was too late to just reappear in your lives. I figured better to just let it be."

Xander broke into her introspection, "Okay, enough of that. Why did you become an FBI agent? Do you work on the X-Files? Can you get me a tax break?"

With that the tension broke, and ten years of gossip, tales of adventures, and occult insanity were exchanged. Willow's adventures in relationships, "Wills! You dated a girl?" Buffy's life in the FBI, "No way Buffs! You get to claim your broadsword collection as part of your tax deductions?", Giles and Jenny's wedding, ". . . So anyways, there was Xander, giving a toast to the happy couple, and he actually told that story about that chair woman incident!" Giles' response, "Yes, and I was never so embarrassed in my life."

After Xander's joke though, Buffy moved away from Angel, and didn't go near him again for the rest of the evening.

The party broke up somewhere around four in the morning, and everyone left to go home, promising to meet the next afternoon to research Buffy's demons. Angel was left alone in his apartment wondering whether Buffy still cared about him at all. She'd leaned into him readily enough when she'd broken down, but the moment she realised she was leaning against him Buffy had leaped to her feet and had kept a considerable distance between the two of them all evening. He was also the only one she hadn't had a private word with.

The only conclusion he could draw was that she'd not only gotten over him, but she'd realised how insane a relationship between the two of them could be. He was, after all, her professor, and she probably had a boyfriend. Why else would she own that nightgown? Angel went to bed and slept fitfully, his dreams full of Buffy declaring undying love to a faceless man while dressed in nothing but a thong and strapless bra.

Buffy lay in bed and went over every moment of the evening to catch any hint at all Angel was still interested in her. She had made a complete ass of herself collapsing and sobbing all over him like the buffle brained heroine of a Harlequin romance, and had gotten away from him to compose herself as soon as she had realised it. He hadn't gone near her again, despite all the hints she had thrown his way.

Maybe he had a girlfriend now. The others all had someone, which would make Buffy the pathetic dateless loser. Just like she had been in high school. Angel had probably gotten over her schoolgirl crush and found himself a woman who knew what she was doing. How could he not? He was handsome, smart, a university professor, and sexy as all hell. He would have no trouble finding himself a girlfriend.

Buffy curled up and tried not to cry as she imagined him in bed with some gorgeous exotic female, laughing over his early romantic follies like the small blonde slayer who had tears running down her cheeks despite her best efforts to stop them.

The following afternoon they all gathered at the Magic Box and began to search for any clues as to what Buffy's demons were up to, and how to stop them. Things were a little awkward at first, but soon the old camaraderie of those earlier days in the Sunnydale High School library came back. Giles, Angel, Willow and Jenny all worked diligently, while Xander and Buffy alternated between going for snacks and trying to look busy. Anya counted money and didn't bother pretending.

Buffy frequently shot sidelong glances at Angel, not wanting to be caught staring at him, but unable to help herself. He just looked so handsome sitting in the pool of sunlight coming in through the window. She was also trying to decide whether the ring he was wearing was an engagement ring or not.

Angel was engaged in a similar pursuit. He kept checking to see if Buffy had any jewellry that would indicate whether she was affianced to anyone, and was immensely relived that she didn't appear to be. She also looked so beautiful in the hip hugging blue jeans and low cut t-shirt. He shifted uncomfortably, then stood declaring he was going to take a break.

He headed for the back, which served as a training room for the gang, as well as a place to put the fridge. He got a bottle of water out, and gulped it down in an attempt to get himself under control. He jumped in surprise when he heard Buffy speak. "It's really nice in here," she said, "I mean, the training centre for the FBI doesn't have anywhere I can practice with a crossbow."

Angel turned around, noticing how natural she looked in the room and forced a chuckle out, "Yeah, well I don't think that crossbows are really part of the up-to-date agent's arsenal."

"True," she smiled, "Wanna go a round?"

He gulped, "What?" surely she didn't mean . . .

"Spar? With me?" she asked.

Angel looked at her, glanced at the door and calculated escape routes. Then he decided to be reckless, "Why not?" he replied, grinning.

They took off their shoes, and headed onto the mat. The room was silent as the two sized each other up for a moment. Then Buffy made the first move. The kick could have seriously hurt him if he hadn't seen it coming. He blocked it and responded with a punch that she simply dodged and returned.

