Chapter III

Buffy stared down at the little insulated cooler that held her lunch.  She had never really been a sack lunch kind of girl, but springing for the car right after graduation left her in a financial lurch.  It wasn’t new, but it was new enough.  Even a used BMW was really pricey.  So sack lunches it was.  Luckily for her, most of the Analysis department brought lunches as well.  Their offices were in a fairly rural area.  There weren’t a lot of restaurants nearby.

Usually, Buffy sat at a big table on the lawn with Xander, Anya, Willow, Riley and assorted other people who worked in the building.  But this day, she walked past her usual spot, as she headed for the small gazebo.  The others stared at her as she strolled by, but nobody said anything.

Her eyes scanned the horizon and she was afraid it might rain.  Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she figured the gazebo would be a shelter of sorts if it did.  She had a passing thought about what storms did to Angel, but she was determined now that she was almost there.

In actuality, it was nowhere near as uncomfortable as she had been imagining.  By this time she had nearly six weeks of practice in sharing space with Angel, hardly acknowledging each other.  The only difference here was that instead of having their backs to each other, they were face to face – or would have been if Angel would have looked up from the book he was reading.  He didn’t.  Buffy looked at the pages of the book.  It was hard to tell upside down, but she was fairly certain it wasn’t written in English.

Angel also checked the clouds overhead when he came outside.  The sky had been overcast for the last couple of days, making the landscape bleak and drab.  It hadn’t rained though.  But as he looked up from his book, he felt the faint electrical charge in the air that precedes a storm.  He shivered at the feeling and had just thought to leave … when he saw Buffy approaching the gazebo.  She was unaware of his perusal and he turned his eyes back down to the book.  Knowing the storm was near made him jumpy, but he couldn’t move once he saw her obvious steps in his direction.

Buffy sat down and openly scrutinized the food on the table in front of Angel.  She wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but it looked suspiciously like tofu.  She grimaced and opened her cooler, removing a bag of potato chips and a soda.

“That stuff will kill you,” he told her, without raising his head, eyes still trained on the page before him.

Buffy looked at him for several moments.  He was bent over so far all she could really see was the top of his head.  “Life’s short,” she replied, trying to keep her voice light.  She had the strangest sensation that she was trying to befriend a wild animal.   Okay, bad metaphor, not wild ... abused maybe, hurt, scared.  One of those dogs at the pound that had been kicked so much it bites anyone who tries to come near it and has to be put down.  That was Angel.

Slowly, he closed his book and lifted his head to meet her gaze.  Buffy couldn’t breathe.  She stared at him dumbly.  Angel.  Her Angel.  The weirdo she shared her office with day after day was ... absolutely fucking gorgeous.  She swallowed audibly. What on earth ever prompted her to use a dog metaphor to describe any part of him?  It was a definite case of the total package being more than the sum of the component parts.  She’d seen him before.  She looked at him in profile every day.  She knew what color his hair and eyes were.  She knew roughly how tall he was.  But damn, looking at him – no that wasn’t right – being looked at by him was ... bracing.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

She blinked several times before she realized he expected an answer.  An evil little part of her was tempted not to reply simply to get revenge, but instead she said, “Doing what?”

“Talking to me,” he said suspiciously.  “The coffee, now this.  Why?”

Buffy shrugged and then frowned.  “How did you know it was me?” she asked, changing the subject.

“What do you mean?”

“Like when I sat down,” she said, “or when I left the coffee on your desk.  You never look up, you definitely never look at me.  How did you know it was me?”

He stared at her for several heartbeats, then said the first thing that came to mind when he thought of her. “You smell like vanilla,” he said quietly.

Buffy blinked at him and a look of incredulity stole over her features.  “What?” she asked.

Buffy caught his movement.  With anyone else, Buffy would have said it was nervousness, but with Angel she just didn’t know.

“You smell like vanilla,” he said more seriously, like it was a valid explanation.  “I always know when you’re around.”

