Chapter Two: Dirty Laundry
"My unlife?" Angel chuckled ruefully. "That's a good one." He sighed. "Well, let's see. Did you hear about Connor?"
"Connor?" Buffy's brow wrinkled a little. "Who's Connor?"
"My son," Angel said casually, hoping to avoid the Darla issue.
"You have a son!" Buffy exclaimed, sitting up straighter. "But you told me vampires couldn't have children!"
"Uh, well..."
"With who?" she interrupted, before he could attempt to explain.
He winced. "With Darla," he said quietly, hoping she wouldn't get sidetracked too much on that issue; his son was the important issue here.
It was not to be. "With Darla!" Buffy screamed. "When? I thought she was dead! I clearly remember you staking her six years ago."
"I did," Angel said. "Wolfram and Hart..."
"The law firm!"
Was she going to question everything he said? He quashed a momentary burst of annoyance and continued with his explanation. "Yes. They brought her back as a human and had Drusilla re-Sire her... it's a long story." He waved the rest of that away, hoping again that she wouldn't pry. "This was about three years ago."
"And you're giving me grief about Spike?" Buffy accused, leaping right to the most ironic implications of the story.
Angel winced again, looking away. "I was in a bad place at the time. I'd fired Wes, Cordy and Gunn-- Darla was trying to seduce me into turning into Angelus again. I was depressed, she was there---"
"Did it work?" Buffy asked, in a very quiet voice. Then she narrowed her eyes and glared. "You are, after all, more or less a eununch," she said sharply.
That was a low blow. He growled a little, annoyed again at her display of jealousy. "I am not a eununch. Why does everyone keep saying that?" he snarled.
"Well, there is this little thing called a curse," she replied. "You remember. The one time you and I had sex, that was all it took for you to go Angelus on me."
"That had nothing to do with the sex," Angel objected. "It was because with you, it was a moment of perfect happiness. With Darla, it was perfect despair. I've been doing a lot of thinking about what the curse means in the last few months. The gypsies didn't curse me not to have sex, just not to be happy about it."
"Any other conclusions?" Buffy asked, looking a little mollified.
"A few," he replied. "For example, that knowing I could go all fists and fangs means I will probably never know that perfect happiness with anyone ever again." He wondered if she would pick up on the implications of that; he could still hear the tone of her voice as she made that ridiculous cookie speech.
She didn't reply immediately, but Angel knew she would eventually have something to say. He decided to head it off at the pass. "If we are going to be rehashing our sex lives, I'm going to need something a lot stronger than tea." He got up and went into the kitchen, where he pulled out a bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey.
She eyed the bottle, then smiled wryly. "I could use a stiff drink, too."
Angel poured two drinks and handed one of them to Buffy. She stared down into the highball glass for a moment, then observed, "You know, this is something we never did."
"You were barely eighteen when I left," Angel shrugged. "What kind of pers-- I mean, what kind of boyfriend would I have been if I had encouraged underaged drinking?" And truthfully, he had never needed alcohol anyway to feel intoxicated around her.
"I didn't mean the drinking," she objected. "Although, I did get pretty drunk a couple of times before I turned 21. I meant, the honest heart-to-heart talking thing."
Angel tried to picture Buffy drunk, and couldn't imagine it. "Was that before or after you died the second time?" he asked, curiously.
"Both," she said. "Once, my freshman year in college, when I tried the beer at the bar Xander was working at and it made me turn into a cavewoman. It was pretty awful, except for the part where I got to beat up Parker. The other serious binge was after I came back and the bills started piling up and I couldn't hold down a job. I went to Spike's crypt and followed him to a bar; he was playing poker for kittens to get info on what was stalking me that week." She laughed, Angel wasn't sure at what.
"You went drinking with Spike?" he asked, bemused. "Then I'm surprised you remember any of it. I went pub crawling with him a time or two back in the day, and we got pretty plastered. The kind where the hangover lasts for days."
She frowned a little. "I didn't think you two were that good of buddies," she observed.
"You might be surprised," Angel muttered under his breath, "although 'buddies' isn't really the word for it." But he didn't want to dwell on that right now. Louder, he said, "Well, there were the times when Darla and Drusilla had those interminable dress fittings, and we had to do something to pass the time."
"That is not a thought I want to contemplate. You and Spike back in the bad old days." Buffy shuddered.
"Yeah, I don't really want to think about it most of the time either, but you do have to realize, Spike and I did have a history before we met again five years ago. Even after I got the soul back..."
She shook her head, and interrupted him, abruptly turning the conversation back to its original topic. "We were talking about the son you had with Darla, weren't we? Speaking of histories."
Angel finished off the shot in his glass, then poured another. "Okay. What do you want to know?" He began listing off answers, hoping to preempt most of her probable questions. "How it happened? No one knows other than that it was prophesied that a vampire would give birth. Have I slept with anyone else since you? Other than that time with Dru when I was Angelus, no." He furrowed his brow a little, remembering that they hadn't really talked about that time, either. "You did know about Dru, right?"
"Yes, I knew about Drusilla," she said, her tone a little brittle.
