A/N: Hope this one's enjoyed, even though Angel's the one dealt with in a bit...of a rough manner...I love him, I do. Tough lovin'. This is also, I've decided, unabashed humor/sop. There's nothing objective about it--I'm Spuffy all the way with this one. :D
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Buffy's first thoughts are, funnily enough, those of annoyance. Instead of the usual, fuzzy-headed euphoria of Yay! Angel's here, oh my god, how's my hair?, mostly what she's thinking is, Damn, no Spike lips, and Angel looks like he's going to yell. Oh my god, how's my hair?
Well. Some things never change.
The mania of seeing Spike again is still faintly running through Buffy's blood, and she wonders what Angel would do if he saw her lean up and kiss the bleached blonde vampire he grand-sired so long ago. Probably go ballistic and kill people, seeing as he's all shady and evil again. Her lips purse at the thought and she places her hands on her hips, ready to step forward and give him a piece of her mind.
Then Angel's glower darkens and Buffy hastily decides she doesn't want to test her theory. Not that she couldn't hold her own, or anything. Just that unneccessary bloodshed is so Sunnydale.
Also, considering the fact that she and Angel almost always lock lips whenever they see each other now, it'd probably be a bit hypocritical--not to mention insensitive--for her to go all pissy about Angel halting her own Spike mackage.
"Angel," she says, her voice high and bright. "Uh, hey."
Angel's eyebrow arches, because, yes, admittedly, lame greeting. But then Buffy's brow furrows--just 'cause she's not leaping into his arms and pining away, her greeting is suddenly not up to muster? What the heck is that?
"It's very up to muster," she mumbles to herself. "Many people say hey by way of salutations, it's totally musterful. Full of muster." She juts her chin up. "Yeah, hey is just fine. I can say hey if I want. Hey, Angel. Hey."
Angel's eyebrow is still way up there. "Hey, Buffy."
There is silence for a moment save for the music all around them, and Buffy stifles a sigh. Her toes are mighty interesting right now. Very cute toes, they don't look like they're attached to an awkward, vampire-loving moron at all. Misleading toes. Bad toes, bad.
The silence is broken, unsurprisingly enough, by Spike. "God, this is pathetic."
"You? Yeah, I've always said so," Angel smirks. There is a tension, a nervous energy to him that Buffy wonders about, but it doesn't keep her from shooting him an admonishing glare.
"Angel, don't."
The universe tilts a little at this reversal. It's one thing to be all Encourage Girl for Spike when it's just him and her and a whole bunch of crazy talk in the Sunnydale High basement. But she's never done it before outside of impending apocalypse (and to Angel of all people, oh God, how surreal and ironic is her life?). Never had any real reason to ask people to lay off Spike, besides the 'he's the best warrior we have' shpiel, which by the end, even Buffy sort of was tired to hear. Now she doesn't have an armageddon to fall back on, but surprisingly enough, she finds she doesn't need one.
It feels good to defend him simply because she cares for him. It's like they're almost...friends. She and Angel, they never got to be friends. It was always 'woe is our love, don't hate on it because it's tragic and doomed anyways' but with Spike--with Spike, there was sort of friendship, kinship between all the wild sex and self-abuse and kickery. Or there could have been. There could be, Buffy firmly corrects herself, and squares her shoulders.
"Spike's not pathetic, okay?" Buffy says with the air of someone who knows these things intimately. And boy does she ever--Angel wants pathetic? Maybe he should sit in on Andrew's geekathon DVD runs every now and then--that was patheticness squared, no, cubed.
"No?" Angel's eyes narrow, and he looks absurdly like a kicked puppy. "No. I guess, uh, not." He cocks his head, as if pondering some great mystery. Like what "he's in my heart" could still mean after all that's happened. Then all the tension and animosity and hurt drains from his face and he drags a hand across his eyes as if he's very, very tired. "In any case, we don't have time for arguments. Whatever game we might play under other circumstances, it's gonna have to wait. Things are brewing. Big things." His eyes meet Buffy's. "And it's no coincidence that you're here, huh?"