Buffy’s frown deepened.  “You ... smell ... people?” she asked.

He pursed his lips together momentarily.  “I do not smell people,” he said almost defensively.  “I know people think I’m strange, but I do not go around sniffing my co-workers.  Certain people have certain scents.  Willow Rosenberg smells like patchouli and incense, Anya Emmerson smells like All-Purpose Cheer on Monday and money the rest of the week, Xander Harris smells like cabbage unless it rains and then he smells like fabric softener and Riley Finn smells like gym socks and Old Spice all the time.  People have scents.  I notice them.  You, Buffy Summers, happen to smell like vanilla.”

Slowly, a smile crept over Buffy’s features.  “And here I thought you weren’t paying attention,” she said.

“Just because I don’t chatter does not mean that I am not paying attention,” he said.

Buffy sat up straighter, narrowing her eyes at Angel.  “So you think I chatter?” she asked.

“You do seem fond of talking,” he replied.

Buffy sighed and relaxed her posture.  She had enough experience with brainy males to know that he probably didn’t even realize he had just insulted her.  As far as he was concerned, he was simply stating a fact.

Angel suddenly stilled, hearing a low, deep growl of thunder, like a hunter after its prey.  The too familiar feeling of desperation slithered down his spine.  He lifted his head and looked through the archway, towards the trees on the edge of the grass, smelling the rain before it fell.

Buffy frowned, oblivious to the thunder or his growing turmoil, her eyes and mind focused on his hands that were still clasped over the closed book.  She saw faint scars circling both of his wrists just visible past the cuffs of his shirt.  The marks looked old, faded, but still raw somehow.  She hated to think of him hurt by the wounds that must have made them.  She didn’t even think, but reached a slender finger towards one of the scars,  “Angel, your wrists …”

An unexpected bolt of white-hot light illuminated the woods as the earth shook from the responding crack nearby.  Dark terror flooded him, Angel’s eyes skittered wildly, then fell upon the blonde head and the small hand moving towards his arm.

Buffy raised her head at the crackle of thunder and was struck by twin wells of raging, agonizing pain.  Her stomach clenched with a sick feeling of déjà vu.

Angel arched away from the table, wrenching his arms and hands from her.  His powerful body was caught in an unseen tension, muscles corded on his neck, his eyes sparking dangerously. “Don’t!” he snapped. “You don’t know anything about me.  And you don’t want to!”  Turning, he stalked away across the grass in a swift, forbidding motion as though the further the distance he gained from her the better.

She sat there, stunned, watching his rapidly retreating figure disappear from sight. She felt the wind and rain as it snaked through the tired boards of the little structure.  Numbly trying to work through both Angel’s scars and his violent departure, she heard his words ringing in her ears. The rain began coming down in sheets, highlighted by more flashes of lightening.  Buffy didn’t even notice.  She made no move to leave.  She looked like a water-colored still, painted behind the rain, vacantly staring at the spot of her last glimpse of Angel.

*****

Angel made it to the building before the clouds opened and rain started pouring down in buckets. As he stumbled blindly into the office he slammed the door, pushing his back hard against it.  The knuckles on his hand turned white as he gripped the handle.  His broad shoulders pinned against the door, he worked to calm himself.  After rapidly sucking air into his lungs he forced himself to breathe at a measured rate, feeling the erratic beat in his chest finally slow.  He resisted the urge to slide down to the floor, instead thrusting a hand in his pocket, crossing to his desk.

Using a key, he opened the drawer to grab the bottle of pills.  Much as he hated them, he fished one out and gulped it down with the cold coffee left from that morning.

He spent what was left of his lunchtime hunched on the floor of the office supply room. There were no windows there, but he could still hear the rain. That and the damn thunder.  He rubbed his large hands over his face, then up and down his arms warding off a chill he felt more inside than out. The room was rarely used and no bigger than a closet.  It was big enough to encompass brooding.  He had sought it out as a sanctuary more than once. Today he really needed one, then grimaced at the thought.  Drawing his knees to his chest, he threw his head back to rest against the faded green wall.

