Part 4
So it happened that, a week later, when Angel was trying to brood over Buffy, Darla firmly walked into his room, sat down and said, "Alright, we leave you alone in here and you brood about that girl. Maybe you ought to try talking about her for a change."
Angel glared, "Leave me alone, and don't talk about her that way." He then firmly turned his back and returned to one of his favourite brooding pastimes. Repeatedly drawing the person he was agonising over, and then crumpling up the ones that didn't satisfy him.
"Angel," Darla gently laid her hand on his, "You never talk about her. It might help you to cope with things if you stopped bottling them up. I mean, I'd love to know what is it that makes her so special to you." At that he looked up searchingly.
When he found not even a hint of sarcasm he he fully turned to face her and started to speak. "In 1996 I was living on the streets in New York. I was feeding off of rats, and living like a vagrant. I was a vagrant. This demon, Whistler, found me and offered me the chance to be someone. I was set to refuse, but he told me to see something first.
"So we flew out to LA, and he drove me in a car with blacked out windows to a street facing a school. That was when I saw her. I saw her called, and I followed her that evening when she killed her first vampire, and when she went home and cried in her bedroom for the loss of her innocence. Her parents were fighting downstairs, and all I knew was that I loved this slayer." Angel looked at Darla who was much taken aback by the force of Angel's feelings and the poetic language he was speaking. She briefly considered letting herself out in the face of these embarrassingly powerful emotions, but she had a mission and was damned if she was going to fail because of some stupid feelings that he should have privacy.
So she plunged on, "So, when did you notice she'd started to fall for you?"
An unbelievably goofy smile crossed his face. She'd never seen anything like it, not even when he was at his most 'idiotically proud daddy' as Spike had once said. Angel's eyes went a little misty and he leaned back slightly, "The night when I wound up staying in her bedroom. The Three had just chased us to her house and she refused to let me leave in case they were still lurking out there," he paused and smiled, "She was so nervous when she remembered she didn't have a spare bed to offer me. God, if she had known what I was thinking..." he trailed off, lost in reminiscence.
"What were you thinking?" prodded Darla, now fascinated for her own sake.
"I was thinking that one bed and the two of us worked completely." He glanced at Darla and explained, "She just said 'One bed, two of us. That doesn't work.'" Darla chuckled slightly. He was right. It did and it didn't. He continued with his story, "The moment I knew she felt something was when she asked if I snored."
Darla was mildly surprised. She had no idea the Slayer could be that subtle. Certainly, for a fifteen-year-old girl, that was excellent fishing. "What did you tell her?" Buffy hadn't told her about this.
"I said it had been a long time since anyone was able to let me know." The look on Angel's face was sheer deviltry as he said this and Darla gave a snort of laughter.
"You didn't." He just looked at her and tilted his head meaningfully.
Darla began to think furiously. She had come here to find out what had happened from Angel's perspective that night at the Bronze. The problem was asking the question so that Angel wouldn't suspect anything. So, she asked another question that would hopefully lead him to answer what she wanted to know. "The night you two kissed the first time, I was close enough to hear the screams, but what happened in there?"
He winced, "I lost control. The last person I'd been close to that way was you, and you liked it when I changed face while we were kissing. It was a habit I had somewhat gotten into, and when she and I kissed," he paused, his eyes closed as he relived the moment, "The feelings were just so intense I couldn't help myself."
Darla just stared. "You? You lost control? You never lose control!"
He gave her a wry grin, "Buffy makes me lose it."
"Apparently." She shook her head, "That's not what I meant. How did the two of you wind up kissing in the first place?"
Angel laughed softly again, "She thought I read her diary," he said simply.
"What?"
He sighed, "I was stuck at her house all day. I couldn't sleep, and her mother came up a couple times to straighten up, and I had to hide in the closet. Anyway, there was nothing to do, so I read a couple of her romance novels," he shuddered. Darla joined him. Those things were unbelievable trashy. Angel continued, "I'll admit the parts she had dog-eared were... interesting." Darla raised and eyebrow at him and he changed the subject. Sort of, "I also went through a couple of her Cosmopolitan magazines. I think that's the only reason she was so amazing on our one night together," he added.
Darla gave him a LOOK. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"When we made love on her seventeenth birthday, I would never have known she was a virgin if it weren't for the... uh... physical evidence." Angel looked embarrassed as he spoke, and Darla rolled her eyes at him.
"You're more than 200 years old Angel. You can say 'maidenhood'. Hell you can say 'hymen'." Then she paused, "What do you mean that you wouldn't have been able to tell she was a virgin if it weren't for that?"
