Games We Play
(There Are No Words Remix)

Author: Jeff Bremen

Original Story: Attack of the Scribble Monster by Am-Chau Yarkona

Summary: Angel and Buffy being silly

Rating: PG

Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Notes: This one was just too cute to pass up.

Angel looked like he was brooding. Angel always looked like he was brooding. It was vaguely annoying.

"This is dull," Buffy observed, Angel's soulful eyes tracing the shadows around the playground. "No vampires in sight- boyfriend excepted- and no demons to fight. Let's do something different." Damn brooding Angel. She was going to make that man smile, even if it killed her. Wandering around playgrounds "in grave danger" was not a good way to do that.

Angel's brooding look was replaced briefly with an expression of dread, and Buffy restrained a giggle at his expense. The last time she'd seen him with that look was when she asked him if her tank top made her look fat.

"Do you have something in mind?" Angel replied, cautiously. Buffy brushed a few imaginary stray hairs out of her eyes, adopting an innocent, ditzy expression.

"Umm..." she said, twirling her hair around her fingers. "We could play a game..."

Angel's eyebrows bunched together in the middle of his forehead, and Buffy coughed to cover a laugh. He gave her a dear-in-the-headlights expression, swallowing heavily. "What kind of game?"

Buffy adopted a new look, one that spoke for itself. You're-not-going-to-like-it-but-you'd-damn-well-pretend-you-do. "Scrabble." She voiced it as a question, but something in her eyes made it clear that this was what they were going to spend the rest of the night doing, vampires be damned. Then, with an air of grave disappointment and a perfect deadpan, "forget it. Might as well patrol the Bronze."

Angel was so tired of the Bronze that he had actually stooped to complain about it a few dozen times, so Buffy's surprise was affected when he replied. "No... Buffy, we don't have to. You're tired, and..." Buffy shivered helpfully. "And cold. We should take you home."

Buffy winked surreptitiously at Angel, sensing that he was just beginning to catch on. "I don't need taking home. I can go myself," offered Buffy, flipping her hair. "But if you wanted to come..."

Angel sighed, realizing he was trapped. Scrabble or angry Buffy. No real choice. "Yes?" asked Angel, expression conveying deep regret for the loss of an exciting night wandering aimlessly around playgrounds.

"We could play Scrabble," said Buffy, refusing to give it up. Angel sighed again, melodramatically.

"Do I know how to play Scrabble?"

"It's not hard," Buffy replied, grinning transparently. "You can learn."

Angel grumbled. "Is it, you know, a computer game?" he asked, hopefully. If it was, he could beg off on the grounds that not being able to see his reflection on the screen was creepy.

No such luck. Buffy's smile widened. "No, it's a board game. See, you have this cardboard board marked with little squares, and you have plastic tiles marked with letters. You make words with the tiles, and you get points for big words. Giles always wins."

Angel nodded, over-elaborate comprehension dawning across his face. He didn't need tiles to play games, and this one was getting to be a little too much fun.

In any case, English wasn't exactly his first language. He'd learned Gaelic as a child, then Latin. The English were loathed and feared in Ireland back when he was born, and he hadn't picked up the language till he was nearly as old as Buffy was now. He fully expected to be soundly beaten.

"Giles isn't in my bedroom, presumably," Buffy added, and Angel laughed despite himself. "So I don't imagine he'll win this time. It's fun. You can make all sorts of ridiculous words and try to trick the other players into thinking they're real."

Angel shrugged, wrapping an arm around Buffy's waist. She drew in closer to him. Scrabble or no, she liked playing this particular game with Angel. He was almost a caricature of himself when he was brooding, and seeing him melodramatic was always good for a few laughs.

***

"'Trousers' already is a plural," insisted Angel. "You can't make a plural of a plural!"

"I can," whispered Buffy, having trouble keeping quiet enough to let Joyce sleep. "Two pairs of trouserses!"

Angel sighed again. He didn't need to breathe, strictly speaking, but the sighs were just queuing up tonight. She'd been right, though, this was fun. They'd already been at it for almost two hours.

Buffy looked down at the board. "Stak," "kem," "dissapoint"... it was covered in horribly mangled words. It almost beat mangling monsters. She glanced at the score sheet, admiring her atrocious addition skills that somehow managed to tip the point balance even farther in her favor. Angel knew full well she was cheating, but neither one of them cared; after all, he'd been trying to pass off words like "carpel" as correct spellings for two hours, too.

"Buffy," Angel said, the brooding expression returning. Buffy knew what he was going to say - his expression had gone all Responsible Adult on her. "It's three AM. Shouldn't you get some sleep?"

Buffy sighed. "Just because you're winning," she half-heartedly accused. "I guess I should. We should do this more often, though. It's fun."

"Yeah," Angel admitted. "It has been fun. And you're winning," he added, standing up.

"Patrol tomorrow?"

"Of course."

"All right. Come here," she said, pulling herself to her feet. She kissed him, a long, happy kiss punctuated with a little random groping. "Goodnight."

Angel climbed out the window, carefully lowering himself to the ground. He heard a clatter and glanced down at the concrete.

A single Scrabble tile.

In Gaelic.

He grinned widely, not bothering to disguise his happiness, and headed home.

End

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to their owners/creators/copyright holders. This fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights.