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quinaraAlthough it's still reasonably early, I fear this is still the last chapter for the evening. I didn't get much sleep over the weekend and it's all catching up with me, so I think I'm on for Great British Menu and then a meandering wind-down towards bed!
Turn and Face the Strain.
[Sequel to The More Things Stay the Same and As Good as a Rest.]
When Buffy thought about falling in love again, she didn't expect it to be nearly so complicated as it actually turns out to be.
Also, she didn't expect it to be Spike. (She's not sure he did either.)
[Notes + Chapter One: I'm Not a Political Animal, But.]
/
[Chapter Nine: Don’t Forget Today’s Trash Day.]
.
Chapter Ten: That’s Where Even Your Best Political Minds Can Drop the Ball.
Coffee with Brian was a Starbucks on the way to the Hyperion, where he proved once again that his way of dealing with awkward moments was to talk right on through them: at the bar the barista took both their orders and before Buffy could reach for her purse Brian was saying, “Now, don’t go all Joycie on me here and make me split it; I dragged you all the way here for nothing, so the least I can do is buy you a cup of coffee.”
Had her mom had principles about that sort of stuff? Buffy was fairly comfortable with having stuff bought for her and had relaxed her hand the moment she’d seen the look in his eyes, but as she actually listened to what he was saying she felt momentarily guilty. Especially in her recent situation, though, there just didn’t seem too much point in rejecting things that were freely offered unless they were clearly bought with ill-gotten gains. (And apparently, she thought, remembering her birthday, she was willing to make exceptions even for that on special occasions.)
It was true she didn’t want Spike buying Dawn stuff, but that was more about her own pride than anything else. Buffy liked to think that she made enough money that Dawn’s allowance could keep her happy on its own, even if she couldn’t go to the movies as much as her friends did or buy so many clothes. What she didn’t want, however, was for Brian to think that she was any less whatever-quality-this-exemplified than her mom, so she smiled as though she was giving in. “OK,” she said, slightly begrudging. “You don’t have to – but thanks.”
It all seemed like a pointless act, really.
Thankfully, conversation moved on as they took their seats, finding a small table towards the back of the busy coffee house, next to a feature wall painted an earthy terracotta brown. Buffy figured it was meant to make her feel like the place was homey, not so much pretentious, but it didn’t quite work.
“So, are you still living in Sunnydale?” Brian asked, keeping one eye on they of the green aprons for when their order would be called.
“Sure,” Buffy replied, relaxing on her chair, not quite sure what he meant. “Where else were we gonna go?”
“I dunno.” Brian shrugged. “I thought when your dad came back he might’ve moved you all someplace.”
Genuinely surprised, Buffy laughed. What a quaint assumption that was. “Oh, our dad never came back,” she explained as Brian shook his head at her, startled. “He’s still out there living the dream or whatever.” That much she did know, after all: men might buy you things, but you sure as hell couldn’t depend on them. Or at least she knew she couldn’t. The only certain way to survive was to find security on her own dime.
“Wow,” Brian responded, sounding shocked. “He is one grade A asshole.” Of course, he said it before he realised who he was talking to and immediately tried to backpedal. “I mean – I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry, Buffy.”
She shrugged. All this stuff with her dad had been pretty passé for months now. “Eh, don’t mention it,” she told Brian, even if the reminder did bring her down a little. She didn’t remember her dad having asshole genes, but these days she seemed to gather more and more proof of it. It didn’t give her sleepless nights or anything, but it did make her wonder if her radar for this sort of stuff was defective – and whether she’d be able to recognise in herself if she was pulling any assholish behaviour she’d inherited.
“No, I shouldn’t have said it,” Brian repeated, possibly actually apologising for the reminder as well as the sentiment as he shook his head. “I shouldn’t talk about your dad; I didn’t know him.” For some reason, the way he said it made Buffy suspect his opinions went a little deeper than minor expletives. As he went up to the counter to retrieve their finished coffees, she wondered where her mom had talked to him about all the things she’d never discussed with Buffy after the divorce – or at least some of them, if not everything.
It was kind of nice to think that she might have had someone to talk to.
Returning with the coffees, Brian took his chair again and apparently wanted to reassure himself that she and Dawn hadn’t been completely abandoned, “Are you still keeping up with your training, at least, with that Rupert guy?”
She could see where this was going and really didn’t want it to go there, but she asked anyway, wanting to make sure. “Training?”
Now Brian shrugged, gesturing as he drank his cappuccino. “Whatever you wanna call it; your taekwondo. Should be seeing you at Athens, the way I heard,” he joked, even though it took her a couple of seconds to realise that he was talking about the Olympics.
At least once she’d figured it out it wasn’t so hard to bend the truth around the lie. “Not really,” she said, sipping her latte and letting her general disappointment with life filter into her voice. “I haven’t trained in a while,” she said, which was true. “Giles went back to England. Still got the moves, but…” She’d pretty much plateaued as far as slaying went, she realised then, and was getting by on what she already knew. Giles had nothing more to teach her, so he’d said, and if that wasn’t evidence that she was living past her expiration date, she didn’t know what was.
Apparently slayers and watchers both came with built-in obsolescence. At least Giles had been able to do something about his.
Across the table, Brian was frowning. “God,” he said. “This really isn’t turning out the pleasant conversation I hoped it was gonna be.”
Quite how she was supposed to respond to that, Buffy didn’t know, but she thought she might as well give him the benefit of the doubt. She did have questions of her own, after all. “D’you wanna maybe talk about demons instead?” she suggested. “I’m still curious about what business you do with them.” Mostly, of course, she was curious about whether he was evil, but she felt as though she should ease in to that line of questioning.
Slightly less startled than the first time she’d mentioned them, Brian still kept his frown as he asked, “How is it you know about them?” It was funny how many of her coffee conversations went this way.
For this one, however, she covered automatically, working with the line he’d given her about what she did in her spare time. “Come on,” she said, bluffing. “It’s Sunnydale. I went to high school at Sunnydale High. The only difference between me and everybody else who’s been attacked outside the Bronze is that I can hold my own long enough to see the faces of what’s attacking me.” It was possible she was going too far by talking about attacks like they were an on-going nuisance, but, well, they were.
Brian seemed to accept it, anyway, so that was good enough for her. “Yeah, I can imagine,” he said, shuddering. “Man, am I glad to be out of that town… My contact’s mostly business,” he added, not elucidating very far. “Your mom never really dealt with that side of things. She had the art history background I couldn’t compete with, but there’s one hell of a market here in SoCal for pagan artefacts that are a little more fact than art, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Sure,” Buffy said. She didn’t, exactly, but she assumed he meant magic junk, with the added influence of Hellmouth tourism. “We used to get that all the time at the high school, weird rituals and stuff.”
