It's an ordinary Saturday morning in Paris. I walk down the road by the market I go to, and take deep gulps of the air like it's water. I suppose I'm thirsty, cause I didn't have coffee like I usually do. Mike made me some before he left for work, but when I came in the kitchen, it was cold, and there was a thin film floating on top of it. I didn't bother making more, just chucked the brew down the sink and took a sip of orange juice.

Tiny rivulets of sweat are pouring into my belly button. I can feel them and it tickles. The heaviness that hangs over the city is nice, simply because it's usually so cold that when I go outside to collect the paper, my teeth chatter and my exposed skin puckers into goose bumps. The heat reminds me of California, and makes my eyes water.

Under my arm is a bag full of French bread, crusty and warm- just as Mike likes it, and a package of cheese. It's the kind that looks like mold is growing on it- which I suppose it is. He eats it all the time, and it scares me. The blue veins run through it and look almost like cancer. I've always been afraid of cancer, and so I'm afraid of the cheese and the way he swallows it and draws it down into his stomach. Mostly it just grosses me out though, and he thinks that's hilarious. It makes him laugh and that makes me laugh. When he laughs, I always start- it's a reflex. A Mike reflex.

My boots make clacking noises against the pavement, and I cross the street, nodding absently to a schoolgirl who runs by in her grey kilt and crisp white shirt. She has a long blonde braid and it swings over slender shoulders as her legs pump her past me. For a moment I stop and stare, because she's a child and I'm twenty-seven and maybe I'm starting to feel the tick of the biological clock. That thought makes the corners of my red mouth turn up. Kids? Me? Well, Mike and I have talked about it, but it seems so ludicrous. I mean, there was a time I thought children weren't ever going to be an option, and now the thought of it is alien to me. Turning, I spin away from my contemplation of the schoolgirl and continue my path down the rue de Monterpasse, to the boulangerie. As I enter, the sickly sweet scent of sugar and pastry and flour and cookies hits my nose.

“Bonjour Alain,” I call to the baker, who kneads his doughy mixture with white hands. He smiles at me, his cheeks ruddy.

“Salut Buffy,” he responds and wipes his fingers on the apron rolled down his stomach and comes to the counter as I order some jelly and custard rolls for Mike, who adores them with coffee at night. He's a big eater, and I'm not, which he teases me about. I think he worries, even as he chuckles and traces the outlines of my ribs and collarbone. He worries that one day I'm going to waste away to nothing. I usually poke him in the belly and kiss away the lines around his eyes cause I hate that I put them there.

As I walk outside again, a leaf drifts past me, fluttering across my face lightly, like a moth's wings. It's brown, wrinkled, and ancient. It's probably seen more of Paris than I have. In my year of living here, I've barely scratched the surface, but I have my little niche, and that's become enough. The breeze carries it down down down, away away away, and I watch, as it twirls, dancing through the air, and I want to follow it with my eyes for some reason, so I spin, my skirt flaring around my legs and that's when I see him.

He's walking down the street across from mine, where I was before, but that I had to cross to get to the boulangerie. His white shirt is open at the neck, and I catch myself being transfixed by the sliver of tanned chest revealed by the gap of the fabric. His black pants slip and slide against his thighs and he looks unhurriedly at his watch, a slow gracefulness in the movements that I envy. Lately I have been gazing at the clock with fast eyes, unblinking and quick. I want to see the little hands moving with more speed than they are, because that would mean that time was racing by and not slowing down.

I know the exact moment he looks up and sees me, standing stock still on the quietly empty Paris Street and I know the moment his eyes lock with mine, and the moment they go wide with shock and bewilderment and I know the exact second I feel like throwing up with terror and fury and lust and everything in me that screams at night when I lie beside Mike in the silence of our bedroom.

Now. It's now. It's all happening and I don't feel equipped to deal with it. Angel crosses the pavement and he looks wonderful, sweaty and young and fresh. I know I will reply this time years from now… when I'm older and wiser and I can laugh at it. File it away in the dusty corners of my brain, and never take it out if I don't want to. It'll become just a snapshot in an old album, tucked between pages sticky with glue. But for now… it's real and vivid and I feel nauseous as if I've drunk cough syrup or something equally disgusting.

“Buffy,” he greets me with the same Angel voice and I get a close-up of his face as he leans down and sort of embraces me. It's awkward, my arms aren't ready for it and they hang limply at my sides, where he pins them down with his hands. They feel so warm and when he takes them away, I see the way they glisten slightly now with my sweat and it makes my belly hollow out with a familiar hot ache.

“Angel,” I say, and my voice sounds fakely happy even to my own ears. “God, this is weird. I didn't even know you were living here.”

He smiles at me. “Well, I'm not really. I'm just here for a week on an assignment. I do photos for a travel magazine and there's this hotel… anyway, what are you doing here?”

I try and grin, but it probably comes out more like a grimace. “I live here.”

“Oh…” he pauses and catches his lower lip between his teeth. “By yourself?”

It is really none of his business, and I think for a second that I should be strong and tell him that, but instead I answer truthfully, “No. With… with my fiancé, Mike.”

My chest starts to hurt and I think maybe I'm feeling what he's feeling. He replies, “Oh,” and his voice is husky and my eyes burn like they're going to fill with tears. Reaching up, I touch his face.

“I'm sorry,” I murmur.