Buffy gives a long-suffering sigh. "Where I go, big things follow."
Spike's lascivious grin is cut off by Buffy's knowing look. "Don't even touch that comment right now." Then, relenting because after all, hello, he'd been nice after her resurrection, she takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. This doesn't escape Angel's notice, and he gives her a pinched look, like he's about to say something.
"So what's this big thing we don't have time for arguments because of?" She looks at Angel expectantly, arching her eyebrow. Sure, she's iffy about this whole standing up to Angel and showing him she can have a boyfriend (or a friend of the male vampire persuasion) if she wants, even though if they ever got in a fight they'd kill each other instead of Angel ripping said boyfriend's head off and drinking his spleen like he could've with Riley. But she's got to rise above it, especially since Angel tends to get prissy enough for the both of them about things like this. He has to get used to seeing that Spike is a part of Buffy now, just like she got used to finding out Angel had a freaking son (a son, although Willow hadn't been too clear on the details that one drunken weekend in Rio). Plus, he's obviously not the same man (or vampman) he once was--she's got to stand her ground or risk falling into the googly eyes of doom.
Doesn't mean she's nervous, not at all. She only made promises of being cookies one day and saving the delicious oatmeal raisinishness of her for him, only to indeed "give him the brush off for Captain Peroxide." It's not the stuff of perfect happiness, that's for sure, but that doesn't mean Angel still can't go all angsty and evilly on her now.
Buffy sighs and chides herself. No, she thinks, No jitterbugs in this tummy. Slayers can't show nervousness. Vampires can smell it, among other things.
"You smell nervous," Spike whispers in her ear. Buffy jumps.
"God! That is so freaky," she grits out.
"What're you nervous for?"
Buffy shakes her head. Whatever new feelings she's having for Spike, new feelings of protectiveness and--and that other thing, she can't share them yet. And it wouldn't be fair to either her or Spike to do that. They're different people now, Spike's been through things and so has she. They have to take some time before they can--
"And your knickers are wet, too."
--start having sex again.
No, Buffy says sternly in her head. No Spike sex. What are you, some sort of Slutty Buffy? How about hit first base before rounding all the way home? No Spike sex. Yet.
Spike's smoky laugh echoes in her ear.
But maybe Spike lips. Maybe.
"Are you done yet?" Angel's pained voice breaks through Buffy's haze and she starts guiltily, remembering the whole vampire-super-hearing thing. She glances at Spike suspiciously, and seeing him grin smugly, realizes that he remembered the vampire-super-hearing thing, too. She narrows her eyes and kicks him subtly in the shins.
"Yep. All done," she declares, and Spike mutters a curse under his breath, locking his fingers around her wrist and jutting his chin out at Angel. Angel gives them a curt nod that says they'll be discussing things later, and Buffy just rolls her eyes. Stupid vampires and their dumb possessiveness.
"There's something big happening," Angel declares. "And it involves Buffy."
Buffy rolls her eyes again. "Big surprise," she mutters darkly. "Is it an apocalypse?"
Angel shakes his head. "I don't know. Cordelia had a vision, and all she told me was that you were in town, and that something was about to happen. And then she said, 'Tell her those jeans would be cute if they weren't a size zero.'" Angel stops and seems to attempt to stare at his own mouth in wonder. "I...didn't really mean to quote her directly," he says lamely.
Buffy arches a brow. "We all live in hope not." She looks down at her jeans. "And these are a size four!" she says indignantly. "I'm bulking up."
Spike leers. "I think you look perfect," he says. "Vision Girl doesn't know what she's blathering about."
Angel narrows his eyes. "Spike," he grits out. "Shut up." He looks down at Buffy, using his patented hunky-gaze, all intense and concerned. "Have you seen any demonic happenings around here since you've arrived?"