That comment wasn’t actually meant to accuse him of supplying all the demons and sorcerers she’d met over the years with their evil paraphernalia, but Brian looked away anyway, shifting in his chair. “Oh, well,” he said. “Most things in life can be used for all sorts of purposes; it depends on what books you read and…” He trailed off, apparently quite eager to turn the conversation in a different direction. “I guess you must have been caught up in a lot of that,” he suggested, wincing slightly. “Practising late after class?”
“You’d be surprised,” Buffy replied carefully, fairly certain she’d found the moral ambiguity she hadn’t actively been looking before. “Word gets around that you can handle yourself; suddenly you’re the go-to gal for everybody’s problems.”
As if he’d just remembered something amusing, Brian smiled at her. “You know there’s a legend about that,” he said, like he hadn’t thought about it in a long time and this might actually be a subject they could relax into. “A girl, bit younger than you, bit older than Dawn – high school age, maybe – there’s supposed to be one in every generation who gets chosen to beat back all the demons in the world. Vampires in particular, if I recall.”
Buffy blinked. No freaking shit…
Oblivious, Brian continued, “Can you imagine? It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, like all those early martyr stories. One girl, chosen by God not to grow up and get married, start a family or anything, but to fight a divine war against the heathens, sacrifice herself for the greater good.” He snorted. “You read the manuscripts and it’s all these monks fantasising about all the ways these girls died, over and over. They’re always alone out in the woods or set upon in ports and you know the monks can’t get enough of it, with the ravaging claws and fangs – uh – penetrating…”
He pulled himself up then, presumably panicking about using the word ‘penetrating’ in front of her, but Buffy was too busy trying to laugh, like she was going along with the joke. Her face, however, couldn’t seem to manage much more than a grimace.
That was her life, wasn’t it? One thing after another for her to fight off, always alone and always a great big joke to some pathetic loser in a habit. Maybe Brian was an all right guy, his heart in the right place even if he was a little rough around the edges, but he’d never understand her – there wasn’t any point in trying to explain.
“Brian, I’ve gotta go,” she said, taking one last gulp of her coffee. It hadn’t been that warm to begin with, fortunately. “I’ve gotta…” She didn’t really want to stay here any longer, so she was going. That was what was happening. She was Power Buffy, in control.
“Oh,” Brian replied, the confused frown back on his face. He didn’t seem too offended, but it did seem like he’d worked out it was something he’d said. Rather than push her on that, however, he seemed willing to obey social niceties and said, “I’m sorry,” in the way that could have been an apology for holding her up as much as one for making her leave. “Here,” he added, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out his wallet. For an awful, terrifying moment she thought he was going to offer her money, which for some reason was a lot more offensive than coffee, but what he actually pulled out was white, not green. “Take my card,” he said, offering it to her as she stood up. “Give me a call if you ever need anything; we’ll get these financials sorted out.”
Buffy accepted the business card with the closest thing to a smile she could manage, glancing at the name on it (Brian Goldstein – Objets d’art and Curiosities) before she picked up her bag and said goodbye. “Thanks for the coffee,” she added, repeating herself, remembering she owed Kate at least two cups of java as well. It was like every time she tried to connect with people all she ended up with was debt she didn’t feel comfortable with. And Spike wondered why she didn’t want his money.
Leaving the coffee shop, Buffy didn’t want to think about very much. She made her way down the streets automatically, not really registering people as she passed them. The Hyperion wasn’t too long a walk, so she concentrated on avoiding cars as she crossed the streets and tried to move quickly around everybody else.
A woman who sounded nearly as distraught as her was talking on a cell phone not that far from the hotel, but Buffy ignored her. This wasn’t her town and it probably wasn’t relevant anyway, so the only thing to do, really, was keep on walking, hope she could relax in the hotel and call home. She felt like she could go for being perved on down a phone line around now, not for being a woundable Slayer-victim.
The cars rushing alongside, however, were not enough to drown out the key word in what the woman was saying. “I swear to you, Angel,” she was saying and Buffy stopped short, before turning on her heel to look at the woman where she was pacing by a lamppost. “If you don’t turn on your cell phone right now,” she continued, “I am gonna – I’m gonna feed it to you, then charge you a hundred dollars for it as an entrée.”
The voice was familiar and, as she turned her face up to the light, Buffy realised it was Cordelia. Cordelia with short – blonde – hair, which three years ago Buffy had been sure was never going to happen.
“Cordelia?” she asked, hitching her bag on her shoulder in an attempt to mask her confusion.
Surprised, Cordelia jumped and stared in her direction. “Buffy?” she asked, shielding her eyes against the afternoon light. “Is that you?”
“In the resurrected flesh,” Buffy replied. She wasn’t sure what else to say.
It didn’t look like Cordelia did either. “You cut your hair,” she finally went with, sounding surprised.
There was only one response to that. “So did you.”
Last time she’d been in LA, Buffy had missed Cordelia; she was the one familiar link left on Angel’s crew – apart from Wesley, maybe, but Buffy had never really got to know him very well. Angel didn’t really count, because he came with a really complicated situation of awkwardness and I-have-seen-you-naked familiarity. All she and Cordelia had done was change for gym in the same room. Now that Cordelia was actually here, however, Buffy wasn’t quite sure how it was going to go, because it wasn’t actually like they’d ever been the best of friends. She found herself waiting for the other woman to set the tone of the conversation, because, really, Buffy didn’t want to be bitchy, but she didn’t want to be the one who got screwed over, either.
Amazingly, what this Los Angeles Cordelia did was break out a smile and say the mutually affirmative, “We’re so in season!”
Immediately Buffy relaxed, smiling back. Maybe she was still capable of interpersonal interaction after all, she thought. “I didn’t actually know, but that’s awesome,” she replied, trying to keep up the small talk. “So, how have you been? Angel said you were on vacation.” She remembered then, before Cordelia could reply, what she overheard. “And were you calling him, is that what I heard? Isn’t he home?”
Smile collapsing into serious, in a way that made Buffy’s stomach drop, Cordelia nodded to something behind Buffy’s shoulder. “I don’t think anybody’s home,” she said.
“Huh?” she asked, worrying. Cordelia didn’t reply.