Angel twitched slightly and Darla recognised the signs of incipient male fantasy. She'd seen enough of them over the centuries. "Have you ever read one of those magazines? The stuff in them sometimes puts Spike's hard core internet pornography to shame. 'The Top Ten Methods to Please Your Man' reads like the Kama Sutra, only it's supposed to arouse," he said as his eyes glazed over in a cross between the 'Buffy look' and the 'man in lust look'.
Her eyes widened, "And mothers let their daughters read that stuff?"
He shook his head ruefully, "You ought to see the things Buffy snuck out of her mother's room."
Darla shook herself out of her state of distraction and forced him back on track. The story just kept getting more interesting. She was going to have to talk the other two into some flashbacks or retrospective bits to cover Angel's version of events. "So what about the diary thing?"
"Hunh?" Then he realised what she was asking. "Oh. Well, when she got upstairs she asked what I'd done all day. when I told her that I had read a little, I must have gestured to where her diary was." He grinned. "She was absolutely furious and started to tell me about how 'A' didn't stand for 'Angel', it stood for 'Achmed, a charming foreign exchange student', and that hunk could mean a lot of things, bad things!" The last was said in mock dramatic tones, and Darla was very amused. That the girl had thought she could manage to cover up her crush by saying something like that was hysterically funny.
"Then what?"
"Then I told her I hadn't read the diary, she believed me and was utterly humiliated. Of course by then I was trying to find a way to get away."
Darla interrupted, "Why? If you were so in love with the girl why didn't you just go along with it?"
It was now his turn to give her a LOOK, "Because it was wrong! I'm a two centuries old monster! She deserves better!" His voice was full of bitterness, and Darla smacked him upside the head for it.
"How can she do better than someone who, loves her as much as you do, who can watch her back when she's in a fight, and understands her calling?" She couldn't believe the man's stupidity. There were some things that Angel's evil twin and even his human self had over the current incarnation. The most obvious of which was that they didn't have this thrice bedamned inferiority complex. She'd apparently sired a moron.
Angel just looked at her with those pathos ridden eyes and made her feel like a cretin for hitting him, "We can't be together because of the loophole in my curse anyway," he said, "So it doesn't matter whether I'm good for her or not."
Darla stood up and joined him where he sat on the bed, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "It's okay," she said, "Maybe I should go." She made a move to stand up, but Angel pulled her back down and leaned into her.
"No. You were right. I have to talk about this. So I'll pick up where I left off?" He gazed at her with those sad dark eyes, and Darla hugged him gently before nodding encouragement. "Where was I?" he asked.
"You were trying to get out of the situation."
"Right. I started trying to tell her that she was a wonderful person and deserved a guy her own age, and told that I wanted to kiss her instead." Darla just rolled her eyes. Angel, unaware of the byplay continued. "We both started talking and I tried to get back to the speech I'd prepared about how the age difference was to big, and we couldn't be a couple. The next thing I know, she's looking at me with those big eyes, dressed in a small silky dress with a miniskirt, and then we were kissing."
Darla finished the scene for him. "Then you lost control etc."
He sighed wistfully. "Yeah." They were both silent for a couple moments until the wistful look on Angel's face intensified.
Darla glanced at him and asked, "What's wrong?"
"I..." he trailed off indecisively.
"What is it?" she gently laid her hand over his.
He looked down, fidgeting with his hands. "I just sometimes wish she and I had started to date after I staked ... you that night."
The opening she had been looking for! "You didn't?"
"No. The evening after we met at the Bronze and we decided that a vampire and a Slayer couldn't be anything," his expression was chagrined, "How right we were."
"What happened? I mean, the look on your face just says something did." Darla prompted gently. She didn't want him to be hurt, and she didn't want to blow her cover. If her ever figured out she was pumping him for information...
"Well, we met on the dance floor and she asked if I was okay, I asked after her mother, and then we pretty much agreed that nothing good would come of us."
"And..."
"And we both babbled about how we had to just give up the impossible dream."
"Angel, if you don't tell me what else happened I will not be held responsible for my actions." Darla was getting irritated. She could see there was more, and he was just gazing into space, and rubbing that small burn on his chest... that wasn't there until after he killed her she'd bet. "Does what happened next have anything to do with that scar you're rubbing?"
He glanced at her startled, then said ruefully, "Yeah. We kissed. She was wearing the cross I gave her when we finally met and it burned me. I didn't even notice until after she stepped away."
Now that she looked at it Darla could see the shape was crosslike. "You didn't notice you had a cross on your chest?" she asked dumbfounded.