Buffy has to stop herself from saying "Those shoes and that shirt," but boy, does it take effort. Angel's style sense sure has gotten...well, more boring. He's all suit jackets and plum button-ups, now, and where the hell did the Armani loafers come from? She glances at Spike and is relieved to see he still looks the same: black duster, black t-shirt, black jeans. Nice and creature-of-the-darknessy, not all Business Weekly.
"Nope," she answers Angel. "Got in this morning, haven't really had time to see anything foreboding. But you, now, you work at an evil lawfirm. Have you seen anything demonic happening since I've arrived?"
Angel's eyes darken. "A couple ritual sacrifices," he says evenly. "Nothing too hairy." Off Buffy's look, he shakes his head. "Come on, Buffy. You know better."
"No, Angel. What I know is that one minute Wolfram & Hart is a really insiduous firm with a track record of, oh, you know, killing people. Then the next, you're their CEO, and the reputation isn't taking any blows. No, it's actually better, cause guess what? Angelus is the new freakin' higher-up!" Buffy steps close, her eyes calculating. She's not sure if she believes Angel is really evil per se, but she really wants to understand what made Angel make this decision...and also, what Spike's part in this whole shebang is.
"How do you know all this?" Angel asks, his jaw tense.
"Giles asked around. I asked around. You have a real rep among the nasties--very Scourge of Europe-y." Buffy folds her arms and turns to Spike. "And you. You came back as a ghost because Wolfram & Hart hand-delivered you and that wasn't suspicious to you at all? And then you finally recorpealize, and you stay here? With the evil dudes and Angel? Don't you guys hate each other?"
"Definitely."
"Oh, with a burning passion."
Buffy sighs and throws up her hands at Angel and Spike's feverish agreement. "Then what's going on? Why are you--" she points to Angel, "--evil, and why are you--" she points to Spike, "--a big chicken?"
"We're not!" Angel says, exasperated. Then, catching Spike's eye, he hastily amends, "Well, I'm not evil. He's still a chicken." Angel rakes a hand through his hair. "Buffy, you know I care for you, I always will, but I just don't have time for our little back-and-forth right now--"
Buffy puts a hand up. "Whoa, there. Who's backing what forth now? Angel, I'm not angsting out about our forbidden love, here, I'm seriously curious as to how you made one of the worst decisions I've known you to ever make, and uh, hello, I've known you to make a few--"
Spike coughs something that sounds like 'hair gel' and Buffy feels a warm sense of kinship come over her. Yeah, Angel's hair gel is dumb!
"Look, Buffy." Angel's face is in granite-mode now, which means he's pretty much tuning out everything and anything unagreeable after he makes his speech. "I realize that to you, I've just been messing up ever since I came to Sunnydale to help you out during your Apocalypse, without questioning your pretty questionable way of handling things, I might add. But taking over Wolfram & Hart was my decision to make in the first place, and I happen to think me and my team are doing some good. Sorry we're not all sunbathing in la citta eterna here, but we've got priorities. In any case, thanks for letting me in on Giles's--whoops, your--opinion concerning Wolfram & Hart. Now, you can either work with us against this big evil Cordy saw, or you can go home." His lips are in a tight line and he is leaning over Buffy now, doing that intimidating, towering thing he always liked to do when he was losing fights with her.
Whereas once, Buffy might have cried at such a speech, now she only feels good old-fashioned feministic righteousness. Has Angel always been this pushy about making decisions that included the both of them? In a word: yes, but the difference is, Buffy's a lot older now, and a lot more tired now, and she can finally call him on all the B.S he likes to call their "issues."
Her eyes blaze. "Angel? When did you become the boss of Buffy? When did this happen? Did I sign a contract? Was I just not there when it happened? Did you make an executive decision? Well, too bad, buddy. I'm not employed by Wolfram & Hart, and since I could beat you up, you don't get to tell me what to do." She stomps forward and shoves Angel's shoulder a little. "Go home? Nuh with a double side of uh, buddy. I'm on vacation, okay? So I didn't even really come here to question your evilness or proclaimed lack thereof. I came here for him." Buffy jerks a thumb back to point at Spike, and Angel's expression is priceless.