Slowly turning around, Buffy realised that she’d not only managed to walk past Cordelia, but the hotel as well, no matter that she’d thought it was on the corner of the next block. In the shadows of the afternoon, the art deco structure didn’t look so out of place on the boulevard. With more than a cursory glance, however, Buffy realised that it didn’t look the way she remembered, not only not exactly but actually not actually. A lot of the windows were gone, holes like wounds in their place on their façade and while the stone facing in general seemed to have coped quite well, there were scorch marks above the door way and in smudgy streaks up various parts of the building. They looked like shadows, almost, but they weren’t.
“Is that…?” Buffy began, not sure what she wanted to say. Fire?
Thankfully Cordelia seemed to have expected her response. “It must have happened a few days ago,” she said blankly. “The fire department’s been and gone. I mean, this is isn’t the first time we’ve had our building destroyed, but…”
“I’m…” Buffy still had absolutely nothing, only shock. “I was gonna be staying here,” she said, apparently entirely egotistical at this precise moment. “I tried calling, but there wasn’t any answer; Kate and I were gonna meet up.”
Mmming in agreement, apparently already come to terms with what had happened, Cordelia only asked, “Kate?”
“Kate Lockley,” Buffy replied off-handedly, still staring at the surreal face of the Hyperion. What the hell happened here? “She’s a detective; we’ve been –”
“I know who she is,” Cordelia interrupted, dragging Buffy’s attention towards her confusion. “She used to work in LA. Angel knew her. I… I guess I never thought about what happened to her after she wasn’t around anymore.”
This was all way, way, way too much unexpected information. “You guys knew Kate?” Buffy asked, unable to resist pointing an accusatory finger in Cordelia’s direction. “But she never said anything!” came out the next exclamation, directed in completely the wrong direction. “I told her about Angel and the hotel and everything and she never said a word, even though she said some stuff when we first met that made me think…” It was far too late, as far as Buffy was concerned, for this sort of puzzle, but it seemed like she was stuck with it anyway. “Why the hell didn’t she say something?”
Equally bemused, Cordelia shrugged. “But she’s coming here?” she asked.
Buffy wasn’t entirely sure she knew anymore. “She’s supposed to be.”
Looking like someone who had just come back from a long journey, which she probably had, Cordelia sighed. “Well, Groo’s taken our bags to my apartment; I’m supposed to be waiting to see if someone shows up, but I guess that someone is you.” Rubbing her possibly-tropically tanned arms against the afternoon breeze, Cordelia sounded pretty put out. “What are we gonna do now? D’you wanna wait for Kate? Come back and freak the hell out in my apartment? Try and find the guys? I can’t get hold of anyone.”
The last one was pretty tempting, but Buffy was mostly caught up in wondering how she’d ended up in charge. “I don’t know,” she said, glancing back at the hotel just to make sure it was still burnt out. “I guess…” Forcing herself to think, she made a decision. “We should wait for Kate at least, else she’s not gonna…”
As Buffy trailed off, fortunately, Cordelia picked up the slack. “Do you have her number?” she asked, brandishing her phone. “I could call her.”
Buffy wasn’t even sure Kate had a number to call, but then it wasn’t like she ever asked anyone, being cell-less herself. “I’m don’t know,” she began, not helpfully – but then the previous few days’ drama managed to echo around in her head in a way that was useful. Tara and Kate: they’d been socialising. That meant communication. “I might be able to get hold of someone who does?” she told Cordelia, whose sceptical eyebrow started relaxing into relief. Of course, it wasn’t like Buffy knew Tara’s home number at all, but this looked like as good an excuse to call home as any. “Can I borrow your cell?”
Immediately, and weirdly generously, Cordelia held it out immediately. “Go ahead,” she said.
“Thanks,” Buffy replied with a smile, dialling the numbers into the squidgy keys. She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to avoid giving away who was on the other end of the line, because that wasn’t really anything she wanted to get into right now, not on top of anything else, but she’d manage something or other…
The line was ringing as Buffy watched the cars rush by, but then it picked up more quickly than usual.
“Hello?”
“Dawn?” she asked, because that was who it was. Naturally, the connection wasn’t great and the traffic noise made it hard to hear, but it was definitely Dawn. “It’s me. Can you hear me?”
“What?” Apparently she couldn’t, or at least not perfectly.
Oh well; she’d have to try anyway. “Is, um, is anyone else there with you, Dawn?” she said more loudly, hoping Spike was, though she’d take Willow – even with the awkwardness of asking her to ask Tara for Kate’s number. “It’s me. Something’s – I need…”
The urgency seemed to get through at least, because Dawn heard enough to panic a little, working out that it was her. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine.” There was murmuring to go with the rushing she could hear. Glancing at Cordelia, who was frowning, Buffy tried to gesture that the reception wasn’t so great, wandering a little further down the road, guarding the conversation. “I’m not hearing you very well here, Dawn,” she explained, loudly. “Can you –”
“Slayer? Love, are you all right? What’s going on?”
She paused by a tree, able to hear Spike’s voice more than clearly enough. She smiled, not really meaning to, and hoped that with her back to her, Cordelia wouldn’t really be able to hear much of what was going on. “I’m fine,” she said, letting her voice tinge with aggravation but mostly feeling blank. Seriousness was called for, however, so she cupped her hand around her mouth and the cell to explain, seriously, “But something’s happened here, to Angel and his friends. I’m not sure what.”
“Are you…” It sounded as though Spike was trying really, really hard to calm down; he paused before speaking again. “What d’you mean?”
“I wasn’t there when it happened,” she told him, hoping that would help keep him relaxed. “But the hotel’s… Well, it’s been burnt down, pretty much. There’s no one here and it’s all charred up. I’m with Cordelia and she says this kind of thing’s happened before, but I think it’s pretty bad.” And wasn’t that the understatement of the century.
“Is Kate with you?” Frowning, Buffy wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, because even with her gun there was no way that Kate could protect her better than she could protect herself. As he continued, thankfully, it became clear that that wasn’t his main concern. “You shouldn’t be seen round there. Doesn’t matter where you go, but if there’s people watching…”
Getting his point, Buffy looked up and started looking around. Cordelia was contemplating her manicure, but otherwise the sidewalk was basically empty on their side. Some other pedestrians were down by the intersection, but otherwise it was all cars, moving cars… “Kate’s not here yet,” she said, still on alert as she spoke. “I’m with Cordelia; she’s just come home from vacation. We’re gonna have to wait – or else I was gonna ask,” she added, glad she’d got to the point of her call. “Can you call Tara and ask if Kate has a cell phone number? Or see if maybe the police station has it on file? I don’t know if she has one, obviously. A cell, I mean. But if we could call then we could…”
“Got it.” It was nice when Spike managed to decode her babbling into something that made sense. Probably he’d had a lot of practice with Drusilla, Buffy considered, but maybe that wasn’t worth thinking about. “I’ll call you straight back.”