"No. It hurt so much just giving up all my hopes about her that it didn't start to hurt until we stopped kissing. Then she walked into the crowd. It was like watching an angel sweep through a sea of humanity. She just lit up the dark in that room."
There was more silence, finally broken by Connor crying downstairs. They both got up and started to the door when Angel stopped Darla and looked at her seriously, "Thank you."
"Why?"
"For helping me remember why I love her so much." He fidgeted again briefly, then asked, "I don't suppose you'd be willing to listen again sometime?"
*YES!* "Anytime Angel."
***********************
Buffy's father reappeared and took Dawn away with him for a vacation in Hawaii, Tara and Willow figured out a witch could do as good a job at patrolling as a slayer, and Anya and Xander's second attempt at a wedding had gone off fine and the couple were now visiting the Grand Canyon. All this meant that when Buffy and Spike's people at the publisher's asked the pair to go on a book tour they were able to.
The tour took them on a whirlwind trip up and down the country, and through several other English-speaking countries as well. There was much consternation when William LaPointe revealed his extremely rare medical condition that prevented him from going outside during the day, but arrangements were made. So, while Dawn was relaxing in sunny Hawaii and surfing badly, Buffy and Spike were suffering from jetlag in an Australia hotel room.
Still, the promotional tour went well, and the money rolled in. Spike kept insisting on calling to attempt another renegotiation. Finally the company told him in no uncertain terms that this was the last time they would negotiate with him until the contract came up for renewal. Spike bitched in between signing sessions and being unconscious in the hotel room he and Buffy shared.
The first stop on the tour was New York. They had enough time to run up the Empire State Building and back down again, through the galleries and museums, and Times Square before they had to leave. That was in between signing enough books to give both of them tennis elbow, and going on enough talk shows to fill both of their BS quotas until Christmas.
Next was Chicago, then Des Moines, then Las Vegas, and a whole bunch of other cities that blurred as the days passed. It got to the point that neither knew where precisely they were until the radio talk show host said something like, "Welcome to KWBL! Indiana's favourite talk radio station!" At which point both would desperately try to recall what they knew about the state.
The worst part was that they weren't going in any particular order. They didn't cross the country North to South, East to West, or even on a diagonal. They just bounced up, down, left and right. Then things degenerated because they woke up to find themselves in Canada. Someplace called Moosejaw. They went from there to Toronto, on to Vancouver, (both were grateful enough television shows were filmed there that they could say *something*), then out to Halifax, and so on.
When they arrived in Britain, Spike tried to make a break for it and go to one of his favourite pubs. That failed when Buffy dragged him up to their room saying that since she didn't know her way around London he was going to have to suffer along with her by being stuck in the hotel with nothing to watch but snooker and the BBC. "Also, aren't you exhausted? I slept the entire flight and I can barely stand." Spike passed out on his bed.
Then they headed to York. Then Ipswich. Then Swansea. Then Cork. Inverness, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh followed. Then back to London because they had to make a TV appearance. In between bouts of cricket. "Pansy sport!" Spike snorted.
Then they crossed way too many time zones again, and woke up in Perth. Australia. "Weren't we supposed to be in Edinburgh?" Buffy asked.
"We were there on Tuesday," Spike replied.
"Oh."
On to Sydney, Darwin, Adelaide, and Fremantle. "I just checked an atlas. Perth is right next to Fremantle. Couldn't we have come here while we were in the area before?"
"Don't care. Wanna sleep." (thud)
"Missed the bed."
"Shut up."
Two days later. "Why the hell are we in South Africa?"
"Have you ever seen such pretty birdies?"
"Spike, stop smoking and sleep. You're freaking the hell out of me."
"Can't sleep. My arm hurts like it just got hit with a bat."
"It 's all the book signings. I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome."
The nightmare ended after an abysmal tour through the depths of redneck America. Then they both staggered back to Sunnydale and slept for a week. When Darla visited she found Spike didn't have the energy for anything. At all. This was discovered when four centuries of carnal experience had Spike falling asleep because he was allowed to lie still.
Willow and Tara came by Buffy's one afternoon to find her and Spike unconscious in the kitchen. There was much worried consultation between the two. It was interrupted when Buffy sat up and said, "Oh hell. Spike!"
"Hrghmph," came the response.
"We're on the kitchen floor. I think we should at least get to the couch."
"Hrghmph."
Buffy dragged Spike to the couch and hoisted him on as the two witches watched in bemusement. "We're fine. Just tired. Really," she said.
"Hrghmph," Spike added reassuringly.
Willow looked doubtful, "Buffy, I've never seen you this tired. Are you sure you're alright?"
"Hrghmph."