Angel was a painfully private person, not that he harbored any illusions that anyone gave a damn about him or his thoughts.  His lips curled in a rueful smile, thinking of one exception – Cordy.  His sister got as close as anyone could, not that she’d ever given him any choice.  But even she didn't know all of what he kept hidden from everyone.  He was well aware of how he was regarded by his fellow co-workers, especially since what was commonly referred to as the ‘incident’.

He had always been a loner, never fitting in anywhere or with anyone, never bothering to even try.  Before the said ‘incident’ he at least had gained respect for his work, admiration for his effectiveness.  Not that he was concerned how others viewed him, but it gave him a modicum of satisfaction that what he did was of value, that he served a purpose.

His eyes swept the dusty, gray shelving units bolted against the wall in front of him.  The only illumination was provided by the single, naked bulb that hung by its cord from the ceiling.  Sighing deeply, he stared at the mundane stacks and boxes of supplies without really seeing them.

Since he had returned to the Bureau, Angel questioned how much of an asset he really was.  But he needed the job – needed his time and mind occupied.  It hadn’t been easy returning to a desk job, instead of the fieldwork to which he was accustomed.  Working as an agent hadn’t limited him to the confines of a set time and place.  Although he was highly organized and disciplined by nature, it had been an effort to adjust to the static environment of four walls and a nine to five schedule.  He couldn’t deny he missed the freedom his former duties had afforded him.

Dealing with the constant scrutiny of the same set of people day after day was even more difficult.  It had died down now to a low murmur, but he had borne the whispered comments and subtle innuendoes he wasn’t supposed to hear.  He had grown used to the furtive glances or pairs of eyes suddenly turning away whenever he traversed the halls of the building.  He kept such journeys short, made only out of necessity.  The atmosphere of the break room had been the worst to endure, but the novelty of his frequent visits there to get coffee had, thankfully, worn off.

He wasn’t very successful at trying to hide how the freak weather system affected him.  When he heard the thunder, he stayed in the office even more than before.  Pacing restlessly over the tiles from one end of the room to the other and drinking even more coffee, which helped him even less.  There were some instances though when he had no choice but to interact with people.  He was forced into either braving the break room or explaining a detailed analytical report to a bunch of people who couldn't follow his logic without a wipe board and a calculator.  He could feel the wave of speculation that rippled through the ranks making him even more disquieted.

For the most part, his days finally rutted into an accepted routine.  He did his work, drank coffee, ate lunch, did more work with more coffee, and went home.  He existed – even less than he had before.

Then Buffy appeared and she changed everything.

Shifting his large frame on the cement floor, he tried to find a more comfortable position, still gazing blindly at the dingy walls.  His fingers traced a fierce, steady path up and down the side of his leg.

Angel was furious that he’d come apart in front of Buffy and then shouted at her.  ‘Fucking storm!’  He grabbed the closest thing on a shelf within his reach, a box of markers, and slammed them against the opposite wall.  They made an unsatisfying clatter as they hit the floor.

He was sick with self-loathing for losing his temper with her.  If it had been anyone else he could have dealt with it.  He didn’t care about anyone else, their reaction wouldn’t have mattered.  But Buffy wasn't just anyone.  Buffy mattered.  He saw the sting from his quicksilver retaliation strike her before he stamped off and left her sitting there.  And it was tearing him apart that he cared – deeply.  He cared what she thought and he had pushed her away.  He never meant to hurt her but he did.

Buffy provoked too many emotions for him to deal with at one time.  He was well aware she had no clue as to his reactions to her.  He didn’t know how to handle these new feelings washing through him like opposing currents.