“Thank you,” she told him, meaning it, her stomach settling with relief. If they could get in contact with Kate, then they could work out what they were going to do next, even if that was only the place they were going to reconvene to panic some more.
“No worries.”
Of course, now came the moment when she was supposed to hang up, but Buffy didn’t really want to. She paused for a moment, trying to think of something vital to say, which would give her an excuse to stay on the line, but she couldn’t come up with anything.
Thankfully, Spike didn’t seem that keen to hang up either, and had far fewer qualms about using the call for private conversation. “But you’re all right?” Even if he was repetitive, it was still kind of nice to be asked. “Everything else is all right?”
She felt guilty as her mind left the current crisis and tracked back over the day, but it didn’t stop her doing it. “Yeah, pretty much,” she told him, not feeling very enthusiastic about it. It was a struggle to fully remember what had happened, but she knew Spike wanted to know. “I met Brian and we got through the paperwork,” she continued, stubbing her toe along the crack between sidewalk paving stones. “His lawyers seemed to want him to get out of paying me, but he told them, I dunno, one of your expressions…”
“He told them to fuck off?”
She could have come up with that one herself, but whatever. “Maybe not quite so…”
“Good on him.”
“… Yeah.” It wasn’t like she didn’t agree with his sentiments, was it, in the end? “I guess.” Score one for Mr. Beta Male.
He heard her pause and raised her a hesitation. “What is it?”
This wasn’t the time – this really wasn’t the time to get into how such a short time with a stranger was enough, as always, for her to realise the extent to which her life sucked, in its basic principles as well as the actual reality. There were bigger things to worry about, like what the hell had happened here, even if that wasn’t technically part of her remit. As she’d discovered over the years, you couldn’t protect the world in isolated bursts. “It was just something he said,” she found herself explaining anyway, because apparently she was that weak. “He knows about demons, but not about slayers and he said…” The exact words didn’t really matter, did they? “Oh, he didn’t mean it, but he left me feeling kind of low.”
For a moment there was silence, as Spike presumably tried to work out what to say. In the end it seemed like he’d taken to heart all the times she’d rejected his sympathy, because he just went with the practical. “Is there anything else you want me to do? Besides getting the number? You’re not going to be back tonight, are you?”
She wouldn’t be, she realised. “No,” she said, and it made them both sigh resignedly. She couldn’t leave until she knew that everything here was OK. It was possible; the main reason she’d been intending to stay was that Kate didn’t want to drive out in rush hour traffic, but it was possible to get back to Sunnydale that evening. There was no way, however, that they could just abandon Cordelia or pretend like something wasn’t going down.
The question was, what did she want Spike to do in the meantime? There wasn’t much he could really do in Sunnydale – but then… There was always something. “Could you, though…” she began, looking back to Cordelia and wondering whether this was what she really wanted to ask. “Would you be able to…” This was selfish, this was a really selfish idea, not least because she knew he’d say yes if she asked, but the thought was crossing her mind and it seemed like a far better thought than going this alone. Even with the others around her. “Is there any way you could come down here on your motorbike?” she asked at last, blushing violently.
His initial response wasn’t what she might have expected: Spike, apparently, couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Tonight?”
Wincing, she confirmed, “Yeah.” Of course it didn’t make sense to him, but it made sense to her. If he was with her, she knew she’d have a slightly higher chance of surviving. More than that, she’d have a much lower chance of stressing out, panicking and generally worrying in a way that would make it harder to find Angel and the others and work out what was going on. It would keep her from being ravaged in some woods; generally it would just make her happier. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea, a rational plan. It felt like she should have asked him along for the day right in the first place. “I like having you with me,” she explained, nervously.
And yet she’d been wrong about him automatically saying yes, because he deferred for a few more seconds of silence. “Buffy…” She cursed herself for taking him for granted, the slight sickness of her worry digging deeper at the thought of the night ahead. But then – “Bloody hell.” He sounded torn, uncertain, but not quite rejecting her. “Yes, I’ll – of course I’ll be there. Should… Willow’s out right now; I should wait till she’s back so Dawn’s not…” Then there was yelling the background, confusing Buffy as she bit her lip. Presumably the shouting came from a Dawn who resented all implication she needed someone with her, even if they all knew she didn’t like being left alone, and Buffy felt guilty for not being there right now – as well as encouraging Spike to leave. He was always better at prioritising Dawn than her, even if Dawn was the main reason she was in the city anyway. “You can be a contradictory little twit sometimes, you know that?” And now she knew she was a bad person, because she laughed. “Not you, love.” His voice directed itself back down the phone, making her smile with its fondness. “Not all the time, anyway.”
Buffy wasn’t sure what to say back. In the end, after all, how could she not love someone who managed to realise she was about ninety per cent flaw, and yet said she was amazing all the same? “Noted,” she eventually decided on, smiling, relieved and trying not to sound too desperate – because she would have managed without him, maybe.
Smirk in his voice, Spike got them back on track, conveniently ignorant of her embarrassing rush of emotion. “So, what’s the plan?”
Shaking herself, Buffy thought through the practicalities. They couldn’t wait for Spike at the Hyperion, especially after they’d tracked down Kate, so they needed another rendezvous point. “OK,” she tried out. “If you get Kate’s number, then we’ll probably find her first or wait for her to come here, then head out looking for the rest of Angel’s guys. We could meet at…” Where did they both know? Oh yeah – “Do you remember where Wesley lives? The apartment we stayed in? We could meet there in a few hours.”
After a brief pause, Spike seemed all right with the idea. “Can vaguely remember it. You got an address?”
Buffy turned back to Cordelia. “I can get an address for when you call back,” she confirmed.
“Then we’re on.”
.
[Chapter Eleven: You’re Not Taking the Pulse of the Public.]
Turn and Face the Strain.
[Sequel to The More Things Stay the Same and As Good as a Rest.]
When Buffy thought about falling in love again, she didn't expect it to be nearly so complicated as it actually turns out to be.
Also, she didn't expect it to be Spike. (She's not sure he did either.)
[Notes + Chapter One: I'm Not a Political Animal, But.]
/
[Chapter Nine: Don’t Forget Today’s Trash Day.]
.
Chapter Ten: That’s Where Even Your Best Political Minds Can Drop the Ball.