Soon they had both entered the flow of battle. All thoughts of lost love, crushes, inadequacy and lust had gone, and all there was, was the kicks, punches and blocks. Suddenly, Buffy dropped and kicked his feet out from under him, and Angel just barely managed to tangle her feet up in his own as he fell. When they hit the mat together, Angel rolled them so that he had her pinned beneath him.

Abruptly both were aware of the intimacy of their position, each panting, both sweaty, their faces mere inches apart. They leaned closer and closer together, and just as their lips were about to brush- Xander shouted ecstatically from the other room, "Woo-hoo! I got 'em!"

Immediately the couple broke apart and scrambled to opposite sides of the room to put their shoes back on, then headed out to see what had happened.

It turned out that the demons Buffy was tracking were called Diebeunschuld, or 'thieves of innocence'. They relied on the children they took once every hundred years to make themselves invulnerable. It was only during a brief window during the ceremony, in which they killed the children in typically ritualistic style, that they could be killed. The symbol found at so many sites was caused by a transportation spell, marking the place where the portal had been.

With some further research, they figured out that the rite was going to take place the next evening at the local elementary school. Unfortunately, there was little they could do to prepare other than arm themselves to the teeth, which meant Buffy had to go to class to maintain appearances. Angel's class.

So, she sat at her usual seat, and listened to Angel lecture about the effects of electrical light on the social lives of people in Europe. The lack of sleep from the past two nights caught up with her, and she fell asleep.

Standing at the front of the room, Angel noticed Buffy slump over, and hoped that she woke up rested, and didn't force him to have to wake her up. When she smiled, he wondered whether she was dreaming about her boyfriend. Odd she hadn't mentioned him yet.

Part 4

Buffy found herself wandering through Sunnydale as it was ten years before. She knew she was being followed, but the thought didn't alarm her. In fact, it made her feel safe. As she reached 1630 Revello, and climbed up to her window, she slipped and would have fallen if it weren't for the cool hands that caught her, and then wrapped themselves around her waist.

Suddenly Buffy was perched in the tree, the owner of those hands still holding her, and gently caressing her through the thin material of her shirt. He leaned down, and kissed her, and Buffy tasted the familiar flavour of toothpaste and Angel, with the slightest hint of blood.

Somehow, the transition was made to her room and Buffy was lying on her bed, her clothes and his miraculously having disappeared. They were still kissing, and his weight settled over her, so perfectly, so right, she wondered how she could ever give it up. His hands were all over her, and they both kissed as though neither could get enough of the other. Suddenly, his hips shifted, and he was so close to-

Waking her up as she realised she had slept through the class and everyone leaving. Angel smiled at her, and Buffy wondered how he would react if she kissed him right then. *He'd probably gently pull me off and tell me he's sorry for leading me on, but he has a girlfriend. Or boyfriend,* Buffy thought grumpily.

"I'm up," she declared, firmly putting a smile on her face.

Angel looked at her smiling face, and wished she were smiling because of him, not whoever was in her dream.

"Sleep well?" he inquired.

"Yeah. Weird dreams though," Buffy replied, as they made their way out of class and down to Angel's car.

"So, you're human. How'd that happen?" Buffy asked.

Angel told her about Spike's hunt for the ring, and how they had managed to trick him into wearing a fake and burning up in the sun. He told her about the spell Willow had found buried along with the rest of the treasure and the Gem of Amara in Giles' private collection. They talked about the demons each had faced, and how they had beaten them. The conversation lasted right to the door of the Magic Box.

Oz had returned from his latest tour, and after a positively adorable reunion with Willow, had offered the use of his new van to transport the gang and their weapons to the school. They spent the afternoon packing the vehicle and organising themselves into groups and determining strategy.

At sunset they piled into the van and drove off. As they walked into the school, the sound of chanting and crying children lead them directly to the ritual. The large numbers of both demons and children were in the gym. Alongside them were a large number of humans who were participating in the sacrifice for the same reward the demons sought.

One of the Diebeunschuld strode over to the whimpering children and pulled a small boy out of the group, and yanking a knife out if his belt, began to move to slit the child's throat. As Angel fumbled to get the crossbow into position to shoot the monster, knowing he couldn't do it in time, Buffy simply yanked her gun out of her back pocket and shot the Diebeunschuld, causing it to simultaneously drop the boy and die.

As the Scoobies moved to enter the battle, Giles muttered, "I see we have progressed past the crossbow."

"No kidding," Angel said, as he sliced the head off of a demon with his axe.

Ultimately, the battle was almost an anticlimax, as the Diebeunschuld were pathetically easy to kill when they weren't invulnerable. Centuries of being unkillable had left them with absolutely no survival skills, and the Scooby gang were able to take them out with ease.