It took Buffy and Spike several days to convince the two wicca that they had simply overtired themselves tracking down a demon on their 'road trip'. Luckily, Buffy had kept a trophy of the sole demon they had run across on their tour, and she showed it to Willow who immediately requested that her friend throw out the incredibly disgusting horn her friend had chopped off the demon.
"It's not a horn," said Buffy.
Willow blinked at her, "But you said that was the source of its power, and it's hard and pointy."
Buffy nodded sagely, "It is, but the demon was a sexual predator that lured people into its grasp with psychic powers granted by this." As she spoke she handed it to Willow, who only held it until what Buffy had said reached her.
"Ewww!"
*******************
Spike made his way to LA as soon as he was able to drive without falling asleep at the wheel. When he got to the Hyperion Darla demanded several times during the greetings with the other members of the A-Team whether Spike was completely certain he was recovered from his bout with total exhaustion. When she was satisfied he was back to normal he was forced to give her several protracted apologies for falling asleep when she was trying to do things to him that were cardinal sins in at least five religions.
In between the apologies she heard about the tour. "So, the first people who are askin' us to sign their books want to know the answers to some of the most bloody stupid questions I ever heard."
"Like what?" Darla asked.
Spike growled in irritation, "Like 'Why doesn't the huntress own a submachine gun?' and 'Are you gay? 'Cause you write Kitty so well,' and 'Are you and Ms Winters married? I know you said you aren't in every interview I've ever seen but I just wanted to be sure because you're so cute together.'"
Darla glared, "That's not funny."
"It's not meant to be. Some bint in a purple sweater with large yellow polka-dots asked me that. Twice." Spike was now all tense, so Darla was forced to relax him to get more information out of him.
When she had gleaned all the details she could, she presented him with her findings on Angel's perspective about his and Buffy's relationship. She spoke of the sheer number of times he waxed eloquent in poetic language when discussing his soulmate, and told Spike all about the almost-words Connor had been babbling in all summer.
"He's been saying 'Nah' a lot, and I really think he's figured out that it acts as a negation when he says it," Darla said eagerly, "And just this morning he called me 'Mah'." She was so very proud that Spike decided not to ruin the moment by pointing out that the boy also frequently said, 'Ah', 'Bah', Kah', 'Dah', 'Fah', and so on. The boy had a tremendous grasp of the existence of consonants and vowels, but Spike was uncertain that meant he was starting to talk. Didn't they have about six months until babies actually started speaking?
Angel was also a big soppy goof about his son, and Spike found himself coping with an Americanised Angel who wanted to teach his son ice hockey. "Why don't you get the boy a football and teach him a real sport?" Spike asked as Angel and Gunn made fools of themselves with miniature hockey sticks.
"I don't want him playing a game with that much violence in it," Angel explained to Spike, (conveniently disregarding the fact that NHL hockey is frequently more violent that the blood sport that is boxing, or even American football or a rugby match) "Besides, those pads look ridiculous."
It took Spike a moment to figure out what his grandsire was talking about, during which time Gunn had gotten into an argument with Angel about the great American pastime of watching grown men tackle each other while wearing garish uniforms. "How can you say that? Football is the greatest sport ever!"
"They're grown men wearing bizarrely coloured breeches and with frequently stupid team names," Angel retorted. "I mean really, the Miami Dolphins?"
"Hey the Dolphins are a great team! Besides there's a lot of strategy involved in a game, and those guys have to work really hard-"
"To look like tubs of lard who give each other concussions?"
Spike interrupted them at this point having determined that Angel had been speaking American to him and not English. "You bleedin' moron! Sometimes I wonder if you're not some impostor from Philadelphia pretendin' to be Angelus!"
"Hey!" complained Angel.
Gunn had a more pertinent question, "Why Philly?"
"It just fit." Spike glared at Angel again, "I was talkin' about football you wanker. Real football, the sport Americans call soccer?"
Angel matched Spike's glare with one of his own, "I want him to grow up here, so he should be like the other kids his age."
"You want to turn him into..." Spike paused as he searched for an adequate descriptive. Then Cordelia came walking in speaking with one of her insipid friends on the phone and Spike had his word. "Her!" he said pointing at Cordelia who had just said, "So, I like, totally agree. If Becky can't get Davis to take her out she should definitely make him ask her."
Suddenly aware of the scrutiny she told her friend, "Listen, Kelsey? I'll have to call you back." She turned to look at them fully, and said, "What?"
All three men bolted in different directions, none wishing to face Cordelia's wrath. She just blinked at their retreating forms, shrugged, and called her friend back. "Anyway, so Kelsey? Yeah. I know. Becky needs to ask him to ask her so she can get him to ask her about... Well duh!"