"You did?" Angel asks, mouth dropped open.
"You did?" Spike echoes, still looking a little disbelieving. "You expressedly came for me? Not a hop, skip, jump over the pond for Droopy Brow here?"
"I did. For you." Buffy confirms, turning to Spike for a brief, tentative smile. "But I did anticipate Droopy Brow," here, she turns and gives a sour look at Angel, "and he was definitely supposed to be more mature and less nyah-nyah-I'm-evil-and-you-can't-do-anything-about-it-'cause-it's-my-city-not-yours."
"I'm not evil!" Angel bursts. "That's the other part of me--remember? Angelus? Cocky guy, sorta smarmy. Really mean. Likes to maim?"
"Yeah, yeah, soulboy. Put a sock to the tired charade." Spike shakes his head and feels his jacket up for smokes. "Been hearing this whine-moan routine for way too long."
"I'll show you whining," Angel hisses, grabbing at Spike's jacket. "All I've heard since we opened that godforsaken package is 'Boo-hoo, Buffy doesn't love me--but I'm going to Rome anyway right after I annoy the hell out of everyone in the entire office for a mo'. Well, now she's here, and it's just for you! Not for me, even though there were supposed to be cookies." He glares at Buffy, then turns back to Spike, his voice pathetically low. "Happy now?"
"Extremely," Spike grins grimly. "Be even happier if you'd let go of my coat, you big poncey git!" He tries to release himself impatiently, wriggling around.
"For the last time," Angel explodes, shaking Spike, "I--am--very--heterosexual!"
"Tell that to the person who made your lifts!" Spike snarls, grabbing Angel's suit jacket, too.
"My elevators?" Angel asks, confused.
"That wasn't supposed to furrow your substantial brow, Peaches. 'M talkin' 'bout your girly shoes, you wanker! What kind of Irishman are you? You don't even have a brogue, faker!"
"Yeah? Well, you bleach your hair!"
Before the vampires can come to blows, however (and attract even more ardent attention from the bar, where two hoe-bags in tight leather are looking at them like the second coming), Buffy plows between them and picks both Spike and Angel up by their shirt-collars.
"Don't. Hit." Buffy says firmly. She looks from vampire to vampire. "I'll put you down, but only under one condition: you guys have to apologize, and stop fighting. It's embarrassing, not to mention barbaric, and hello, conspicious." She shakes both males. "Okay?"
"That's two conditions you gave us, not one, Slayer. I'll stop fighting, but I won't apologize to that git," Spike grumbles, which earns him a harder shake.
"Oh, look, Spike can count," Angel glowers, "and I'm not going to apologize, either, then. He really does dye his hair, you know." This earns him an equally hard shake.
"Okay, so it's like this," Buffy sighs wearily. "I'll throw you both across the room, anonymity be damned. This is LA, so chances are, a) no one will notice or care, and b) the ones who do will probably just film it and sell it to Fox as America's Wussiest Bar-Fighters. Now are you gonna listen, or be covered in non-fun Slayery bruises?"
After a moment: "We'll stop," Angel says sullenly.
"We''ll listen," Spike adds grumpily.
Buffy grins smugly and puts them down, keeping her hands on their chests as a cautionary (not at all lecherous) way to keep them separate for the time being. Angel steps back and dusts his jacket off, straightening his collar and cuffs and looking generally disgruntled. Spike only makes a digusted sound and yanks his collar back into position, glaring daggers at Angel. Buffy has to smile in spite of herself--they're like five year olds.
"Now. Say you're sorry," Buffy chides, neatly stepping into the role of babysitter. "Being here and fighting evil with you guys is gonna be hard enough as it is--you're both way highstrung, and you do this vampire thingie where you take two or three hits before you even decide to hit back, just to prove your, like, masculinity or something. Drives me nuts. But if you two are gonna be fighting each other, too, well--" Buffy screws her face up. "Just say you're sorry, please."
