Rating: umm...I'm thinking along the lines of PG...in the meantime. Who knows what the future might bring:).
Disclaimer: nope, last time I checked, nothing was mine.
Spoilers: well...better safe than sorry: everything up to the end of season 3 can be spoilery.
Synopsis: I have a strange drive to rewrite season 3 of BtVS. I just don't seem to like the way it ended...beats me why. Anyway, so despite the fact that the original plan was to begin with "Helpless" (that's around the time everything really started getting screwed up B/A-wise), as you can see, plan's changed and I'm going to start with "Anne". If you expect to find in this series events/quotes from the original season....I seriously mean it - I'll try my hardest keeping them to the very minimum. But all in all - it's probably a yet another attempt to end the season on a more "positive" B/A level. See how it goes:).
Pairing: the conventional ships: B/A, W/O, C/X. If I decide to torture any/all of them, you'll be the first to know:).
Distribution: ask first.
Feedback: please, yes, please.

I waited hours for this
And now I watch it fade
This moment that we share
Will always slip away
I need to run away
From you, from me

- Vast, "Song Without a Name"

********

"Hi," Buffy flashed a grin at her boyfriend, but remained constantly on the move between the closet and the bed where her clothes were pilled up.

"Seems like you're feeling at home already," the vampire observed, removing his coat and hanging it on the back of a chair.

"I adjust fast," the replied, stopping in front of the open closet and thoughtfully tapping her finger on her pursed lips, obviously trying to decide where was the best place to put her clothes. Eventually, she retrieved a pile of Angel's shirts from one of the shelves and placed it on the bed, right next to the vampire, who shot her a look she, naturally, didn't perceive, and intended to protest, but at the last second, changed his mind. The empty space was rapidly being filled with the Slayer's clothes, and she appeared utterly satisfied with her work.

"Buffy?" he addressed his girlfriend with a question in his voice. "Why is there a pink stuffed pig on my bed?"

She took a break from folding her clothes and turned to face him. "His name is Mr. Gordo, you were introduced," she told him, as if it were an obvious fact he should have known. "And it's *our* bed now, and until I find a better place for him, he'll be sleeping there, too," she smiled innocently at her boyfriend and in a flash of blond ponytail was back inside the closet. "So how was my patrol tonight?" she inquired, changing the subject.

"You staked two vampires," Angel reported, beginning to unbutton his black shirt. "Tell Giles I saw nothing out of the ordinary," he added, then sighed. "I saw Faith though."

Buffy left the closet and sat down on the bed next to him. "You did?" she asked, her voice tinted with concern.

The vampire nodded. "We more or less avoided each other. She was patrolling, too, so…it was obvious our ways would cross at some point." He grimaced and massaged his neck intensely, and wrenched his shoulders in attempt to unbind his stiff muscles.

Buffy removed his hands and took over, successfully loosening the knots in his back with her hands. "Who threw you against which wall?" she asked, shifting herself to a more comfortable position. Buffy moved behind Angel's back and bestrode his waist with her knees.

"Didn't see it coming," he excused, matter-of-factly, his voice fading off into a thought.

"Right," his girlfriend wasn't at all convinced. "Why do I feel like I'm being spared half the story here?"

Angel groaned quietly and rested his head on his open palms, utterly giving in to the mitigative effect her massage had on him. "It's just…there was something I didn't get."

"What?"

"I followed three vampires tonight, dusted one of them and the other two got away. The wall he shoved me against was of the City Hall building." He turned his head around, thus causing Buffy to stop. "What could they *possibly* have to look for there?"

The blonde appeared momentarily thrown by his question, then shrugged thoughtfully. "Maybe they weren't going *there*, maybe they were just passing by…" she suggested, but wasn't convinced by it and knew Angel wasn't either. It really was strange.

"When I said the other two got away, I meant they got away *into* the building," Angel dismissed the possibility she had brought up before it could make actual sense to any of them.

"We could talk to Giles…*I* could," she amended at his immediate change of expression. "You don't have to be there," she planted a kiss in his hair. "If I finish unpacking tonight, we'll go there ourselves and check things out, if you're up to some more."

"Yeah," Angel sighed, standing up.

"Where are you going?" Buffy called after him.

"I'm hungry," he muttered, as he exited the room.

*********

A couple of minutes later, he was back, wearing a strange expression on his face. "Buffy?"