So it happened that, a week later, when Angel was trying to brood over Buffy, Darla firmly walked into his room, sat down and said, "Alright, we leave you alone in here and you brood about that girl. Maybe you ought to try talking about her for a change."
Angel glared, "Leave me alone, and don't talk about her that way." He then firmly turned his back and returned to one of his favourite brooding pastimes. Repeatedly drawing the person he was agonising over, and then crumpling up the ones that didn't satisfy him.
"Angel," Darla gently laid her hand on his, "You never talk about her. It might help you to cope with things if you stopped bottling them up. I mean, I'd love to know what is it that makes her so special to you." At that he looked up searchingly.
When he found not even a hint of sarcasm he he fully turned to face her and started to speak. "In 1996 I was living on the streets in New York. I was feeding off of rats, and living like a vagrant. I was a vagrant. This demon, Whistler, found me and offered me the chance to be someone. I was set to refuse, but he told me to see something first.
"So we flew out to LA, and he drove me in a car with blacked out windows to a street facing a school. That was when I saw her. I saw her called, and I followed her that evening when she killed her first vampire, and when she went home and cried in her bedroom for the loss of her innocence. Her parents were fighting downstairs, and all I knew was that I loved this slayer." Angel looked at Darla who was much taken aback by the force of Angel's feelings and the poetic language he was speaking. She briefly considered letting herself out in the face of these embarrassingly powerful emotions, but she had a mission and was damned if she was going to fail because of some stupid feelings that he should have privacy.
So she plunged on, "So, when did you notice she'd started to fall for you?"
An unbelievably goofy smile crossed his face. She'd never seen anything like it, not even when he was at his most 'idiotically proud daddy' as Spike had once said. Angel's eyes went a little misty and he leaned back slightly, "The night when I wound up staying in her bedroom. The Three had just chased us to her house and she refused to let me leave in case they were still lurking out there," he paused and smiled, "She was so nervous when she remembered she didn't have a spare bed to offer me. God, if she had known what I was thinking..." he trailed off, lost in reminiscence.
"What were you thinking?" prodded Darla, now fascinated for her own sake.
"I was thinking that one bed and the two of us worked completely." He glanced at Darla and explained, "She just said 'One bed, two of us. That doesn't work.'" Darla chuckled slightly. He was right. It did and it didn't. He continued with his story, "The moment I knew she felt something was when she asked if I snored."
Darla was mildly surprised. She had no idea the Slayer could be that subtle. Certainly, for a fifteen-year-old girl, that was excellent fishing. "What did you tell her?" Buffy hadn't told her about this.
"I said it had been a long time since anyone was able to let me know." The look on Angel's face was sheer deviltry as he said this and Darla gave a snort of laughter.
"You didn't." He just looked at her and tilted his head meaningfully.
Darla began to think furiously. She had come here to find out what had happened from Angel's perspective that night at the Bronze. The problem was asking the question so that Angel wouldn't suspect anything. So, she asked another question that would hopefully lead him to answer what she wanted to know. "The night you two kissed the first time, I was close enough to hear the screams, but what happened in there?"
He winced, "I lost control. The last person I'd been close to that way was you, and you liked it when I changed face while we were kissing. It was a habit I had somewhat gotten into, and when she and I kissed," he paused, his eyes closed as he relived the moment, "The feelings were just so intense I couldn't help myself."
Darla just stared. "You? You lost control? You never lose control!"
He gave her a wry grin, "Buffy makes me lose it."
"Apparently." She shook her head, "That's not what I meant. How did the two of you wind up kissing in the first place?"
Angel laughed softly again, "She thought I read her diary," he said simply.
"What?"
He sighed, "I was stuck at her house all day. I couldn't sleep, and her mother came up a couple times to straighten up, and I had to hide in the closet. Anyway, there was nothing to do, so I read a couple of her romance novels," he shuddered. Darla joined him. Those things were unbelievable trashy. Angel continued, "I'll admit the parts she had dog-eared were... interesting." Darla raised and eyebrow at him and he changed the subject. Sort of, "I also went through a couple of her Cosmopolitan magazines. I think that's the only reason she was so amazing on our one night together," he added.
Darla gave him a LOOK. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"When we made love on her seventeenth birthday, I would never have known she was a virgin if it weren't for the... uh... physical evidence." Angel looked embarrassed as he spoke, and Darla rolled her eyes at him.
"You're more than 200 years old Angel. You can say 'maidenhood'. Hell you can say 'hymen'." Then she paused, "What do you mean that you wouldn't have been able to tell she was a virgin if it weren't for that?"
