If You Wish Hard Enough…
She watched them through the cover of trees. For a pair of predators, they hadn’t yet noticed her. Or maybe they hadn’t wanted to; so caught up in each other, that they cared naught, she sighed, for the outside world.
What was that like? To forget everything for a minute, an hour, a day? To forget that the world hated you and that the only reason you continued to do your job was because you did it well – better than anyone else – and that you had no one in your life.
Not any more.
Or at least not like that. Friends, yes, she had friends. One or two close ones, but otherwise…
But that was depressing, and she had work to do. Work that, while oftentimes tedious, could be rewarding. Or at least interesting.
Tonight was going to be an interesting night.
One of the first she’d had in a long, long while; since, she paused and thought about it... since, she smiled, remembering. But then the couple before her recaptured her attention, and she focused on them. Leaning against a headstone, she watched the couple talk in low voices. Oh, she could hear well enough what they were saying, but she didn’t care about their words. No, it was body language that fascinated her the most. It was the way they touched, the way they looked at each other.
It was the way he held her close, and the way she looked up at him as if he could change the world for her.
Getting comfortable, she supposed that she could tell the happily oblivious couple happily ever after didn’t work. That love was hard, and it was frightening, and that eventually it sucked everything out of you until you had nothing left to give. That even when you thought your love was meant to be forever, it wasn’t.
Something always happened. And that something was always, always bad.
They were kissing now, slow and sweet, as if they hadn’t touched hundreds of times before, as if they hadn’t been lovers, as if this were their first kiss, a slow exploration of each other.
But she knew differently. She knew they’d known each other – in the biblical sense – and she knew that their kiss was slow and hesitant only because they were still afraid around the other.
And then she heard the woman whisper in a jesting sob, tears in her eyes, love in her heart, “Can’t we, for just one moment, forget that we can’t be together and hump like bunnies?”
He laughed, a strained sound as he, too, choked on tears he’d never let her see fall. Those large hands of his cradled her face tenderly, and he kissed her on the forehead, holding her tight against his body.
“I wish,” he murmured, “Because then I’d never let you go.”
“Done,” Anyanka said, smiling happily as she left the cemetery to find her true reason for being in Sunnydale. Cordelia Chase’s pain still resonated strongly within her, calling to the vengeance that coiled around Anyanka for justice, for retribution.
She knew what would happen between the couple, and she wasn’t wrong. Angel took Buffy back to the mansion, their home, and made love to her throughout the night. All reasons why they shouldn’t were gone. All reasons why they hadn’t been able to touch each other like this in the past months fled as if they were never there.
And when Buffy woke, when she moved against Angel in contentment and joy, she still couldn’t remember why they couldn’t be together.
“Morning,” he said, kissing her shoulder.
“Hmmm,” she sighed. “Am I late for school?” she asked with no real interest, turning to face her lover.
“Probably,” he agreed. “But I’m not letting you out of my sight for the rest of the day.”
“I have,” she assured him, “Absolutely no problem with that.”
Kissing her once again, Angel tried to remember why they couldn’t be together, but all he came up with was her – her scent, her body against his, her mouth on his, her love for him.
And for the rest of the day he didn’t let her out of his sight.
When Buffy went to leave that night, to tell her mother she was still alive, to see what homework she’d missed, he went with her.
As the sun rose on the next day, it was only then that Angel reluctantly let her out of his sight, releasing her hand only because he knew – logically at least – that the sun would do him more harm than good. Three minutes later, she was back in his arms.
“I think,” Buffy admitted, “That this is going to get bad sometime later.”
Angel nodded, “Probably,” he agreed between kisses. “But we’ll deal with that later. Right now, I need to be inside you.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Anyanka listened to Cordelia drone on and on about her problems. She almost left her, but couldn’t. It was, after all, her job. Nonetheless, the moment she could, she left and met up with Halfrek at the local club.
“I can’t believe you, Anyanka!” Hal said with an understanding smile.
“What can I say, they were so depressing, it threw off the balance of everything. Honestly,” she sighed. “The whole brooding, forbidden love thing? So last century.”
Nodding in sympathy, Halfrek agreed. “Still, what are you going to do about this Chase woman?”
“Have you heard her talk? I’m out of here. If I have to hear one more time about Xander this, or Buffy that, I’ll wish her into Quar-toth myself.”
Eyes wide, Halfrek looked at her in disbelief. “You can’t! You can’t even open a portal there, Anya! You have to punch through dimensional barriers, you-”
“I know,” Anyanka waved it off, “I know. I didn’t say I was going to, merely that I thought it.”
Standing, she looked at her friend. “Come one, Hal. I hear Chechnya is still having that war with Russia. Remember the last time we were there?
“Ohhh, The Communist Revolution,” she said appreciatively. “Some of your finest work, Anyanka. And Angel and Buffy?” Halfrek asked as the couple in question entered the Bronze, ignoring the horrified looks of their friends, the envious ones of random patrons, and began to dance to the pulsing beat of the music. They only had eyes for each other, uncaring of the rest of the world.
“Oh,” Anyanka laughed. “Buffy wanted to forget they couldn’t be together and hump like bunnies, though why anyone would use such a disgusting analogy I don’t know, and Angel wanted to never let her go.”
Roaring with laughter, Halfrek added, “You know, she is the slayer. If her lover doesn’t let her go, then we’re going to be overrun with vampires who have no appreciation of the finer points in fashion, life, or social hierarchy.”
Anyanka frowned. “Hmm, you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that. And humans tend to make so much more interesting wishes.”
Halfrek sighed, looking regretfully at her dearest friend. “You have to change the wish, Anya.”
“Oh,” she groused, “Alright.” With a wave of her wrist, that particular part of the wish was rescinded.
“There. Happy?”
Shrugging, Halfrek said, “Doesn’t matter much to me, but vampires are the scum of the demon world – the more she rids us of them, the easier things are for us.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Anyanka nodded once more. And, with a final look at the couple who were still ignoring everyone and everything around them, including a pissed off Cordelia who looked as if she wanted to strangle someone in her hooker-red outfit, they left.
Chechnya, after all, beckoned for vengeance.
Angel kissed his lover, holding her against him as the music moved around them. “What did Willow say to you earlier?”
“Something about we can’t be together,” Buffy sighed, snuggling against him. “But I really have no idea what she’s talking about.”
Angel moved his shoulders in a restless way that said ‘I don’t know, either, and I don’t care.’ Twining her fingers with his, he led her off the dance floor. “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we couldn’t let each other go,” he said, but didn’t much care.
“Whatever,” Buffy said. “I don’t care.”
“No,” Angel smirked against her throat. “It’s unimportant.”
“Exactly! All that matters,” she giggled as he sat on a stool, pulling her onto his lap while Willow, Xander, Oz, Faith, and a fuming Cordelia watched in stuttering horror. “Is that we’re together.”
They never did figure out what the others were talking about, why they couldn’t be together, but it didn’t matter. Neither cared. The world didn’t end, she wasn’t grounded, the sun wasn’t blocked out, so what was the big deal?