Coffee with Brian was a Starbucks on the way to the Hyperion, where he proved once again that his way of dealing with awkward moments was to talk right on through them: at the bar the barista took both their orders and before Buffy could reach for her purse Brian was saying, “Now, don’t go all Joycie on me here and make me split it; I dragged you all the way here for nothing, so the least I can do is buy you a cup of coffee.”
Had her mom had principles about that sort of stuff? Buffy was fairly comfortable with having stuff bought for her and had relaxed her hand the moment she’d seen the look in his eyes, but as she actually listened to what he was saying she felt momentarily guilty. Especially in her recent situation, though, there just didn’t seem too much point in rejecting things that were freely offered unless they were clearly bought with ill-gotten gains. (And apparently, she thought, remembering her birthday, she was willing to make exceptions even for that on special occasions.)
It was true she didn’t want Spike buying Dawn stuff, but that was more about her own pride than anything else. Buffy liked to think that she made enough money that Dawn’s allowance could keep her happy on its own, even if she couldn’t go to the movies as much as her friends did or buy so many clothes. What she didn’t want, however, was for Brian to think that she was any less whatever-quality-this-exemplified than her mom, so she smiled as though she was giving in. “OK,” she said, slightly begrudging. “You don’t have to – but thanks.”
It all seemed like a pointless act, really.
Thankfully, conversation moved on as they took their seats, finding a small table towards the back of the busy coffee house, next to a feature wall painted an earthy terracotta brown. Buffy figured it was meant to make her feel like the place was homey, not so much pretentious, but it didn’t quite work.
“So, are you still living in Sunnydale?” Brian asked, keeping one eye on they of the green aprons for when their order would be called.
“Sure,” Buffy replied, relaxing on her chair, not quite sure what he meant. “Where else were we gonna go?”
“I dunno.” Brian shrugged. “I thought when your dad came back he might’ve moved you all someplace.”
Genuinely surprised, Buffy laughed. What a quaint assumption that was. “Oh, our dad never came back,” she explained as Brian shook his head at her, startled. “He’s still out there living the dream or whatever.” That much she did know, after all: men might buy you things, but you sure as hell couldn’t depend on them. Or at least she knew she couldn’t. The only certain way to survive was to find security on her own dime.
“Wow,” Brian responded, sounding shocked. “He is one grade A asshole.” Of course, he said it before he realised who he was talking to and immediately tried to backpedal. “I mean – I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry, Buffy.”
She shrugged. All this stuff with her dad had been pretty passé for months now. “Eh, don’t mention it,” she told Brian, even if the reminder did bring her down a little. She didn’t remember her dad having asshole genes, but these days she seemed to gather more and more proof of it. It didn’t give her sleepless nights or anything, but it did make her wonder if her radar for this sort of stuff was defective – and whether she’d be able to recognise in herself if she was pulling any assholish behaviour she’d inherited.
“No, I shouldn’t have said it,” Brian repeated, possibly actually apologising for the reminder as well as the sentiment as he shook his head. “I shouldn’t talk about your dad; I didn’t know him.” For some reason, the way he said it made Buffy suspect his opinions went a little deeper than minor expletives. As he went up to the counter to retrieve their finished coffees, she wondered where her mom had talked to him about all the things she’d never discussed with Buffy after the divorce – or at least some of them, if not everything.
It was kind of nice to think that she might have had someone to talk to.
Returning with the coffees, Brian took his chair again and apparently wanted to reassure himself that she and Dawn hadn’t been completely abandoned, “Are you still keeping up with your training, at least, with that Rupert guy?”
She could see where this was going and really didn’t want it to go there, but she asked anyway, wanting to make sure. “Training?”
Now Brian shrugged, gesturing as he drank his cappuccino. “Whatever you wanna call it; your taekwondo. Should be seeing you at Athens, the way I heard,” he joked, even though it took her a couple of seconds to realise that he was talking about the Olympics.
At least once she’d figured it out it wasn’t so hard to bend the truth around the lie. “Not really,” she said, sipping her latte and letting her general disappointment with life filter into her voice. “I haven’t trained in a while,” she said, which was true. “Giles went back to England. Still got the moves, but…” She’d pretty much plateaued as far as slaying went, she realised then, and was getting by on what she already knew. Giles had nothing more to teach her, so he’d said, and if that wasn’t evidence that she was living past her expiration date, she didn’t know what was.
Apparently slayers and watchers both came with built-in obsolescence. At least Giles had been able to do something about his.
Across the table, Brian was frowning. “God,” he said. “This really isn’t turning out the pleasant conversation I hoped it was gonna be.”
Quite how she was supposed to respond to that, Buffy didn’t know, but she thought she might as well give him the benefit of the doubt. She did have questions of her own, after all. “D’you wanna maybe talk about demons instead?” she suggested. “I’m still curious about what business you do with them.” Mostly, of course, she was curious about whether he was evil, but she felt as though she should ease in to that line of questioning.
Slightly less startled than the first time she’d mentioned them, Brian still kept his frown as he asked, “How is it you know about them?” It was funny how many of her coffee conversations went this way.
For this one, however, she covered automatically, working with the line he’d given her about what she did in her spare time. “Come on,” she said, bluffing. “It’s Sunnydale. I went to high school at Sunnydale High. The only difference between me and everybody else who’s been attacked outside the Bronze is that I can hold my own long enough to see the faces of what’s attacking me.” It was possible she was going too far by talking about attacks like they were an on-going nuisance, but, well, they were.
Brian seemed to accept it, anyway, so that was good enough for her. “Yeah, I can imagine,” he said, shuddering. “Man, am I glad to be out of that town… My contact’s mostly business,” he added, not elucidating very far. “Your mom never really dealt with that side of things. She had the art history background I couldn’t compete with, but there’s one hell of a market here in SoCal for pagan artefacts that are a little more fact than art, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Sure,” Buffy said. She didn’t, exactly, but she assumed he meant magic junk, with the added influence of Hellmouth tourism. “We used to get that all the time at the high school, weird rituals and stuff.”
That comment wasn’t actually meant to accuse him of supplying all the demons and sorcerers she’d met over the years with their evil paraphernalia, but Brian looked away anyway, shifting in his chair. “Oh, well,” he said. “Most things in life can be used for all sorts of purposes; it depends on what books you read and…” He trailed off, apparently quite eager to turn the conversation in a different direction. “I guess you must have been caught up in a lot of that,” he suggested, wincing slightly. “Practising late after class?”