Angel twitched slightly and Darla recognised the signs of incipient male fantasy. She'd seen enough of them over the centuries. "Have you ever read one of those magazines? The stuff in them sometimes puts Spike's hard core internet pornography to shame. 'The Top Ten Methods to Please Your Man' reads like the Kama Sutra, only it's supposed to arouse," he said as his eyes glazed over in a cross between the 'Buffy look' and the 'man in lust look'.
Her eyes widened, "And mothers let their daughters read that stuff?"
He shook his head ruefully, "You ought to see the things Buffy snuck out of her mother's room."
Darla shook herself out of her state of distraction and forced him back on track. The story just kept getting more interesting. She was going to have to talk the other two into some flashbacks or retrospective bits to cover Angel's version of events. "So what about the diary thing?"
"Hunh?" Then he realised what she was asking. "Oh. Well, when she got upstairs she asked what I'd done all day. when I told her that I had read a little, I must have gestured to where her diary was." He grinned. "She was absolutely furious and started to tell me about how 'A' didn't stand for 'Angel', it stood for 'Achmed, a charming foreign exchange student', and that hunk could mean a lot of things, bad things!" The last was said in mock dramatic tones, and Darla was very amused. That the girl had thought she could manage to cover up her crush by saying something like that was hysterically funny.
"Then what?"
"Then I told her I hadn't read the diary, she believed me and was utterly humiliated. Of course by then I was trying to find a way to get away."
Darla interrupted, "Why? If you were so in love with the girl why didn't you just go along with it?"
It was now his turn to give her a LOOK, "Because it was wrong! I'm a two centuries old monster! She deserves better!" His voice was full of bitterness, and Darla smacked him upside the head for it.
"How can she do better than someone who, loves her as much as you do, who can watch her back when she's in a fight, and understands her calling?" She couldn't believe the man's stupidity. There were some things that Angel's evil twin and even his human self had over the current incarnation. The most obvious of which was that they didn't have this thrice bedamned inferiority complex. She'd apparently sired a moron.
Angel just looked at her with those pathos ridden eyes and made her feel like a cretin for hitting him, "We can't be together because of the loophole in my curse anyway," he said, "So it doesn't matter whether I'm good for her or not."
Darla stood up and joined him where he sat on the bed, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "It's okay," she said, "Maybe I should go." She made a move to stand up, but Angel pulled her back down and leaned into her.
"No. You were right. I have to talk about this. So I'll pick up where I left off?" He gazed at her with those sad dark eyes, and Darla hugged him gently before nodding encouragement. "Where was I?" he asked.
"You were trying to get out of the situation."
"Right. I started trying to tell her that she was a wonderful person and deserved a guy her own age, and told that I wanted to kiss her instead." Darla just rolled her eyes. Angel, unaware of the byplay continued. "We both started talking and I tried to get back to the speech I'd prepared about how the age difference was to big, and we couldn't be a couple. The next thing I know, she's looking at me with those big eyes, dressed in a small silky dress with a miniskirt, and then we were kissing."
Darla finished the scene for him. "Then you lost control etc."
He sighed wistfully. "Yeah." They were both silent for a couple moments until the wistful look on Angel's face intensified.
Darla glanced at him and asked, "What's wrong?"
"I..." he trailed off indecisively.
"What is it?" she gently laid her hand over his.
He looked down, fidgeting with his hands. "I just sometimes wish she and I had started to date after I staked ... you that night."
The opening she had been looking for! "You didn't?"
"No. The evening after we met at the Bronze and we decided that a vampire and a Slayer couldn't be anything," his expression was chagrined, "How right we were."
"What happened? I mean, the look on your face just says something did." Darla prompted gently. She didn't want him to be hurt, and she didn't want to blow her cover. If her ever figured out she was pumping him for information...
"Well, we met on the dance floor and she asked if I was okay, I asked after her mother, and then we pretty much agreed that nothing good would come of us."
"And..."
"And we both babbled about how we had to just give up the impossible dream."
"Angel, if you don't tell me what else happened I will not be held responsible for my actions." Darla was getting irritated. She could see there was more, and he was just gazing into space, and rubbing that small burn on his chest... that wasn't there until after he killed her she'd bet. "Does what happened next have anything to do with that scar you're rubbing?"
He glanced at her startled, then said ruefully, "Yeah. We kissed. She was wearing the cross I gave her when we finally met and it burned me. I didn't even notice until after she stepped away."
Now that she looked at it Darla could see the shape was crosslike. "You didn't notice you had a cross on your chest?" she asked dumbfounded.
"No. It hurt so much just giving up all my hopes about her that it didn't start to hurt until we stopped kissing. Then she walked into the crowd. It was like watching an angel sweep through a sea of humanity. She just lit up the dark in that room."