"Yeah?" she looked up from an open suitcase.

"Why do I have a box of cookie-dough-fudge-mint-chip ice cream in my fridge labeled with 'ice cream'?"

The Slayer smiled. "So that you won't get confused. And we're gonna have to do some more shopping since now we're officially *eating*," she remarked.

"*I* don't eat," he pointed out plainly. "My taste buds are dead."

"After I introduce you to my favorite ice cream, you *will* eat," she assured with an impish beam.

Angel only sighed, and helplessly shook his head.

********

It wasn't until two hours later, that Buffy was finally finished with her unpacking and left the bedroom, finding her lover typically deeply engrossed in a book by the fire.

"Trying to kill the long hours without me?" she inquired with a childlike grin.

Angel looked up from the book, then pointedly nodded with his head to her right. "I was admiring my new Christmas tree," he said.

"Right," the blonde nodded sheepishly. "I was actually gonna talk to you about that." She dismissed his look with an impish grin and continued, "I thought it'd be nice to have a Christmas with a…tree. Since I had mom's car anyway I thought I'd get us one on my way over."

The vampire arched a brow at that explanation. "Did it come with the ice cream?" he finally asked.

The Slayer playfully poked his abdomen with her elbow as she comfortably seated herself into his lap.

Angel enveloped his arms around her waist and she rested her back against his wide chest, letting a quiet sleepy purr escape her lips as she was snuggling to make herself more comfortable.

"What did Christmas ever do to you, anyway?" she murmured, while temporary taking the book from Angel to check its cover, not out of genuine interest. "I mean, I know that…you being a vampire and all, you two don't really mix…but it doesn't mean you can't…right?" she angled her head up to meet his eyes. "It can be...something new."

Angel kissed the top of her head. "I don't think I have much of a choice," he observed, offering a small smile.

Buffy, clearly content with his reply, snuggled back into his arms and closed her eyes, burrowing her face in his armpit, away from the heat of the fire, while Angel resumed his reading, seemingly undisturbed. "It's nice," she murmured softly.

"What?"

"This…this is nice, it's…normal. I like it."

The vampire smiled and planted a soft kiss on her blond crown. He knew how important the essence of normality was to his girlfriend, and though he didn't know how, but he was glad he could at least gift her with that little bit of peace and completeness.

The Slayer glanced at the lines in her boyfriend's book for a long moment, then closed her eyes and nuzzled the strong muscles of his arm, turning her face away from the fireplace again. What she felt at that moment was something she hadn't felt in a very long time. It was something she hadn't known she would ever be able to feel again. And in the back of her mind, she always knew that in spite of everything that happened, Angel would always be able to give her that little, and that much, as a small fleeting moment of normality. Even her mother, surprisingly, the only person with whom she had once felt relatively normal, wasn't able to give it to her anymore. As much as the woman was trying to behave as if nothing was out of the ordinary, Buffy could always descry that glimpse in her eyes when she was looking at her. And though Joyce wasn't doing it intentionally, but that glimpse taught the blonde that instead of looking at Buffy Summers, her mother was looking at the Slayer.

Then there were Giles and Faith. Both her Watcher and her sister Slayer became a part of her life due to her duty only, and that fact had never changed. Regardless to all the things she might do with either of them that didn't relate to the slaying in any aspect, one of the things that would forever bind them together was her calling. And *that* would always stand in the way to normality. And Xander and Willow, her only true connection to real normal life, had also been gradually spoiled by her calling, just because of being *the Slayer's* best friends.

And these were the granted reasons why the little moments she spent in Angel's arms, snuggled in an embrace that could make her forget the entire world and everything and everyone in it, she finally was a really normal girl, wrapped in the arms of her boyfriend. And regardless to whom that boyfriend was, in *her* eyes, *he* somehow never connected with the darkness of her life.

But as always, every perfect moment in her life at some point needed to end.

She tiredly looked up at the vampire, tearing his eyes from the book again. "It's only ten o'clock," she mused. "I have no idea how I managed it so fast, but I'm fully unpacked, so…you feel up to some dusting as scheduled?"

The vampire nodded. "Just give me five minutes," he kissed her head and returned his attention to his book.

Buffy nestled on his chest, closing her eyes with a grin playing in the corners of her mouth, when Angel's fingertips started to abstractly draw patterns on her belly.

And sometimes, these moments lasted some more.

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