Alter Bound

"So, where are we going tomorrow?" Buffy Summers asked her best friend, Willow Rosenberg, as the two women sat eating lunch in Sunnydale’s trendiest cafe.

"Tomorrow is the fitting and hair and makeup day." Willow answered, cramming a bite of caesar salad into her mouth.

"Fitting first, then hair and makeup, right?"

"Right. We wouldn’t want to mess up the dresses OR the hair."

"Horrors!" Buffy rolled her eyes in mock terror.

Willow merely narrowed her eyes at her friend. "Cordelia should be here later tonight."

"Is she bringing Doyle and the baby with her?"

"Probably just the baby. Since Angel’s in town for his fitting, Doyle has to man the agency."

At the mention of Angel’s name, Buffy resisted the urge to flinch. He was in town to be fitted for his tuxedo, because he was one of the groomsmen.Things were better between them then they had been...but she still wanted what she couldn’t have. Desperately. With a passion.

"Cordy’s probably going to stay with Angel at the mansion," Buffy pointed out. "So I’ll pick her up tomorrow morning, and meet you and Anya and Amy at the boutique, okay? And then we’ll have big wedding fun." She tried to make her voice as cheery as possible, but Willow was not fooled.

"Are you okay, Buffy?"

"I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be? My bestest buds in the world are getting married in a double wedding, and although I don’t think I’ll ever understand the whole Anya-Xander thing, I’m psyched."

"Buffy."

Guiltily, Buffy looked up. Willow had on the resolve face. "Will..."

"If you don’t tell me what’s wrong now, I may have to resort to drastic measures."

Buffy let out a huge, put-upon sigh. "It’s just that everyone’s getting married. Making the big commitment. Everyone but me. It wasn’t so bad when Cordy and Doyle got married, because of the whole pregnancy thing...but now you and Oz, and Xand and Anya...even Ethan and Giles look like they’re getting serious again. Never mind. It’s silly. Ignore me. I’m just messed."

"It’s not silly. Have you talked to Angel about it? I mean, you guys gave up the pretense of seeing other people a while ago."

"Nothing’s changed, not really. He keeps this wall up between us. We go out when he’s here, and sometimes he forgets and grabs me and kisses me like he used to...but then he remembers and he backs off. And then I want to die a little more." The blonde’s eyes welled up with the hated tears.

"Do you want to marry him?"

"Of course I want to marry him!"

Willow held up her hands. "Just making sure."

"The problem is, Cryptic Guy doesn’t want to marry me. I don’t know if he even wants to be with me anymore."

"Buffy Anne Summers, you know full well that is not true!"

"Do I? He’s never made me any promises."

"You need to talk to him. You need to get this out in the open before it makes you nuts."

"I can’t! How desperate will I sound then?"

"You are twenty five years old, and if you can’t talk to the man by now, you’re just ridiculous."

Buffy looked at Willow, misery apparent in her eyes. The redhead reached a hand across the table and squeezed Buffy’s fingers. "It’ll be okay," she said. "It will."

//Even if I have to threaten Angel’s unlife myself.//

*****

Slowly, Angel hung up the phone and turned to face Cordelia, who had just come downstairs. He had the ‘deer in the headlights’ look, but Cordelia was too consumed with her son’s burning desire to eat the fuzz off of the carpet to notice.

"Gabriel, remember when Mommy said that the carpet wasn’t food? And I thought Uncle Angel was watching you."

Gabriel looked up at her and grinned. The sight of the dark curls and dimples did her in, and with a sigh, she said, "Well, I guess it is fiber..."

"Who was that on the phone?" she asked as she went into the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice. "Was it my extremely annoying yet somehow roguishly charming husband calling to tell me how much he misses me?"

"It was Willow."

"Is something wrong with the gowns? Are we not on for today?"

"No, she wanted to talk to me."

"About?"

"Buffy."

The tone of his voice made Cordelia turn around. Angel was sitting on the floor, looking like his legs had gone out from underneath him. Gabriel was climbing all over him, delighted that his favorite person in the whole world was down at his level.

"Angel, what’s wrong?" Cordelia asked, concerned. If she didn’t know better, she would have said his face had gotten paler. "Is Buffy okay? She seemed okay when I talked to her last week."