“You’d be surprised,” Buffy replied carefully, fairly certain she’d found the moral ambiguity she hadn’t actively been looking before. “Word gets around that you can handle yourself; suddenly you’re the go-to gal for everybody’s problems.”
As if he’d just remembered something amusing, Brian smiled at her. “You know there’s a legend about that,” he said, like he hadn’t thought about it in a long time and this might actually be a subject they could relax into. “A girl, bit younger than you, bit older than Dawn – high school age, maybe – there’s supposed to be one in every generation who gets chosen to beat back all the demons in the world. Vampires in particular, if I recall.”
Buffy blinked. No freaking shit…
Oblivious, Brian continued, “Can you imagine? It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, like all those early martyr stories. One girl, chosen by God not to grow up and get married, start a family or anything, but to fight a divine war against the heathens, sacrifice herself for the greater good.” He snorted. “You read the manuscripts and it’s all these monks fantasising about all the ways these girls died, over and over. They’re always alone out in the woods or set upon in ports and you know the monks can’t get enough of it, with the ravaging claws and fangs – uh – penetrating…”
He pulled himself up then, presumably panicking about using the word ‘penetrating’ in front of her, but Buffy was too busy trying to laugh, like she was going along with the joke. Her face, however, couldn’t seem to manage much more than a grimace.
That was her life, wasn’t it? One thing after another for her to fight off, always alone and always a great big joke to some pathetic loser in a habit. Maybe Brian was an all right guy, his heart in the right place even if he was a little rough around the edges, but he’d never understand her – there wasn’t any point in trying to explain.
“Brian, I’ve gotta go,” she said, taking one last gulp of her coffee. It hadn’t been that warm to begin with, fortunately. “I’ve gotta…” She didn’t really want to stay here any longer, so she was going. That was what was happening. She was Power Buffy, in control.
“Oh,” Brian replied, the confused frown back on his face. He didn’t seem too offended, but it did seem like he’d worked out it was something he’d said. Rather than push her on that, however, he seemed willing to obey social niceties and said, “I’m sorry,” in the way that could have been an apology for holding her up as much as one for making her leave. “Here,” he added, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out his wallet. For an awful, terrifying moment she thought he was going to offer her money, which for some reason was a lot more offensive than coffee, but what he actually pulled out was white, not green. “Take my card,” he said, offering it to her as she stood up. “Give me a call if you ever need anything; we’ll get these financials sorted out.”
Buffy accepted the business card with the closest thing to a smile she could manage, glancing at the name on it (Brian Goldstein – Objets d’art and Curiosities) before she picked up her bag and said goodbye. “Thanks for the coffee,” she added, repeating herself, remembering she owed Kate at least two cups of java as well. It was like every time she tried to connect with people all she ended up with was debt she didn’t feel comfortable with. And Spike wondered why she didn’t want his money.
Leaving the coffee shop, Buffy didn’t want to think about very much. She made her way down the streets automatically, not really registering people as she passed them. The Hyperion wasn’t too long a walk, so she concentrated on avoiding cars as she crossed the streets and tried to move quickly around everybody else.
A woman who sounded nearly as distraught as her was talking on a cell phone not that far from the hotel, but Buffy ignored her. This wasn’t her town and it probably wasn’t relevant anyway, so the only thing to do, really, was keep on walking, hope she could relax in the hotel and call home. She felt like she could go for being perved on down a phone line around now, not for being a woundable Slayer-victim.
The cars rushing alongside, however, were not enough to drown out the key word in what the woman was saying. “I swear to you, Angel,” she was saying and Buffy stopped short, before turning on her heel to look at the woman where she was pacing by a lamppost. “If you don’t turn on your cell phone right now,” she continued, “I am gonna – I’m gonna feed it to you, then charge you a hundred dollars for it as an entrée.”
The voice was familiar and, as she turned her face up to the light, Buffy realised it was Cordelia. Cordelia with short – blonde – hair, which three years ago Buffy had been sure was never going to happen.
“Cordelia?” she asked, hitching her bag on her shoulder in an attempt to mask her confusion.
Surprised, Cordelia jumped and stared in her direction. “Buffy?” she asked, shielding her eyes against the afternoon light. “Is that you?”
“In the resurrected flesh,” Buffy replied. She wasn’t sure what else to say.
It didn’t look like Cordelia did either. “You cut your hair,” she finally went with, sounding surprised.
There was only one response to that. “So did you.”
Last time she’d been in LA, Buffy had missed Cordelia; she was the one familiar link left on Angel’s crew – apart from Wesley, maybe, but Buffy had never really got to know him very well. Angel didn’t really count, because he came with a really complicated situation of awkwardness and I-have-seen-you-naked familiarity. All she and Cordelia had done was change for gym in the same room. Now that Cordelia was actually here, however, Buffy wasn’t quite sure how it was going to go, because it wasn’t actually like they’d ever been the best of friends. She found herself waiting for the other woman to set the tone of the conversation, because, really, Buffy didn’t want to be bitchy, but she didn’t want to be the one who got screwed over, either.
Amazingly, what this Los Angeles Cordelia did was break out a smile and say the mutually affirmative, “We’re so in season!”
Immediately Buffy relaxed, smiling back. Maybe she was still capable of interpersonal interaction after all, she thought. “I didn’t actually know, but that’s awesome,” she replied, trying to keep up the small talk. “So, how have you been? Angel said you were on vacation.” She remembered then, before Cordelia could reply, what she overheard. “And were you calling him, is that what I heard? Isn’t he home?”
Smile collapsing into serious, in a way that made Buffy’s stomach drop, Cordelia nodded to something behind Buffy’s shoulder. “I don’t think anybody’s home,” she said.
“Huh?” she asked, worrying. Cordelia didn’t reply.
Slowly turning around, Buffy realised that she’d not only managed to walk past Cordelia, but the hotel as well, no matter that she’d thought it was on the corner of the next block. In the shadows of the afternoon, the art deco structure didn’t look so out of place on the boulevard. With more than a cursory glance, however, Buffy realised that it didn’t look the way she remembered, not only not exactly but actually not actually. A lot of the windows were gone, holes like wounds in their place on their façade and while the stone facing in general seemed to have coped quite well, there were scorch marks above the door way and in smudgy streaks up various parts of the building. They looked like shadows, almost, but they weren’t.
“Is that…?” Buffy began, not sure what she wanted to say. Fire?
Thankfully Cordelia seemed to have expected her response. “It must have happened a few days ago,” she said blankly. “The fire department’s been and gone. I mean, this is isn’t the first time we’ve had our building destroyed, but…”
“I’m…” Buffy still had absolutely nothing, only shock. “I was gonna be staying here,” she said, apparently entirely egotistical at this precise moment. “I tried calling, but there wasn’t any answer; Kate and I were gonna meet up.”
