A Car This Fine (Buffy/Angel, PG)

    A car this fine
    Don’t pass your way every day
    Don’cha wanna ride, baby?
        —Joss Stone, “Don’cha Wanna Ride”

Angel is convinced—though his lack of confidence in technology is such that he has, more than once, mistaken Buffy’s iPod for a cell phone, and vice versa—that a mechanic is a waste of money; he’s been driving cars since before they had windshields, he can damn well fix anything in it.

Even if that thing is Buffy’s XM Radio.

“We’ll just call the Geek Squad,” Buffy says, for the fifth time. Angel has left the garage doors open to the bright summer day, and Buffy is growing indolent and slightly sticky.

Angel scowls. “On the whole, it’s best not to tell your boyfriend that your best girlfriend can fix something he can’t.”

Buffy starts to explain that she wasn’t referring to Willow, but then decides it’ll be more work than it’s worth. She stretches out her bare legs, props her feet on the dash, even though it annoys Angel—little footprints on the glass. But he isn’t paying attention; he’s still fretting over the damn sound system.

“You know why I like cars?” Angel asks.

Buffy stretches against the slick vinyl. She can feel her bones burning against her febrile skin. She would have gone in hours ago, into the land of central air, had Angel not been tending her chore in a wife beater and motor oil war paint. That’s not normally the kind of thing she finds attractive, but on Angel—anal, gelled Angel—it’s literally making her mouth water.

“They’re physical problems—it’s these parts that fit together, and if they fit together right, the damn thing runs. There’s never a bigger problem than a worn cog, a piece that no longer fits quite right.”

He frowns at the exposed jungle of wires hanging out of the console, like the detonator scene in a cheesy action flick. Buffy sits up, frowns with him.

“I guess I complicate things,” she says.

Angel looks up at her: her bare, bronze legs stretching up to the dash, the little foggy footprints she’s left speckled all over the windshield. He rests his hands on her knee, slides them up her thighs, her hips.

He is inches from her, smelling of clean sweat and grease. His mouth is an inferno, and he tastes sweet, familiar.

“I really don’t mind,” he says. for a2zmom (B/A, post-shanshu, PG, 400 words)