His hand follows mine and his thumb rubs over my fingers. A wave of heat washes over me just from the slightest caress. “What for?”

“I don't know…” I mutter helplessly and start to laugh softly. He chuckles to and his fingers come up and curve around my cheek.

I know that anyone seeing us would think we were lovers. They would pass by, or see us through a window and sigh for a moment… maybe thinking of their boyfriend/girlfriend, or remembering a time when they had someone… they might breathe for a second and watch the way Angel looks into my eyes with all the forever that anyone could want- might see the way my knees are trembling just slightly… they might want to be us- just for a quick moment.

“How long have you been with him?” he inquires in a blank tone that doesn't invite any emotion.

I strive for that same note and reply, “A year and a half. We moved here a year ago.”

“Are you happy?”

That makes me think. Am I? It sounds funny, but I hadn't really thought about it. Mike makes me smile. He always has. He tells jokes that aren't really funny, but it causes me to giggle anyway, perhaps because they are so spectacularly awful. Sometimes he reads me the interesting parts of the newspaper in the morning, and makes coffee so that when I get up, it'll be there. It might be cold by the time I get to it… but it's there. He likes to play with my hair a lot, and when we watch TV, he lets me have the remote to flick through the channels as I have a habit of doing. He used to be school teacher and he has this calm voice that he uses when we're in a fight. It drives me nuts. Does he make me happy…

“I'm… I'm content,” I tell him and take a step back.

I want to say that he doesn't make my head spin. He doesn't kiss me with breathless hunger in moonlit graveyards and I don't feel as if I could scream to the stars when he's inside me. I want to say that he doesn't know me inside and out, and that he can't tell when I'm lying. I want to say that he's never hurt me so badly that the pain made me feel sick and empty. That he's never told me he wasn't good enough for me, and he's never said that he'll love me beyond death.

But he's never left me. He has never wanted to, or said he wanted to, and I believe that he never would.

Angel has a ghost of a smile on his face as he looks down into my green eyes and says quietly, “Can I see you again? Maybe we could have coffee or something?”

“Sure, that'd be fine,” I respond and sound more smooth than I feel. Inside I can feel my heart starting to crack and I'm so afraid for a second. Maybe I have some arcane glimpse into what might be… but I see in that moment… that we're on the edge. How close we are to crossing a line. How close we always were, and always will be.

He tells me the hotel where he's staying. I watch his lips form the words and know the old urge to kiss that mouth with my own, trace it with my tongue and teeth. “Angel…” I say, “maybe this isn't a good idea.”

“What isn't?”

“Us…”

He breathes in sharply and our palms brush. “I didn't know there was an us.”

“Well… I mean, there's not…” I stumble over the words and then find my voice. “There isn't. Of course it's ok. We should stay… in touch. After all, we did say we'd be friends.”

“Yeah, what happened to that?” he smiles and I do to, and everything is a little brighter.

~~~

When I get home, I put the cheese into the fridge and set the bread down in a cooling container we keep. I can pop it into the oven later when Mike gets back, cause he likes it warm. Taking a long swallow of ice water, I lower myself onto the window seat and inhale the flowers we have growing in a planter by the glass.

My bones sting with a long ago hunger as I remember the last time I saw him. It was a year after the End of Days. Everything was somehow… more complex then. We met over my mother's grave on the anniversary of her death. We talked and he said things that made me feel calm and heady and dizzy all at once. I can recall the way he held me and brushed the hair out of my face. He told me he'd always thought highly of my mother, that he respected her… and I'd wept tears of regret and sadness and the tears of a daughter who never gets over losing the woman who birthed her.

We said we'd be friends… that we knew our relationship could never work. We acted like we weren't in love anymore, and it hurt more than sending him to Hell had. At least I got a kiss and salty tears and love then… this time we were trying to be cold and aloof.

As I lie there, the cushions soft against my back, the sun soaks into my face and I fall asleep to dream…

I'm walking down a long street by my house and it's night. My leather pants and black tank feel like a second skin, and my hair is loose down my back.

Angel steps from the shadows and he wears a black duster and his eyes glint.

“Why are you here?” I ask and he looks up at the moon.

“I was sent here.”

“Why?” I ask softly, and regard him with my steely Slayer gaze.

He laughs ever so quietly and it's like a scream to my ears. “To watch over you.”

Then I laugh and toss back my hair like I always used to do. That cynical, kick-ass, I'm-the-goddamn-Chosen-one hair move that whips it down my back like blonde flames. “I don't need watching over.”

“Yes you do,” he replies and he sounds sad. “Don't you get it yet, Buffy Summers? I was sent… for you.” “I don't need you!” I shout and stalk towards him, laying my hand flat on his heart and pushing. “I don't fucking need you. That's why I killed you, why I let you leave. Cause I never did.”

“Why did you cry every night then?” he taunts me. “Why did Riley never complete you?”

Tears flow down my face angrily and I swipe my hand through them, denying that they exist. “Is it ever over?”

He kisses me then and it knocks me on my back- much like I did to him when I first met him- and we fall, with one fluid movement to the stony ground. They bite into my back and I smell the sickness of the gutter- the garbage and the rot. He kisses my neck and my hands flail out around him.

When he gets up, I touch my lips and my fingers come away bloody.

“No,” he answers my question. Then he spins away. I lie there, amongst the rain and stars and the moon, huge and blue in the black as ink sky.

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