He had been with many women in his years, yet none of them had done anymore for him than satisfy basic physical urges. They were never capable of offering any respite from the shadows of his past.  Blondes specifically he avoided – they brought his past hurtling back.  An icy trickle ran through him at a nightmarish apparition.  Since being released from the hospital two years before, he’d stopped sleeping with women altogether, building his walls even higher.

But Buffy softly shook him.  Nothing in his experience had prepared him for someone like her.  He found himself passing long moments lingering in his thoughts of her.  His body warmed in reflex, melting the momentary chill.  For the first time – not the first time he could remember ...  He always remembered.  It was forgetting he could never do.  For the first time – she made him forget.  It took only a trace of her scent, something that was so uniquely ‘Buffy’, to trigger pictures in his mind.  Laughing, talking, walking – it didn’t matter the picture if she was in it.  Visions of her didn’t blot out the grim, dark images that haunted him.  She obliterated them.

From their first encounter his response to her had been immediate and intense – so sudden it seemed obsessive.  But how she made him feel offered such a welcome reprieve.  He didn’t know.  It didn’t feel ‘wrong’.  What it felt like was soothing relief.  Like a soft flow of energy she gently moved through him.  It was an inexplicable sensation.

He heard her earlier when she approached the gazebo, but pretended to keep reading his book. He was inordinately pleased that Buffy sought out his company, yet ill at ease being that close to her outside of their work area.  The office was a kind of safety zone where they each had their own space.  This was the first time they were actually face to face for more than moments – and at such a small distance apart.  It wrought a devastating effect to feel her that near.  She staggered his senses.

In her presence Angel caught himself mesmerized by the glint of sunlight on her hair and drawn into eyes that were ever changing in color and intensity.  Hearing her voice, a soft, soothing cadence or clear ringing tone.  Her motions revealed a sure, innocent yet sensual grace.  She held a brightness that seemed to radiate from within, as if she had her own power source, something acutely lacking in the dark passages of his mind.  Her proximity set off an unaccustomed rush of heated desire that coursed through his being.  It was the only thing that had ever contended with the ever-present cold.

Not knowing how to act with Buffy, he felt stiff … awkward … and more than a little afraid. The sound of the approaching rain and rumbling thunder in the background forced him further into his protective shell.  Somehow, Angel knew it wasn’t pity that prompted her to choose his company.  He thought it might be kindness, a desire to include him in her world.  And what was his response?  Sniping at her as though he mistrusted her, spoiling her simple act of camaraderie. Then he had exploded when she had shown genuine concern for him.  She saw his scars.  Scars much more than skin deep.  They reached down to wounds that had never healed.  Vivid reminders dragging him back to a past he could never seem to move beyond.

Mentally kicking himself for the hurt he had put in her eyes, Angel wished he could take back the moment.  He needed a second chance to make it right.  Raising his fist in frustration towards the wall next to him, he stopped.  His eyes focused on the jagged cut across his knuckles.  It was healed now, leaving behind yet another scar.  One more sign of the isolation that held him hostage.  Tighter than the ropes that had left those faded marks on his wrists, etched ever so much more deeply into his soul.  Another reminder of the loss of an innocence barely acknowledged a shattered lifetime ago.

Angel turned his eyes away to visually scale the walls and ceiling, absently noting a spider busily building a web in a far corner.  He exhaled a long breath.  Lifting the now healed hand to his head, he dragged slightly trembling fingers through his hair.  He stretched his long, cramped legs out on the cold floor with a subtly catlike grace.

He thought of Buffy’s first day at work.  He had been trying to pull himself together … again … from the violent storm, which had started the night before and still raged on through the morning.  He had been aware of the voices, of someone coming in the room.  He continued to concentrate on his work, something that usually helped distract him.  Unconsciously filtering out the single voice that stayed behind, he compared the letters of the words in the documents before him.  He never bothered with whomever they left at the other desk in the room, unless their work affected his own.