Angel is the first to break. "I'm sorry I thought about breaking a bar stool over your moronic head," he recites dutifully. "Even though you're a pain in the ass."
Spike snorts. "Only sayin' this 'cause Buffy's making me," he sneers. "But 'm sorry I was about to smash your face in with my boot to your stupid, caveman forehead."
Buffy smiles weakly in the silence that follows. "See? We can all be friends." She passes a hand through her hair. "Look, Angel. I didn't come here to cause fights, or to question your place in things." She looks at Angel and all her anger drains. "Really. I didn't. I was worried, maybe, about how...things were handled. But if you say you're not evil? I guess I'll have to believe you." Buffy smiles wryly to show she's joking about any reticence. "I just...I want to be friends, okay?" she says carefully. "For real this time. None of that...you know, Sunnydale stuff. Real live--um, undead and alive--friends. Can we do that?"
"Sure, Buffy," Angel responds after a shocked second. "If that's what you want. We can be...friends?" he asks with a pained question of finality in his voice, clearly warring with himself.
"It's what I want," she says firmly, reaching out her hand to shake his.
"What about Spike?" Angel asks evenly. "Are you here for his friendship, too?"
Buffy's smile fades as her hand drops. She knows they have a ways to go before things are ever okay with them, and the fact that she's here for Spike is definitely not gonna help that along, but she had no idea she'd have to confront their issues here and now. Normally, she wouldn't make a deal of it, content to just chug along on the Angel Heartbreak Express, but she can't do it anymore. She can't be Bitter Buffy and languish in the shadow of her and Angel's lost love. She deserves someone who's willing to be with her, and Spike has always shown just how willing he is.
And for once, Buffy is willing, too.
She bites her lip against a scathing response to Angel. Just 'cause she's had a few epiphanies doesn't mean she's got to take it out on her ex. And she is taking it out on him, yelling and picking fights, when really, he knows he's the loser this time. This time, she's gonna walk away from him.
Admittedly, a large part of her vehemence about Wolfram & Hart is nerves about seeing him again, and the other part is a tiny bit...well, jealousy. Jealousy for moving on to a new life without her, jealousy for finding a purpose outside of Sunnydale, jealousy of how well Angel is actually handling things--aside from the whole 'maybe-evil-law-firm' thing. Which, also admittedly, another part of her is genuinely all afraid of. But the bottom line is, it's clearer than ever that her cookies are starting to brown, and they're not Angel's. Not anymore. She's just not interested in waiting for the day that he might be ready to enjoy 'em.
It's time for her to try and move on, for once.
Angel has, for all his nattering on about Spike and her. She saw the way his eyes brightened when he mentioned Cordelia, and there's a sick feeling inside her that Willow's tentative warnings of a blossoming relationship between them weren't just drunken hallucinations...not to mention Spike's earlier mean-spirited glee. Maybe she will have to face Cordelia and Angel as a couple, but Angel's gonna have to deal with her and Spike, too.
Buffy's hand finds Spike's. "That's between me and him," she says carefully, looking deeply in Spike's eyes. "But I think we both agree that it's not as important now as portents of evil." She sighs. "It's never allowed to be." She turns and arches a brow at Angel. "Right?"
Angel's eyes are faroff for a second. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, you're right." For a moment, his face is so sad that Buffy feels the long-ago pull of her sixteen year old self. But then she remembers all the pain and vacillation and just the general badness of it all. It never outweighed the good in the end, and who're they to be waiting for their rewards forever? She'll always love Angel, of that she's sure. Even now, her cells still tingle with the memory of being near to him. She knows how he smells how he tastes, how he kissed. But she doesn't know him because he never let her, and that's the biggest thing.
Yes, she'll always love Angel. But she's not in love with him anymore.