Buffy was also overjoyed at the presence of enough humans to constitute a cult, and once the demons were disposed of, and her friends out of the way, she called in the FBI backup that had been waiting just out of town for her call. They rounded up the escaped cult members with ease, and the children were immediately put on planes to go back to their parents. Buffy left for Washington, and got very deeply involved in the wrap up of the case, and explaining to the warlock what had really happened to his daughter. Buffy wrote her friends regularly, telling them how things were going, and about her life, and Laurie the Anomovic's baby boy, who had been christened Gerald Andrew Hartaneekarn Smith. The third name was for his grandfather.

Buffy's friends back in Sunnydale were all ecstatic at having regular contact with Buffy, and as the months passed they all settled back into the close friendships they had all shared before. All except Angel, that is.

He was happy to be getting letters from her, and he wrote back just as frequently. They had become quite close over the months, and shared things with each other that neither could share with anyone else. His problem was that he wanted more. He wanted Buffy there in Sunnydale, and he wanted her to be in love with him. Unfortunately every letter he received from her made it quite clear she thought of him as no more than a close friend.

He stopped dating though, feeling it was unfair to string a woman along when all he could give her was a one night stand of meaningless sex. He didn't want Buffy to hear about it and be disappointed in him either. Eventually the others stopped trying to get him to go out trolling for dates. So he was surprised when Anya insisted he join them all at the Bronze one evening.

It had become the prime spot for all the people in their late twenties and early thirties after a new club on the good side of town was opened. That happened after the fourth time the Bronze was completely wrecked in 'gang attacks', and parents got upset enough to demand something for their kids in a safer neighbourhood. The people who had grown up with the Bronze had continued to go there, so it had aged a little.

He arrived there, and was stopped in the doorway by the sight of Buffy in a dress so short it was virtually indecent, dancing to some pop song that was little more than a request for sex by the singer. He finally moved forward when someone shoved him, none too gently, away from the door he was blocking. She turned, and her eyes landed on him immediately. She smiled, and began to mouth the words of the song at him. Angel swallowed hard, and found his feet moving him to her side, unbidden. The moment he came within arm's length of her, she stepped up to him, and wrapped herself around him. When the song ended, the DJ said, "Okay folks! I have a request here, from Buffy to Angel! Cibo Matto's 'Sugar Water'!"

For a moment Angel couldn't quite remember why the music seemed so familiar. Then Buffy stepped back and began to dance around him. Her hips swaying to the music, her eyes darkening with promises he spent his nights dreaming of, Buffy seductively moved around him in a way he had only seen once. Ten years earlier, she had tried to drive him insane with jealousy by dancing with Xander. Tonight, that same dance that could pass as foreplay, was being done for him.

Angel began to move with her asking, "What are you doing?"

"Something I should have done ten years ago," Buffy responded with a smile.

He nearly combusted on the spot. "Buffy, we really shouldn't-"

"Quiet," she ordered him, "Anya and I talked. Neither of us is seeing anyone, and I know I love you, and Anya says that you're still in love with me," she fixed a glare on him, even as her body continued its torturous movements, "There is no reason for us not to do this."

Angel just stared at her. She wasn't seeing anyone? He had spent all this time certain she no longer cared for him like that, and she still loved him? Apparently something in his expression made her nervous, because she stilled, and said, "Unless Anya was wrong about you loving me." The sudden fear in her voice, and on her face spurred him.

"I do. I love you," he took a deep breath, "I thought you had a boyfriend. I saw you in your lingerie, and I still can't think of any reason why you'd own that, unless you had a boyfriend."

She rolled her eyes, "It was a gag gift from my co-workers for 'the eternal spinster'." There was a pause, during which both chuckled and began to move again, when Buffy stiffened slightly and frowned up at him, "You saw me? You were spying on me in my room?"

"Uhhh. Well, I was hoping to see-"

"Me in my underwear?" Buffy said with a raised eyebrow.

"No!" The brow eased higher and Angel realised his faux pas. "I mean, not that I wouldn't want . . . That is I . . ." he trailed off on seeing her snicker, "I can't possibly answer that one right, can I?"

"Nope," replied Buffy cheerily, "Maybe you should take me home where you won't have to talk." She smiled at him, and wiggled her hips suggestively. A grin broke out on his face, and the two virtually sprinted for the door. They had ten years to catch up on after all.

The End