He picked up the explanation again, deciding to get it all off his chest as she had done before him. "I did kiss Cordelia once, though."
Buffy blinked. "Cordy? You and Cordy?"
"Yeah. It was this thing where we were possessed by old lovers, trying to solve the problem of a ballerina stuck in time. If she hadn't ascended and then come back evil, I might have asked her out, but we never got that far." He held up his hands, defensively, at her disbelieving expression. "I know what you're thinking, but she really has grown up from her 'Queen Bitch' days."
"I get that, but still. Cordelia? I mean, I know people change-- when we met, I didn't like you much--"
"You didn't?" Angel interrupted, a little hurt. "Why?"
"Well, you were always showing up with a cryptic warning and then disappearing again," she explained. "I pretty much associated you with bad news, after the first few times you did that. Not to mention, you were way too good looking not to have at least one major flaw, and I wasn't sure I wanted to find out what it was."
He sighed, picturing events from her sixteen-year-old perspective for a moment, and nodded. "I guess I get that. And you were right; I did have a major flaw. Still do, in fact." His eyes dropped to the cross necklace she was wearing, then away, and he poured them both another drink.
She snorted. "Yeah, you do. It was a good thing I had already started having feelings for you, or you would have been dust after that thing with Darla and my mom." She shook her head. "You know, it's really ironic that two out of the three most important relationships I've had have been with vampires. Some slayer I am, huh?" Buffy drained the shot he'd poured her, then reached for the bottle to pour herself another.
Angel noticed that, and started counting up just how many shots she'd had. He reached for the bottle, and put it behind him-- the last thing he needed was a drunk, maudlin Slayer on his hands. "We're back to that, are we?" he asked. "I'm cutting you off. I'm seen some unsettling things, but I don't think I'm prepared for drunk Buffy."
She laughed half-heartedly. "What, afraid I'll get even more depressing?"
"Something like that," he said, reaching out to tip her chin up. "You're a great slayer, Buffy. You've saved the world from what? Six apocalypses?" He frowned. "Or is it seven? And then you had the brilliant idea to make every Potential Slayer a Slayer, taking some of the weight off your shoulders. Who else would have had the kind of strength to share their power that way?"
She brushed off his attempt at encouragement. "Sure, I"m a great Slayer on the apocalyptic scale, but one on one with vamps? I'm terrible." Her voice rose in indignation. "I even had one sh-shrink me!" she stammered.
"Shrink you?" he blinked. "Oh, you mean psychoanalyze?"
"Yeah. One of the first people Spike turned when he was under the First's control was someone I went to high school with. He was a Psych major at Dartmouth, he came back to do an internship and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was just-- I was there to stake him, but I ended up making peace with some of my issues, talking to him--" She stopped there abruptly, and wailed. "Oh God, I'm such a loser!"
Buffy jumped up from her seat, flying at Angel. He caught her, distressed at her mood, and held her as she pummeled his chest with her fists, sobbing about being a horrible Slayer.
"Shhh," he said, rubbing her back. "Shh, it'll be all right. You're a very good Slayer," he told her, soothingly. "Did I ever tell you, I was scared of you when I was Angelus?"
She sniffled and pulled back, looking up at him. "You were? It didn't seem like it."
He chuckled a little, ruefully, thinking that they seemed to be circling the Angelus issue in the conversation like water going down a drain-- but then, it was the place where all their issues with each other converged. "Oh, that. That was just a cover, to put you off guard. You had really thrown me for a loop that night."
"Really? I thought I 'had a lot to learn about men' and that it was just 'a good time'," she said, a little bitterly. "Wasn't that what you said to me?"
Angel winced. This was the first time she'd thrown those words back in his face, and they stung. "I did say some pretty nasty things that morning," he apologized. "I know 'sorry' won't fix it, and I know I can't take it back." Something else occured to him, and he downed another shot trying to drown the guilt. "I probably warped your ideas of sexuality..."
She started a little at that comment, looking at him with surprise and a hint of indignation. "You're not responsible for my warped anything," she objected. "I didn't have any experience, I was incredibly naïve. I've learned a few things since then, I know you just said that to hurt me, it wasn't true. I just..."
Angel laughed darkly. "I'm sure that's true," he said, thinking about the nature of that 'experience'. "Spike was probably quite an education-- but really, you have no idea. The things I could teach you, if you were still inclined to go for the S&M side of things..."
Buffy cut him off. "Yet more of the past I really don't want to hear." She reached around him, fumbling for the whiskey bottle, and snagged it before he could remember she wasn't supposed to have any more. She poured another shot, and threw it back. "If you really want to talk about it though-- Spike told me once he'd done things with me he couldn't even spell, and that at times it was everything he could do to keep up with me."
Angel was impressed by that, despite himself. "Oh, really?" he asked, trying not to picture the two blonds together. "Well, I guess I'm glad I don't have to feel guilty about that any more, then. I have enough guilt where you're concerned, even without that."
She snorted. "You're not the only one with guilt," she said. Then she got up to walk toward the doors where he'd stood to look over the city a few moments before, the highball glass still clutched in one hand.
(end chapter two)