"She wants to get married."

"To you?"

At that, Angel looked up at her. "Of course to me!"

Cordelia shrugged. "Don’t talk to me like that. I can’t imagine why she would want to marry a man that barely goes near her, but hey. She’s always been a freak. Why should things be different now?"

"I go near her!"

"Angel, this is ME you are talking to. I am your best friend. I know you better than anyone, with the exception of Slay Gal herself. You are scared to death of being with her."

"I love her."

"And she loves you. She’s loved you, and only you, since she was sixteen years old. But she’s not getting any younger, unlike you, and all her friends are either married, or in the process of getting. You two are the only ones that are not heading down that particular path...and you’ve been together way longer than everyone else. She feels left out...and she’s unsure of you."

"She’s my world. She has to know that." Angel’s words were quiet, but fierce.

"Do you tell her that? Does she know what she means to you? She wants a commitment. You won’t give her one. You keep coming back, flitting in and out of her life, but you never promise her anything. She doesn’t know if you’ll be in Sunnydale at all in any given month."

"I...I...I..."

"You need to get over yourself and pop the question, Angel." Just then, the front door opened. Angel’s head snapped up as the subject of their conversation walked into the room.

"Morning, baby," she said to him, then walked over and threw her arms around Cordelia. "It’s been forever since I’ve seen you. How are you?

And how’s Doyle? And where—" She looked back at Angel and saw Gabriel teething on the vampire’s fingers.

"Oooh!" she squealed. "Come kiss Aunt Buffy," she said, reaching down to snag the baby, pressing kisses into his hair. "God, Cordy, he’s so big!"

"It’s the carpet fuzz," Angel pointed out. "It has extra nutrients or something."

Cordelia glared at him. "It’s something he wouldn’t eat if SOMEONE could watch him properly."

Buffy laughed at their bickering. "I’m so not getting in the middle of this." She nuzzled her face against Gabriel’s tiny one. "Aren’t Mommy and Uncle Angel silly? Aren’t they silly?" The baby giggled and patted her cheeks.

With a sigh, Buffy handed Angel the baby and tried not to feel the awful twisting pain in her heart that she always felt when she saw him holding the dark haired child. "I guess you have babysitting detail while Cordy and I go and have Big Wedding Fun, right?"

"That’s me," he said, leaning in to kiss her mouth quickly, "The Scourge of Europe, brought low by a toddler."

The women beamed at him, and fled in a cloud of sweet smelling perfume, not giving him a chance to change his mind. Angel regarded Gabriel. "So, what are we going to do with your Aunt Buffy?She’s sad, and we can’t have that, now can we?"

The baby clapped his hands.

*****

The fitting was as heinous as Buffy had expected it to be. Cordelia had never lost those last few pounds of baby weight, and though she looked as stunning as ever, she wailed loudly when she realized she had to have a larger size dress.

"It’s okay, Cordelia," Willow soothed. "You’re beautiful. Gorgeous. Breathtaking."

"Of course they have no breath when they laugh at how fat I am!"

"It’s all Doyle’s fault you’re fat anyway," Anya said in an attempt to be helpful.

"She’s not fat!" Every woman in the store turned to Anya and fairly shrieked the words.

Anya threw up her hands. "See if I try to help again."

"Will, Anya," Buffy said, "Do you really think that periwinkle taffeta is the way to go here? I mean, it kind of reminds me of a dem—uh, of a...piece of furniture I saw once."

*****

After the day filled with chaotic wedding planning and surreptitious Buffy-watching, Cordelia went back to the mansion and harassed Angel until he accompanied her to a small jewelry store.

"Are you sure, Delia?"

"I’m sure."

"Really sure?"

"Really sure, Angel. This is the one. I promise."

"But do you—"

"ANGEL! Do you trust me?"

"Of course I trust you."

"It’s the ring, Angel."

He sighed and plopped an American Express Gold card on the countertop.

*****

"Aren’t you going back to LA tonight?" Buffy asked Angel as they watched Cordelia and Gabriel drive away. The pre-wedding festivities were done, and Cordelia was on her way back to torment her husband.