Mmming in agreement, apparently already come to terms with what had happened, Cordelia only asked, “Kate?”
“Kate Lockley,” Buffy replied off-handedly, still staring at the surreal face of the Hyperion. What the hell happened here? “She’s a detective; we’ve been –”
“I know who she is,” Cordelia interrupted, dragging Buffy’s attention towards her confusion. “She used to work in LA. Angel knew her. I… I guess I never thought about what happened to her after she wasn’t around anymore.”
This was all way, way, way too much unexpected information. “You guys knew Kate?” Buffy asked, unable to resist pointing an accusatory finger in Cordelia’s direction. “But she never said anything!” came out the next exclamation, directed in completely the wrong direction. “I told her about Angel and the hotel and everything and she never said a word, even though she said some stuff when we first met that made me think…” It was far too late, as far as Buffy was concerned, for this sort of puzzle, but it seemed like she was stuck with it anyway. “Why the hell didn’t she say something?”
Equally bemused, Cordelia shrugged. “But she’s coming here?” she asked.
Buffy wasn’t entirely sure she knew anymore. “She’s supposed to be.”
Looking like someone who had just come back from a long journey, which she probably had, Cordelia sighed. “Well, Groo’s taken our bags to my apartment; I’m supposed to be waiting to see if someone shows up, but I guess that someone is you.” Rubbing her possibly-tropically tanned arms against the afternoon breeze, Cordelia sounded pretty put out. “What are we gonna do now? D’you wanna wait for Kate? Come back and freak the hell out in my apartment? Try and find the guys? I can’t get hold of anyone.”
The last one was pretty tempting, but Buffy was mostly caught up in wondering how she’d ended up in charge. “I don’t know,” she said, glancing back at the hotel just to make sure it was still burnt out. “I guess…” Forcing herself to think, she made a decision. “We should wait for Kate at least, else she’s not gonna…”
As Buffy trailed off, fortunately, Cordelia picked up the slack. “Do you have her number?” she asked, brandishing her phone. “I could call her.”
Buffy wasn’t even sure Kate had a number to call, but then it wasn’t like she ever asked anyone, being cell-less herself. “I’m don’t know,” she began, not helpfully – but then the previous few days’ drama managed to echo around in her head in a way that was useful. Tara and Kate: they’d been socialising. That meant communication. “I might be able to get hold of someone who does?” she told Cordelia, whose sceptical eyebrow started relaxing into relief. Of course, it wasn’t like Buffy knew Tara’s home number at all, but this looked like as good an excuse to call home as any. “Can I borrow your cell?”
Immediately, and weirdly generously, Cordelia held it out immediately. “Go ahead,” she said.
“Thanks,” Buffy replied with a smile, dialling the numbers into the squidgy keys. She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to avoid giving away who was on the other end of the line, because that wasn’t really anything she wanted to get into right now, not on top of anything else, but she’d manage something or other…
The line was ringing as Buffy watched the cars rush by, but then it picked up more quickly than usual.
“Hello?”
“Dawn?” she asked, because that was who it was. Naturally, the connection wasn’t great and the traffic noise made it hard to hear, but it was definitely Dawn. “It’s me. Can you hear me?”
“What?” Apparently she couldn’t, or at least not perfectly.
Oh well; she’d have to try anyway. “Is, um, is anyone else there with you, Dawn?” she said more loudly, hoping Spike was, though she’d take Willow – even with the awkwardness of asking her to ask Tara for Kate’s number. “It’s me. Something’s – I need…”
The urgency seemed to get through at least, because Dawn heard enough to panic a little, working out that it was her. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine.” There was murmuring to go with the rushing she could hear. Glancing at Cordelia, who was frowning, Buffy tried to gesture that the reception wasn’t so great, wandering a little further down the road, guarding the conversation. “I’m not hearing you very well here, Dawn,” she explained, loudly. “Can you –”
“Slayer? Love, are you all right? What’s going on?”
She paused by a tree, able to hear Spike’s voice more than clearly enough. She smiled, not really meaning to, and hoped that with her back to her, Cordelia wouldn’t really be able to hear much of what was going on. “I’m fine,” she said, letting her voice tinge with aggravation but mostly feeling blank. Seriousness was called for, however, so she cupped her hand around her mouth and the cell to explain, seriously, “But something’s happened here, to Angel and his friends. I’m not sure what.”
“Are you…” It sounded as though Spike was trying really, really hard to calm down; he paused before speaking again. “What d’you mean?”
“I wasn’t there when it happened,” she told him, hoping that would help keep him relaxed. “But the hotel’s… Well, it’s been burnt down, pretty much. There’s no one here and it’s all charred up. I’m with Cordelia and she says this kind of thing’s happened before, but I think it’s pretty bad.” And wasn’t that the understatement of the century.
“Is Kate with you?” Frowning, Buffy wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, because even with her gun there was no way that Kate could protect her better than she could protect herself. As he continued, thankfully, it became clear that that wasn’t his main concern. “You shouldn’t be seen round there. Doesn’t matter where you go, but if there’s people watching…”
Getting his point, Buffy looked up and started looking around. Cordelia was contemplating her manicure, but otherwise the sidewalk was basically empty on their side. Some other pedestrians were down by the intersection, but otherwise it was all cars, moving cars… “Kate’s not here yet,” she said, still on alert as she spoke. “I’m with Cordelia; she’s just come home from vacation. We’re gonna have to wait – or else I was gonna ask,” she added, glad she’d got to the point of her call. “Can you call Tara and ask if Kate has a cell phone number? Or see if maybe the police station has it on file? I don’t know if she has one, obviously. A cell, I mean. But if we could call then we could…”
“Got it.” It was nice when Spike managed to decode her babbling into something that made sense. Probably he’d had a lot of practice with Drusilla, Buffy considered, but maybe that wasn’t worth thinking about. “I’ll call you straight back.”
“Thank you,” she told him, meaning it, her stomach settling with relief. If they could get in contact with Kate, then they could work out what they were going to do next, even if that was only the place they were going to reconvene to panic some more.
“No worries.”
Of course, now came the moment when she was supposed to hang up, but Buffy didn’t really want to. She paused for a moment, trying to think of something vital to say, which would give her an excuse to stay on the line, but she couldn’t come up with anything.
Thankfully, Spike didn’t seem that keen to hang up either, and had far fewer qualms about using the call for private conversation. “But you’re all right?” Even if he was repetitive, it was still kind of nice to be asked. “Everything else is all right?”
