#yourbigfathero

So, Buffy knows what you’re thinking. Throw her and Angel together and all you’ll be witnessing is a little holiday play instead of a little holiday slay, right? Wrong. They’re here, they’re together (in a strict side-by-side sense), and to all the haters who after all these years still think they’re just helpless slaves to passion (she’s looking at you, Xander), well...

Cut to a shot of her and Angel having a steamy makeout session underneath a street headlight.

You’d be absolutely right.

Between smooches, “You know, as much as I...” She locks them into a passionate kiss for a few seconds more, “I mean, this really isn’t hunting in the classical —-“ and again, “We should probably —-“ and again... “Okay, time-out!”

Ahem. Woo. It’s been a long time since Buffy’s allowed herself to get worked up like that. She clears her throat as they resume walking, awkwardly gazing around the same street they’ve been parked at for almost ten minutes now. Woo, again, “See anything?”

liiiiiiies

“I've never heard you described as a eunuch in a single account of your ensouled life. And you don’t seem that broody to me. Just the normal amount. It seems healthy enough.”

@yourbigfathero

Buffy’s currently more caffeine deprived than she is sleep deprived and is desperately looking for that extra kick. Not the jitterbug Willow from ghost high school past kind, but the kind that gets you through the day and she’s betting this caramel ice blended with extra foam might just do her the job.

She finishes paying and heads for the napkins with a little guilty foam on her lips, too absorbed in her own world and Buffy thought bubble to pay attention to anyone else around her. At least until she suddenly feels like her world is being intruded on.

Call it deja vu, call it intuition, call it her broody ex boyfriend still making with the silent observe-i-ness from afar, but she can feel somebody here. Enough to make her pause and when she finally gazes up with just a little shiftiness in her gaze she can pinpoint their location exactly.

Angel.

Her expression softens, replaced with a little half smile and she doesn’t waste much more time before heading on over because she can't exactly un-see him. “You know, most people that sit in usually tend to order in.”

 “Angel…”

Drop an ot3 in my inbox

A couple of months after Damon and Bonnie returned from behind the veil, rumors of vampire activity hit campus. Oh no! Even though there can’t be any such thing as vampires, the fact that there are a bunch of them eventually draws in hunters. The Mystic Falls Gang scatters, at least all the ones with teeth.

Alaric is a bit lost, initially, without his buddies helping to keep him on the straight and narrow, but he eventually learns to get by on just enough human blood to keep him from losing his mind, heavily supplemented by animal blood supplied by butchers. He keeps hunting, keeps moving, but he misses being part of a family.

After a few years, he floats into Los Angeles. Seems like a good plan, it’s a big, anonymous city, and he doesn’t have to worry about the sun. He hears a rumor about a vampire private investigator, and when he goes to check it out, who does he find in the office but Caroline Forbes, living embodiment of the 100 emoji, with a plaque on her desk that says ‘PARTNER’.

Joyous reunion! They agree to meet after Caroline has done a few things in the afternoon, and Alaric asks if her boss might come. Caroline says he’s a big-time brooder and couldn’t meet them until after the sun went down, about 8.30, anyway.

Alaric starts picking up a little work for Angel Investigations, mostly just taking photographs and doing some research (it’s best he doesn’t talk to customers). He doesn’t even need to do it but it gets him out of the apartment and on the lookout for anything that might need staking.

Alaric and Caroline get closer, just skating the edge of flirtation. It seems like a bad idea, though, until one weekend Bonnie comes to visit, and she’s fifty years old and still beautiful but suddenly the age difference doesn’t seem remotely relevant.

Which also, sort of, makes them both glance sideways at Angel.

He’s difficult to read, harder to draw out, but eventually they get him coming out with them occasionally (by ‘out’ I mean usually drinking in the back room of the office, and by ‘occasionally’ I mean twice in the span of two months, at first. And then it’s a couple of times a month, and one night Alaric admits he knows Angel’s story inside out and really doesn’t give a crap. He just likes knowing the Mikaelsons aren’t as special as they think. Angel actually cracks a smile at that. Caroline waxes lyrical about all of their terrible friends, and how Stefan and Angelus should compare kill counts some time, they’re close enough in age. It’s nice, he thinks, spending time with people who know him, but have no vested interest in his guilt, just their futures.