"No, I thought that maybe we could go out to dinner tonight. Doyle has everything under control."

Buffy turned to look at him. "Dinner? As in, out on the town?"

"Yeah. Did you have other plans?"

The grin that split her face warmed his heart. "Not a one. So, is this restaurant going to be expensive?"

"Extremely."

"I love that."

"I know."

*****

After their incredibly expensive dinner, in which Buffy had her favorite dessert (cherry cheesecake) fed to her by her favorite man (Angel), they went on a patrol of the ‘dale. The night sky was clear, with the stars twinkling festively.

"It’s a beautiful night," Buffy said wistfully. "Sometimes I don’t notice it because I’m so busy...but it’s gorgeous."

"I hadn’t noticed."

"Look at that sky! Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than that?"

"Yes. You."

She turned to face him, a small blush coloring her cheeks. "An-gel," she chided, "Don’t lie."

"Not a lie. You’re breathtaking."

"I’m covered in vampire dust. And besides, you don’t breathe."

"Even covered in dust, and if I did, you would."

She smiled, then looked in front of them to make sure no vampires were milling about. When he said nothing else, she turned back to him.

He was on one knee.

Her heart jumped to her throat, and her body felt hot and cold at the same time. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing could get past the lump in her throat.

"It occurs to me that you may not know where we stand. In the ‘us’ sense. This is my fault...as you have told me more than once, I’m not one to overshare. When I first left for LA, I told myself I wanted you to find someone. Someone that breathed. Someone that could make love to you. Part of me wanted to be selfish and keep you all to myself, but the rest of me knew that wasn’t fair to you. You deserve so much more than what I can give you."

"But I—"

"Shhh!"

She fell silent, her eyes widening.

"But, as the years went by and we had some space, and we dated other people..." He frowned slightly as he said the words, and she fought back a smile. "And you still never settled down. And I told myself that I would give you time to find the perfect person for you. I could be that big of a man, I could watch you find someone new and be happy for you. Of course, that was complete and total bullshit. I stayed up days thinking about new and exciting ways to torture the man you eventually picked."

She coughed into her hand to disguise a laugh.

"But you never picked anyone. Just in case, I gave you more space. Still nothing. And then you stopped dating, and made it clear that you still wanted me. And I was glad. I was disgustingly glad. I was so glad that Cordelia threated to leave a shade open during the day. But I wanted something better for you than me. So I stayed distant, so you could have room. More space."

He fumbled in his pocket, and came out with something that glittered in the moonlight. "Space is over. There will be no more space. We’ve made our choices." Angel held out the ring. "I love you. You’re my life. Please marry me."

The relief that overcame Buffy at that moment was so profound, she had to cry to release some of it. Tears streamed down her face as she made her way over to him. "You’re sure?" she whispered. "You won’t leave me again?"

"I’m sure. I won’t ever leave you. Marry me."

She stuck out her hand, and he placed the ring on her finger. It was a large ruby twinkling at her from a platinum setting.

"I didn’t get a traditional ring...because we’re not exactly a traditional couple."

Buffy looked down at her hand. "It’s perfect."

"Delia sort of helped me pick it out."

Her lips twitched up in a small smile. "I figured."

"So?"

"So what?"

"You never answered me. It’s pretty much the most important question I’ve ever asked in my life, and I—"

She launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Yes!" she said as she peppered his face with kisses, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!"

He fell on his back, pulling her across his chest. She leaned her forehead against his, and nuzzled his nose with her own.

"We’re going to get married," she whispered, in awe.

Angel chuckled. "Yeah. How do you feel about that?"

"I thought you would never ask me!" she yelled suddenly, her tiny fists beating into his chest. "I thought we were going to be stuck in relationship limbo forever!"

His big hands wrapped around her fists, holding them away from their bodies. "I’m an idiot. I don’t deserve to be forgiven. But it would be nice."

"You have some SERIOUS making up to do, mister," she said, eyes narrowed.

Abruptly, he rolled to the side, pinning her beneath him. His eyes were dark as he whispered above her mouth, "How about I start now?"

Her tongue sliding across his lower lip was all the answer he needed.