Chapter 9 of Spin with Nine. I feel like I should have done something special. (Once again) sorry it's so late.

Chapter 9

"Um." Buffy sat down again, having finished the business portion of her talk with Angel. "I guess… We need to have the more dramatic side of the talk."

"The more personal one?"

Buffy nodded.

"Great," Angel sarcastically muttered.

"I guess I'll go first," Buffy said, taking a breath. Here goes nothing.

One Year Earlier

"Um, can I get a table?" Buffy asked the waitress, Claire, in front of her.

"Sure thing, doll." She grabbed a menu. "Just you?"

"There's… There's someone else, but he won't be here for a while." Buffy looked down at her hands.

Claire gave her a smile. "You want to watch out the window?"

"Sure," Buffy said quietly, even though she knew that he'd be in there directly after sunset.

BtVS - A:tS - Sw9

Buffy was staring down into her half empty coffee mug when she heard the bell for the diner that seemed to be taken directly out of the '50s ring. She looked up.

"Angel…" she whispered. He seemed locked in place looking at her, when Claire (who Buffy had to admit was being super nice with the free refills on her coffee) came over to him.

"You the one she's waiting for?" she asked, motioning to Buffy.

"Yeah," he said quietly, before making his way over to the booth. Claire brought over another menu.

"Buffy," he said after a second of silence.

"Hi," she responded.

"Wha- How?"

"Willow." She didn't need to say any more. "I'm glad you called."

"I didn't know until last night. And you would have been sleeping."

Buffy looked down at her mug again, before gulping down the entire thing.

"Do you want to take a walk?"

BtVS - A:tS - Sw9

"How've you been doing?" Buffy asked as the two of them walked down the sidewalk.

"Aren't I supposed to be the one asking you that?" Angel gently joked.

"People have been asking that a lot."

"Because they care about you." They stopped walking at sat down at a park bench. All the kids had already gone home.

"I know that, but… I don't know." Buffy looked down at her feet.

"I just… I just missed you," she said quietly.

After a beat, he responded. "I missed you, too."

"Then why do I feel like nothing's going to change," she said, giving a dry chuckle.

"Buffy… You know nothing can happen."

"And what if I don't care." Angel felt like the sentence should have been yelled. Angry, sad, anything but the monotone voice she was giving now.

"What happened?" he finally responded.

"Didn't you hear what Willow said?" And he was almost glad to hear the bitterness in her voice.

"I want to hear what you say."

With that, Buffy finally let out the sobs she could let out before.

The Present

"Xander!" Willow screeched as she almost ran into her best friend.

"Hey, Will," he said. "I was just trying to find you. What's going on?" he asked, noticing the matching expressions of Willow and Lorne.

"It's… You know what?" she said, "I'm just going to explain it all when we're with Buffy and Angel."

"Do we need anyone else?"

Willow looked over at Lorne. "I don't think so."

"Then let's go," he said, turning around. He started leading the two down the hallway, to stop another bad guy.

Xander stopped. "Uh… Where are they?"

BtVS - A:tS - Sw9

Buffy and Angel looked at each other. There was nothing else to be said. Except…

"Cordelia?" Buffy asked.

"She's grown as a person. She's my friend," he responded. "Spike?"

"Originally… Well, you heard about my bad place." Buffy shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "And he has a soul now."

"Are you two…?" Angel asked, not sure what to expect.

Buffy shook her head. "No. I'm… not quite ready. With him. What about you and… Cordelia?"

"I have no idea," he said.

"Oh." The two continued to sit in silence, when Lorne, Willow and Xander burst in.

"Good, you're still here," Willow said.

"What's going on?"

"Bad news, crumb-cakes," Lorne said, sitting down.

"Cordelia's been possessed," Willow finished.

"What?" Xander said.

"Or, well, I think so," Willow said. "Lorne picked up something weird in his reading, so I did a spell- Don't worry! There wasn't any dark magic, but… It detected demonic energy, and there was some on Cordelia."

"That's normal," Angel said. "She's part demon." The Scoobies looked at him.

"When did this happen?" Buffy asked.

"She was human, and she couldn't handle the visions, so she became part demon."

"But this was more than that!" Willow said. "It was… you, Buffy and Lorne's energy put together. Probably more than that. And that's not normal."

"So, you're thinking possession?" Buffy asked.

Willow nodded.

"Well that's easy," Xander said. They looked at him.

"Xander, possession may be normal, but we have to figure out what kind of demon it is, how to remove it, not to mention find a way to keep her in place long enough to to the exorcism…"

"I don't know about the first two, but the last one, I know."

"What do you have in mind?" Buffy asked.

"Give me one second," he said, leaving.

Around Four and a Half Years Ago

"Do you think you'll ever get possessed?" Xander asked as he and Cordelia sat at the library table. It was of the rare moments they were alone in the library.

"Are you asking this because of the weird ghost possession thing Buffy just went through?"

"Uh… Yeah?"

"Considering we live on a Hellmouth," she said, "I'm thinking the answer is an obvious 'duh'."

Xander glanced back down at his homework before shutting the book. Who like math anyway? Besides Willow.

"What would you do if someone got processed?"

Cordelia shrugged. "I know what I'd do for me."

"What?" In response, she pulled out a piece of paper from her backpack for Xander to read over.

"Just keep it," she said after he had finished and tried to give it back. "I have copies."

"Cool," he said. Xander shoved the paper in the front of his backpack as Buffy and Willow entered the library.

The Present

"It's a good thing I haven't changed my backpack since high school," Xander joked as he finished his story. He pulled out a seriously crumpled piece of loose-leaf and handed it to Buffy.

Buffy shrugged, but smiled as she passed the paper to the others.

"We can work with it."

Willow snorted as she read it. "Definitely."

I hope you enjoyed this chapter! When I started this fic, I hadn't planned at all on writing Buffy and Angel's off screen meeting, but here I am. I just randomly invented Claire, but for some reason I really like her. As for the reason I skipped over Buffy and Angel telling each other about Cordy and Spike, I just feel like I've read a version of that conversation a lot recently and didn't feel like writing it. Honestly, I think it's a good thing, because it probably would have been filled with tons of "um"s. And the second flashback takes place after "I Only Have Eyes for You".