She felt guilty as her mind left the current crisis and tracked back over the day, but it didn’t stop her doing it. “Yeah, pretty much,” she told him, not feeling very enthusiastic about it. It was a struggle to fully remember what had happened, but she knew Spike wanted to know. “I met Brian and we got through the paperwork,” she continued, stubbing her toe along the crack between sidewalk paving stones. “His lawyers seemed to want him to get out of paying me, but he told them, I dunno, one of your expressions…”
“He told them to fuck off?”
She could have come up with that one herself, but whatever. “Maybe not quite so…”
“Good on him.”
“… Yeah.” It wasn’t like she didn’t agree with his sentiments, was it, in the end? “I guess.” Score one for Mr. Beta Male.
He heard her pause and raised her a hesitation. “What is it?”
This wasn’t the time – this really wasn’t the time to get into how such a short time with a stranger was enough, as always, for her to realise the extent to which her life sucked, in its basic principles as well as the actual reality. There were bigger things to worry about, like what the hell had happened here, even if that wasn’t technically part of her remit. As she’d discovered over the years, you couldn’t protect the world in isolated bursts. “It was just something he said,” she found herself explaining anyway, because apparently she was that weak. “He knows about demons, but not about slayers and he said…” The exact words didn’t really matter, did they? “Oh, he didn’t mean it, but he left me feeling kind of low.”
For a moment there was silence, as Spike presumably tried to work out what to say. In the end it seemed like he’d taken to heart all the times she’d rejected his sympathy, because he just went with the practical. “Is there anything else you want me to do? Besides getting the number? You’re not going to be back tonight, are you?”
She wouldn’t be, she realised. “No,” she said, and it made them both sigh resignedly. She couldn’t leave until she knew that everything here was OK. It was possible; the main reason she’d been intending to stay was that Kate didn’t want to drive out in rush hour traffic, but it was possible to get back to Sunnydale that evening. There was no way, however, that they could just abandon Cordelia or pretend like something wasn’t going down.
The question was, what did she want Spike to do in the meantime? There wasn’t much he could really do in Sunnydale – but then… There was always something. “Could you, though…” she began, looking back to Cordelia and wondering whether this was what she really wanted to ask. “Would you be able to…” This was selfish, this was a really selfish idea, not least because she knew he’d say yes if she asked, but the thought was crossing her mind and it seemed like a far better thought than going this alone. Even with the others around her. “Is there any way you could come down here on your motorbike?” she asked at last, blushing violently.
His initial response wasn’t what she might have expected: Spike, apparently, couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Tonight?”
Wincing, she confirmed, “Yeah.” Of course it didn’t make sense to him, but it made sense to her. If he was with her, she knew she’d have a slightly higher chance of surviving. More than that, she’d have a much lower chance of stressing out, panicking and generally worrying in a way that would make it harder to find Angel and the others and work out what was going on. It would keep her from being ravaged in some woods; generally it would just make her happier. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea, a rational plan. It felt like she should have asked him along for the day right in the first place. “I like having you with me,” she explained, nervously.
And yet she’d been wrong about him automatically saying yes, because he deferred for a few more seconds of silence. “Buffy…” She cursed herself for taking him for granted, the slight sickness of her worry digging deeper at the thought of the night ahead. But then – “Bloody hell.” He sounded torn, uncertain, but not quite rejecting her. “Yes, I’ll – of course I’ll be there. Should… Willow’s out right now; I should wait till she’s back so Dawn’s not…” Then there was yelling the background, confusing Buffy as she bit her lip. Presumably the shouting came from a Dawn who resented all implication she needed someone with her, even if they all knew she didn’t like being left alone, and Buffy felt guilty for not being there right now – as well as encouraging Spike to leave. He was always better at prioritising Dawn than her, even if Dawn was the main reason she was in the city anyway. “You can be a contradictory little twit sometimes, you know that?” And now she knew she was a bad person, because she laughed. “Not you, love.” His voice directed itself back down the phone, making her smile with its fondness. “Not all the time, anyway.”
Buffy wasn’t sure what to say back. In the end, after all, how could she not love someone who managed to realise she was about ninety per cent flaw, and yet said she was amazing all the same? “Noted,” she eventually decided on, smiling, relieved and trying not to sound too desperate – because she would have managed without him, maybe.
Smirk in his voice, Spike got them back on track, conveniently ignorant of her embarrassing rush of emotion. “So, what’s the plan?”
Shaking herself, Buffy thought through the practicalities. They couldn’t wait for Spike at the Hyperion, especially after they’d tracked down Kate, so they needed another rendezvous point. “OK,” she tried out. “If you get Kate’s number, then we’ll probably find her first or wait for her to come here, then head out looking for the rest of Angel’s guys. We could meet at…” Where did they both know? Oh yeah – “Do you remember where Wesley lives? The apartment we stayed in? We could meet there in a few hours.”
After a brief pause, Spike seemed all right with the idea. “Can vaguely remember it. You got an address?”
Buffy turned back to Cordelia. “I can get an address for when you call back,” she confirmed.
“Then we’re on.”
.
[Chapter Eleven: You’re Not Taking the Pulse of the Public.]
(no subject)
Date: 23/05/2012 01:40 (UTC)And I'm intrigued about Brian's concern for Buffy and Dawn, it0s oddly touching, and I liked the details of their conversation, like finding out that Joyce told people that Buffy did martial arts. Nice touch.
I'm eagerly awaiting for more :D
(no subject)
Date: 25/05/2012 07:00 (UTC)Hope you enjoy the rest just as much!
(no subject)
Date: 25/05/2012 20:42 (UTC)HA HA!
I adored this chapter.
(no subject)
Date: 27/05/2012 18:30 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 27/05/2012 20:55 (UTC)I suppose that is one thing about an obsessive personality: it does make a guy easier to predict. *G*
Also, I like the way you've made the practical details matter so much. When you can't afford a cell phone, just the bare act of connecting with other people gets much, much harder. And that affects every decision you make, particularly about meetups and schedules.
(how could she not love someone who managed to realise she was about ninety per cent flaw, and yet said she was amazing all the same? )
Awww. *sniff*
(no subject)
Date: 28/05/2012 10:54 (UTC)Oh, thanks! That part was fun. 2002 is possibly a bit early for everyone to start assuming that people will have mobiles, but I thought for a 2012 audience it was an important complication to work through, because calling someone up and asking them to come and meet you is definitely a more difficult business than it would be today.