Buffy cocks her head. The whole in love thing is too scary to contemplate right now, but she's frighteningly suspicious that the hand wrapped around hers right now belongs to someone she could be. In love with, that is. Someone she thinks she is in love with, in fact. She's a lot of things, but she's never been a liar, and her words as the world was ending a year ago come back to her in swift surround-sound.
Which reminds her. "This doesn't mean you're off the hook, mister," she says warningly, shaking a finger at a bemused Spike. "You've been on my list since you burned up into little itty bitty dust particles."
Spike grins. "Not exactly my fault, Buffy," he says, and the way he utters her name just does something to her. No Slayer, no bitch, just Buffy, and his voice is warm, not cocky. It's real, like it was those golden moments of peace leading up to the Hellmouth exploding. The feel of his fingers against hers and the cadence of his voice makes it really hit home that he's back and Buffy has a second chance. "An' I wasn't being a piece of poultry, as you so kindly accused me of before. I mean, I was maybe, but not for the yellow-bellied reasons you're thinking. I s'ppose I was just scared."
Buffy shakes her head. "Of what?" she asks exasperatedly, an echo of yesterdays.
"Of it not bein'...well. Like this." Spike's eyes shine with a sort of restrained happiness that she hasn't ever recalled seeing in them before. It shames, gratifies, stuns, exhilirates her. It also occurs to her that this entire time of battling wills with Angel, Spike has been content to stand by her side, silent. Not like a lapdog, like she used to disdainfully think of him. Now Buffy shudders to think that. Not a lapdog at all--a companion. An equal.
She isn't a little girl who needs protecting to Spike. She's a mate, a woman he loves, someone he trusts at least a little to make her own decisions. Well, most of them, and she thinks in guilty satisfaction of how her fist cracked against his jaw in retribution for not telling her about being alive. There's a difference in this punch and the punches of before--this one was the way they communicated, warrior to warrior, and in a twisted way, lover to lover (hey, bruises could be romantic, especially if they healed in the shape of a heart, like the one Buffy once got fighting a Loksha demon). The last punches before this one, of self-disgust and confusion and pain, they were of another age, and now, now she's finally ready to move on and forget everything of the past. Move on to the future.
Her hands caress Spike's cold, smooth skin, her chin tilted up to kiss him, right there in front of everyone, and for a moment, she gets a little choked up--
A shriek breaks the moment up. Buffy rolls her eyes. So much for Hallmark. Angel, who looks a little bit green, turns desperately to the source of the shrill yell, while Spike, looking endearingly frustrated, sighs and turns around in resignation.
A brunette blur dashes through the crowd and launches herself at Spike. A wild moment of Buffy going mad with rage later, the brunette detaches herself and punches Spike in the arm.
To his credit, he tries to make it look like it hurts.
"That's for making my sister cry when you went kablooey!" Dawn says, her own eyes suspiciously bright. "But the hug was 'cause, you know, I missed you."
Buffy smiles tightly. "Dawn has this radar," she explains to Spike. "Moments when she's most not wanted."
Dawn scowls, then looks abashed. "Oh, wait," she says. "Were you two about to get into the smoochies?"
Angel breaks in. "No! No kissing here, big evil coming."
Dawn looks suspiciously up at him. "You mean like you?"
Then, because Angel looks like he really might kill the next person who calls him evil, Buffy rushes to do damage control. "No, Dawnie. We cleared that up. Angel's not evil, he's just a bad decision-maker."
Dawn seems to ponder that for a moment. "Works for me," she shrugs, then turns to Spike. "Oh my god, I can't believe you're back! Having Andrew telling me the story doesn't do it justice, tell me everything."
Spike looks disconcerted. "Weren't the last words you really said to me, 'I'm gonna light you on fire'?"
Dawn stops and fidgets, while Buffy struggles to look both impressed and stern. "It was an idle threat," she protests. "I was sticking up for Buffy. And I can't even work non child-proof lighters." she finishes glumly.
Spike fights a grin and puts a tentative hand on Dawn's shoulder. "Well, I'll teach you to light fires and stuff, then."