A slight movement in the corner of his eye had caught his attention.  He turned straight into a hazel gaze, which rested on his face for only a moment before traveling to the bandages on his hand.  The rest of her small blonde figure filtered into focus.  He watched her study the strips of gauze.  Flinching, he pulled back as though she had touched him.  Her eyes widened with the realization that she was staring, then fell away as a deep rose color suddenly flushed her cheeks.  Without a word she turned and walked away.

She caught him completely off guard.  An echo of her presence lingered long after she left the room.  He wondered for a moment if she actually had touched him. The fact that she was beautiful hadn’t been lost on him, but that wasn’t what startled him in the brief exchange.  In that quick glance at her, he sensed her re-wrapping the bandages in her mind.  He could almost feel her fingers on his hand, oddly warm and familiar, as if she knew him intimately.  He had snorted, dissolving the ridiculous daydream.  Maybe it was the pill he had grudgingly taken once he arrived at work, to replace the one he had thrown away in anger.  He had immersed himself in his work, then put it out of his mind.

In reflection Angel realized that sensation of familiarity remained.  A comforting calm that enveloped him like a warm blanket.  He felt it whenever she was near.  He vaguely owed it to sharing office space with her, not consciously giving it room in his thoughts.  But now, he did wonder about it, which led him to contemplate what it would be like to be loved by someone like her.

That immediately stopped him as he questioned where that kind of thought had originated.  He’d never thought until that very moment about love, didn’t even have a concept of what it was supposed to be.  He instantly rejected even the possibility of anyone being able to like, let alone feel something stronger for him.  Who’d want the ruined remains of something like him?

Tracking the progress of the spider he watched it slowly move outside the circle of light.  Its legs carried it back and forth, again and again, from one wall to the other as it spun its silken web.

“Love,” Angel whispered.  He turned the word over in his mind as if it were something tangible that could take form and be examined.  He wanted Buffy.  A blaze of heat sweep through him at the thought.  He ached for her so badly it shamed him with its intensity.  But, though it was a part of the puzzle, a big piece, it wasn’t the major one.  He wanted so much more of her than that.  He didn’t know her that well, but he wanted to know all of her. To know her inside and out with the same degree of passion that he wanted to make love to her.  Love.  There it was again.  What did he know about ‘making love’?  He only knew what having sex was like, feeling flesh and pleasure, trying to fill a void.  Sex had served its basic purpose, satisfied his carnal needs, but it had always been empty.  Buffy filled him and she hadn’t so much as laid a finger on him.  Was that love?  He sneered inwardly at himself.  Even if there were something there, what did he have to offer her or anyone?  He sighed once more in frustration, thinking how difficult everything seemed to be.

He finally stood up, brushing the dust off the back of his pants, spying the pink and yellow pens in the corner under their overturned box.  He stopped long enough to gather the markers strewn across the floor, replacing them neatly in their cardboard home and back on a shelf.  Shoving a hand in his pocket, he took the few steps needed to reach the door, turning the knob with his other hand.  Taking one last glance at the room, he left, closing the door behind him.

Whatever his mixed feelings were for Buffy, he knew he owed her an apology.  A way to express his remorse for his outburst, for pushing away the tentative gesture she had offered.  He could never hope to become closer to her, as his mind and body were increasingly yearning and demanding, however undeserving.  But he couldn’t leave things as they were, letting her think she was at fault for simply reaching out.

*****

When he got back to the office Angel felt more than a small amount of trepidation.  He didn’t know how he could face Buffy after what had happened.  The papers for the project he had been working on were lined up in neat, exact rows on the top of his desk.  But he didn’t even pretend to look at them.  He couldn’t focus on anything.  The stricken look on her small upturned face kept materializing in front of him.  He didn’t even realize he was pacing, his soft, steady tread, marking a measured rhythm.  The floorboards under the tiles creaked with his constant trips to nowhere and back.  With each pass he would glance at the door expectantly, but there was no Buffy to be seen.