There was more silence, finally broken by Connor crying downstairs. They both got up and started to the door when Angel stopped Darla and looked at her seriously, "Thank you."
"Why?"
"For helping me remember why I love her so much." He fidgeted again briefly, then asked, "I don't suppose you'd be willing to listen again sometime?"
*YES!* "Anytime Angel."
***********************
Buffy's father reappeared and took Dawn away with him for a vacation in Hawaii, Tara and Willow figured out a witch could do as good a job at patrolling as a slayer, and Anya and Xander's second attempt at a wedding had gone off fine and the couple were now visiting the Grand Canyon. All this meant that when Buffy and Spike's people at the publisher's asked the pair to go on a book tour they were able to.
The tour took them on a whirlwind trip up and down the country, and through several other English-speaking countries as well. There was much consternation when William LaPointe revealed his extremely rare medical condition that prevented him from going outside during the day, but arrangements were made. So, while Dawn was relaxing in sunny Hawaii and surfing badly, Buffy and Spike were suffering from jetlag in an Australia hotel room.
Still, the promotional tour went well, and the money rolled in. Spike kept insisting on calling to attempt another renegotiation. Finally the company told him in no uncertain terms that this was the last time they would negotiate with him until the contract came up for renewal. Spike bitched in between signing sessions and being unconscious in the hotel room he and Buffy shared.
The first stop on the tour was New York. They had enough time to run up the Empire State Building and back down again, through the galleries and museums, and Times Square before they had to leave. That was in between signing enough books to give both of them tennis elbow, and going on enough talk shows to fill both of their BS quotas until Christmas.
Next was Chicago, then Des Moines, then Las Vegas, and a whole bunch of other cities that blurred as the days passed. It got to the point that neither knew where precisely they were until the radio talk show host said something like, "Welcome to KWBL! Indiana's favourite talk radio station!" At which point both would desperately try to recall what they knew about the state.
The worst part was that they weren't going in any particular order. They didn't cross the country North to South, East to West, or even on a diagonal. They just bounced up, down, left and right. Then things degenerated because they woke up to find themselves in Canada. Someplace called Moosejaw. They went from there to Toronto, on to Vancouver, (both were grateful enough television shows were filmed there that they could say *something*), then out to Halifax, and so on.
When they arrived in Britain, Spike tried to make a break for it and go to one of his favourite pubs. That failed when Buffy dragged him up to their room saying that since she didn't know her way around London he was going to have to suffer along with her by being stuck in the hotel with nothing to watch but snooker and the BBC. "Also, aren't you exhausted? I slept the entire flight and I can barely stand." Spike passed out on his bed.
Then they headed to York. Then Ipswich. Then Swansea. Then Cork. Inverness, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh followed. Then back to London because they had to make a TV appearance. In between bouts of cricket. "Pansy sport!" Spike snorted.
Then they crossed way too many time zones again, and woke up in Perth. Australia. "Weren't we supposed to be in Edinburgh?" Buffy asked.
"We were there on Tuesday," Spike replied.
"Oh."
On to Sydney, Darwin, Adelaide, and Fremantle. "I just checked an atlas. Perth is right next to Fremantle. Couldn't we have come here while we were in the area before?"
"Don't care. Wanna sleep." (thud)
"Missed the bed."
"Shut up."
Two days later. "Why the hell are we in South Africa?"
"Have you ever seen such pretty birdies?"
"Spike, stop smoking and sleep. You're freaking the hell out of me."
"Can't sleep. My arm hurts like it just got hit with a bat."
"It 's all the book signings. I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome."
The nightmare ended after an abysmal tour through the depths of redneck America. Then they both staggered back to Sunnydale and slept for a week. When Darla visited she found Spike didn't have the energy for anything. At all. This was discovered when four centuries of carnal experience had Spike falling asleep because he was allowed to lie still.
Willow and Tara came by Buffy's one afternoon to find her and Spike unconscious in the kitchen. There was much worried consultation between the two. It was interrupted when Buffy sat up and said, "Oh hell. Spike!"
"Hrghmph," came the response.
"We're on the kitchen floor. I think we should at least get to the couch."
"Hrghmph."
Buffy dragged Spike to the couch and hoisted him on as the two witches watched in bemusement. "We're fine. Just tired. Really," she said.
"Hrghmph," Spike added reassuringly.
Willow looked doubtful, "Buffy, I've never seen you this tired. Are you sure you're alright?"
"Hrghmph."