Dawn smiles broadly and launches herself at him again, hugging him tightly. "Cool!" she beams.
Angel just stands there, looking a bit forlorn. "Hi...Dawn." he says to no one. "Nice to see you again."
Buffy takes pity on him, because it sort of is a rather pathetic tableau of events he's witnessed the past several minutes. She really never meant to drop in here and put that lost look on his face, and the tender-Angel-lovin' side of her finally wins out as she takes his sleeve and pulls him into Dawn's crazy sphere of flurried questions.
"Angel, tell us all about this big and evil thing Cordelia saw. Because we need you and you are needed. Promise."
"Cordelia?" Dawn stops her hyper Spike-inventory-of-parts and spins. Her eyes gleam, and Buffy feels a flicker of nervousness. It's no secret that Cordelia was always Dawn's idol in Sunnydale, tall and thin and hot and rich. Buffy was sorta glad when Cordy left, because at least it meant no more Dawn scribbling all over her face with red lipstick and calling herself Queen D. But Dawn's still very impressionable; from the looks of it, she's also still mega-interested in what her old idol is up to. "She's awake? How's her hair?"
Angel's smile is almost radiant, and boy, is that creepy, Buffy decides. "Yep," he confirms. "Woke up yesterday. There was this vision deal and this tiny Texan guy and some heartfelt talks, with some of the trademark Chase bluntness, but she survived unscathed. She's back and better than ever! Good thing, too. She came back at a time I--we--really needed her. Oh, and her hair is really pretty. Kinda curly, makes her look--nevermind."
Buffy doesn't miss the Freudian slip, or the way Angel's eyes suddenly aren't so accusing, but guilty. Her suspicions are only intensified by the way Angel describes Cordelia's lack of tact as trademark bluntness, instead of what Buffy always liked to label it: bitchiness.
"So Cordy's like your Girl Friday now?" Buffy asks casually.
Angel gives a nervous laugh. "Heh, heh, well, I don't know, she's pretty much--" he cuts off and points an almost desperate finger. "You and Spike are going out!"
That answers that question, and Buffy takes a deep breath. "It's not important now, anyway. We'll discuss it all after this big, random, brewing evil you keep hinting at but never explain!"
"Big evil?" Wesley pops out of nowhere and almost gives Buffy a heart-attack. "Really? Angel, what are she talking about?"
"Where did you pop out of?" Buffy asks, heart still racing. She sees Gunn, Lorne, and Fred behind Wes. Gunn looks uncomfortable, Fred looks embarrassed, and Lorne looks curious. Buffy narrows her eyes and points at them. "Oh, jeez. You guys were totally eavesdropping!"
"Nuh-uh," Gunn claims, looking unreasonably skittish about Buffy's fist's proximity to his face.
"We didn't hear much," Fred chimes in, her eyes wide. "And uh, coincidentally, congratulations about you and Spike!"
Buffy can't help but smile at the girl's enthusiasm. "Thanks," she says.
Wesley rolls his eyes. "Now that we're finished discussing our romantic lives--or lack thereof--" a cough and glance at Fred, who remains oblivious, "Can we talk about this big evil?"
Lorne just grins. "Tall, dark, and hunky looks a bit preoccupied, Wes. I'm thinking in the face of evil, only two things survive: idiots in love and music."
"I'll take music," Gunn says sourly, although Dawn is still eyeing him up, interested.
"And I'll take an explanation, please," Buffy finally says. Her hand finds Spike's and they face the others. "I almost wish Cordy herself was here to tell us what's the what!"
"That's why I came," a voice suddenly says behind them. "Mr. Awfully-Long-Winded-For-No-Breath here takes some time in getting to the point. But that's okay, because now I can see that what I saw in my vision is true. Peroxide Pete really is Buffy's new honey...and wow, look whose standards have fallen to an all-time low."
She knows this voice. Sighing, she steels herself for the inevitable confrontation.
"Hello, Cordelia."
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