As the time grew longer he started to get worried when she didn’t appear.  Grimacing, he heard the rain still beating on the tiny windows above.  All he could think of was how he had deserted her in the gazebo.  He’d been so engrossed in thinking about himself, it never occurred to him what she had done, left there in the pouring rain.  Cursing himself under his breath, his feet continued to travel their now accustomed path.

He finally couldn’t stand it any longer and moved with an unknowingly predatory stride down the hall towards the outside door.  Before he reached it, the clerk who had brought Buffy to the office the day she began, caught Angel’s eye.

He almost growled, blocking the man’s way, “You know Buffy Summers.  Where is she?!”

The startled little man stuttered, “I-I heard her talking to Willow.  She said she was going home.”

“How was she?  Was she all right?” Angel pressed, looming threateningly as the smaller man unconsciously backed himself up against the wall.

The clerk gave him a wary look and told him, haltingly, “She looked like she was soaking wet.  I guess she got caught in the rain and went home to change.”  Tossing one last cautionary glance at Angel, he slid by him, newly intent on his interrupted errand.

Angel hadn’t thought he could feel worse until he heard that.  The wave of guilt was almost overpowering.  Walking back to their room with a stilted gait, he envisioned Buffy drenched and shivering before him.  He fought an overwhelming urge to find her and see with his own eyes that she was all right.  But he didn’t have any idea where she lived and with the last memory of her, burning a hole in his mind, he knew she wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of him.  He couldn’t sit, couldn’t stand still and once again prowled the circuit he had already covered numerous times.  His hands were crossed on either arm, moving up and down in time with his fluent step.  He spent what was left of the day in much the same manner, finally leaving the office, but not his thoughts.

Another `Annie' had moved in during the evening.  Angel was so involved in the suffering he imagined he had inflicted on Buffy, he barely noticed it.  And strangely, throughout all of the day and night, not once did his agitated ruminations turn to their usual preoccupation.  Not once did the image of another rain-sodden, blonde-haired girl enter his mind.

*****

Buffy wasn’t a broody person by nature.  She was cheerful and happy as a rule.  She loved ‘living’ and usually tried to do so many things in one day that it left little room for sleeping.  Home early from work and soaked to the bone, she was determined to lighten her mood.  After taking a shower and changing into dry clothes, she switched on her CD player with purposely upbeat music.  She kept herself busy by cleaning up her soggy clothes and scrubbing out the shower.  When she had straightened her apartment for the second time and caught herself cleaning dirt that didn’t exist, she turned to the TV.  Try as she might she couldn’t push what happened away any longer and clicked the ‘off’ button on the remote.

She was angry at Angel for running away, leaving her there feeling as though she’d done something wrong, not once, but twice.  And for doing nothing more than looking at him.  But, she couldn’t get the raw pain she saw in Angel’s eyes out of her mind.  It was so deep she felt as though she had glimpsed right into his soul.  She shivered unconsciously at the torment she wasn’t meant to hear in his voice.  The words he threw at her kept repeating themselves over and over.  What could have happened to him that was so horrible?  He was right, it was none of her business.  But that didn’t stop a number of unpleasant ideas popping up on what had caused the scars on his wrists.  She had a feeling the truth was worse than she could imagine and more than she might really want to know.

What had started out as a curious puzzle to crack, just getting Angel to open up a little, had suddenly become a lot more.  It wasn’t pity, although she was sure that’s what he thought she felt.  Still, this shouldn’t be bothering her like it did.  She got that same feeling of déjà vu and thought of the little boy look on his face when she saw his bandages.  She had felt the same way then, an urge to protect him, to help take away the hurt.

Buffy thought of him towering over her, eyes blazing, muscles tensed with heat and emotions.  She had one last thought that made her feel incredibly guilty, knowing he had been hurting.  That he was incredibly sexy when he was angry.

She finally gave up and went to bed.  She slept, but fitfully, with more than one dream of 'Annies' … and Angels.

[end chapter 3]

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