It took Buffy and Spike several days to convince the two wicca that they had simply overtired themselves tracking down a demon on their 'road trip'. Luckily, Buffy had kept a trophy of the sole demon they had run across on their tour, and she showed it to Willow who immediately requested that her friend throw out the incredibly disgusting horn her friend had chopped off the demon.
"It's not a horn," said Buffy.
Willow blinked at her, "But you said that was the source of its power, and it's hard and pointy."
Buffy nodded sagely, "It is, but the demon was a sexual predator that lured people into its grasp with psychic powers granted by this." As she spoke she handed it to Willow, who only held it until what Buffy had said reached her.
"Ewww!"
*******************
Spike made his way to LA as soon as he was able to drive without falling asleep at the wheel. When he got to the Hyperion Darla demanded several times during the greetings with the other members of the A-Team whether Spike was completely certain he was recovered from his bout with total exhaustion. When she was satisfied he was back to normal he was forced to give her several protracted apologies for falling asleep when she was trying to do things to him that were cardinal sins in at least five religions.
In between the apologies she heard about the tour. "So, the first people who are askin' us to sign their books want to know the answers to some of the most bloody stupid questions I ever heard."
"Like what?" Darla asked.
Spike growled in irritation, "Like 'Why doesn't the huntress own a submachine gun?' and 'Are you gay? 'Cause you write Kitty so well,' and 'Are you and Ms Winters married? I know you said you aren't in every interview I've ever seen but I just wanted to be sure because you're so cute together.'"
Darla glared, "That's not funny."
"It's not meant to be. Some bint in a purple sweater with large yellow polka-dots asked me that. Twice." Spike was now all tense, so Darla was forced to relax him to get more information out of him.
When she had gleaned all the details she could, she presented him with her findings on Angel's perspective about his and Buffy's relationship. She spoke of the sheer number of times he waxed eloquent in poetic language when discussing his soulmate, and told Spike all about the almost-words Connor had been babbling in all summer.
"He's been saying 'Nah' a lot, and I really think he's figured out that it acts as a negation when he says it," Darla said eagerly, "And just this morning he called me 'Mah'." She was so very proud that Spike decided not to ruin the moment by pointing out that the boy also frequently said, 'Ah', 'Bah', Kah', 'Dah', 'Fah', and so on. The boy had a tremendous grasp of the existence of consonants and vowels, but Spike was uncertain that meant he was starting to talk. Didn't they have about six months until babies actually started speaking?
Angel was also a big soppy goof about his son, and Spike found himself coping with an Americanised Angel who wanted to teach his son ice hockey. "Why don't you get the boy a football and teach him a real sport?" Spike asked as Angel and Gunn made fools of themselves with miniature hockey sticks.
"I don't want him playing a game with that much violence in it," Angel explained to Spike, (conveniently disregarding the fact that NHL hockey is frequently more violent that the blood sport that is boxing, or even American football or a rugby match) "Besides, those pads look ridiculous."
It took Spike a moment to figure out what his grandsire was talking about, during which time Gunn had gotten into an argument with Angel about the great American pastime of watching grown men tackle each other while wearing garish uniforms. "How can you say that? Football is the greatest sport ever!"
"They're grown men wearing bizarrely coloured breeches and with frequently stupid team names," Angel retorted. "I mean really, the Miami Dolphins?"
"Hey the Dolphins are a great team! Besides there's a lot of strategy involved in a game, and those guys have to work really hard-"
"To look like tubs of lard who give each other concussions?"
Spike interrupted them at this point having determined that Angel had been speaking American to him and not English. "You bleedin' moron! Sometimes I wonder if you're not some impostor from Philadelphia pretendin' to be Angelus!"
"Hey!" complained Angel.
Gunn had a more pertinent question, "Why Philly?"
"It just fit." Spike glared at Angel again, "I was talkin' about football you wanker. Real football, the sport Americans call soccer?"
Angel matched Spike's glare with one of his own, "I want him to grow up here, so he should be like the other kids his age."
"You want to turn him into..." Spike paused as he searched for an adequate descriptive. Then Cordelia came walking in speaking with one of her insipid friends on the phone and Spike had his word. "Her!" he said pointing at Cordelia who had just said, "So, I like, totally agree. If Becky can't get Davis to take her out she should definitely make him ask her."
Suddenly aware of the scrutiny she told her friend, "Listen, Kelsey? I'll have to call you back." She turned to look at them fully, and said, "What?"
All three men bolted in different directions, none wishing to face Cordelia's wrath. She just blinked at their retreating forms, shrugged, and called her friend back. "Anyway, so Kelsey? Yeah. I know. Becky needs to ask him to ask her so she can get him to ask her about... Well duh!"