I'll start by saying SORRY! I forgot that I had a chapter to post (chapters 6 and 7 on are one chapter in the original version). Second, this End is not THE End. You will find a couple vignettes at my LiveJournal account.

Thank you for the feedback, ba2006 and kb. :D

PART SEVEN

Half the pizza is gone, and he found chamomile tea to accompany it. Most of Buffy's anger dissipated into stunned gaping when he commandeered her kitchen area, boiled water, and added the tea bags into it.

"You cook?"

"The basics." He remembers Cordelia and Wesley digging into scrambled eggs, though he can deal with more variety now. His son is human, after all, and with a metabolism that may outrank a Slayer's…. He glances at what remains of the pizza. Or maybe a Slayer is superior in all things. Chuckling to himself at the thought, he adds two spoonfuls of sugar into her cup, remembering that she did the same on his first night in Portland and surprised that he kept in mind such a detail.

"It's amazing!" she pronounces after a careful sip.

He doesn't disagree. He's still getting a coffee machine, though, as soon as he finds a place to stay. "That means you'll take a break?"

"I'm annoyed at you. I don't want annoyance in my kid's room." She takes a longer drink. "And this is too good to let it go cold."

He'll take that.

By the time she's started on her fifth slice, Buffy seems to have forgotten her aggravation and is sitting contentedly in her favorite spot.

She always loved feeling pampered.

Time to ease her into the conversation.

"Your sister is dating Xander," he starts, not needing to fake the surprise in his voice. "I never saw it coming."

Buffy looks up, dumbfounded that he's aware of her sister's love life. Then she rolls her eyes and relaxes back into her seat. "Christina." She shakes her head. "That little babble-mouth."

"She seemed very… communicative."

"You mean gossipy." Buffy tosses the crust back into the box, and takes another slice. "At least she didn't hit on you. She keeps making eyes at Dawn's boyfriends, or so Dawn won't stop complaining."

"I thought they were friends."

Buffy shrugs. "They are." At his confused look, Buffy takes pity on him and explains. "Deep down, Christina is harmless. So far, three of the guys Dawn brought over flirted back, and Christina told Dawn right away. Meanwhile, she gets to brag to her other friends that she totally could have snared a European hunk away from his girlfriend if she were that kind of girl."

Angel blinks. Some things, only women will understand about each other. "Right." Before she can tutor him some more on the symbiotic relationship between young women, Angel moves onto the next subject. "It's been… interesting… to get to know her. But I'm not staying there."

"Oh?"

He wonders whether Buffy believes that, somehow, he's changed his mind in the last twenty minutes and will return to L.A., or if she's got an inkling of his intentions but is too relaxed to argue with him.

It's option number three.

"I don't mind you staying in Portland," she says slowly, weighing every word. "It's even fun to spend time with you, like this." She motions at their comfortable positions in her living room, the half empty pizza box and the chamomile cups, all signs of a quiet night between friends. "But it takes less than seventy-two hours for you to start making decisions about my life, and for me to resent you for it." She sets her cup down, one hand rubbing her belly in small circles. "You've been great, keeping the big bads at bay. We still make a good working team, and I'm glad for it."

"But?" he prompts.

"But…." Buffy gives him a helpless look. "Angel, I don't think we make good friends."

He won't laugh. Really, he won't. "I know."

"You know?"

"Somebody pointed it out to me recently."

Buffy peers at him for a long moment, then shakes her head. "You've been talking to Spike."

There is no point denying it. Sooner or later, Spike will confirm it to her. "The topic happened to be part of a longer conversation."

With a sigh, she sinks deeper into her couch, pulling out a piece of pepperoni and nibbling at it. "I don't think I like being a topic in any conversation between the two of you."

He does laugh at that. "Believe me, it doesn't happen often." Even Drusilla gets mentioned more often than the woman before him. "We're not as eager to brood as other people would think."

That draws a smile out of her. "I have trouble thinking of a way you'd survive each other."

"Better the souled annoyance you know…."

Buffy's head falls back in laughter. "Sorry," she says between hiccups, picking at the crumbs and bits of cheese that fell on her lap at the brusque movement. "It's just – Spike says the exact same thing." Her brow knits in thought. "Well, maybe a little more vehemently, and with worse vocabulary."

"Color me shocked," Angel drawls.

Buffy bites her lip against another fit of giggles, eventually sobering up enough to ask, "Is he angry because I uninvited him?"

Angel doesn't need to think about it, just tips his chin towards her stomach. "Not enough to stop asking that you use 'William'."

"He did not!"

He shrugs. "You can ask him if you don't believe me."

Buffy's eyes widen, and she reaches over for his tea, frowning at it as if it's been drugged when she wasn't looking. Then she stares at Angel incredulously. "You're telling me to talk to Spike." She tilts her head in confusion. "What happened to you?"

"I grew up." His smile turns gentler. "Didn't you?"

She reels back, but relaxes when she doesn't sense any mockery in his tone. "You mean there was a choice?"

"Guess not. And while we're talking of choices..." Angel braces himself. "You don't really have one here. I'm staying. For your own good."

Buffy's mouth opens, then closes again. She pinches the bridge of her nose, mutters this is not happening to herself, and takes a deep breath. "Is it Reverse Day in your world? Because we've had this conversation before, except that time you were leaving."

He was hoping she wouldn't make that connection.

"Yes, everything matches. Ultimatum, check. For my own good, check. Your choice, not mine – oh, make it a double check!" Pizza forgotten and glaring daggers at him, she crosses her arms over her chest. "Aren't you supposed to bring up freak shows right about now?"

Ouch. Of course she'd remember that.

Angel now can admit that it had been a really poor choice of words. In his defense, he had never broken up with anybody before, and she had taken him by surprise, demanding they have that conversation right then and there.

But agreeing with her now would serve no purpose. Instead he leans back and shrugs his shoulders. "I was right back then, too." An icy stare informs him that the only reason he doesn't get tossed out of the room is because her body won't allow her such exertions anymore. "Tell me I was wrong," he challenges.

Her eyes alone would make a lesser vampire take refuge, but she doesn't refute him.

Angel allows a minute to pass, waiting for her temper to settle down. When Buffy leans against the back of the couch and grabs another slice, he reaches over the coffee table for her cup and walks to the stove for a refill.

She doesn't speak until he sets the chamomile in front of her. "That was mean."

"I'm sorry."

"You really want the best for me, don't you?" Her eyes fill with tears. "If I asked you to fight for me, but not come visit, you would do that."

"I would," he agrees. "But I wouldn't believe you really want that."

"I've been alone for too long, I think." She takes her cup and stares into the yellowish liquid. "It's difficult, being the only Slayer again. I know why we did it, and I don't regret it. No matter how many Slayers we found, the world kept getting more dangerous, and…" She bites her lip. "Some of those girls…. They weren't right, you know?"

Angel remembers Spike's days in a hospital room, bandages around his arms. "I know."

Buffy nods. "It was the right thing to do. Willow said it'd be like old times, and Xander made jokes about how we were only a Hellmouth-under-the-library away from going back to high school…."

"But it wasn't the same."

"They don't understand that I am not the same. No, that's not it." Buffy shakes her head, gathering her thoughts. "When I was fifteen… I don't know. My parents were getting divorced, my mother was moving us to a tiny town, the tiny town was a portal to hell…. I barely had time to freak out about being the Slayer. I never realized how… responsible I had to be, how it was all in my hands, and my hands alone."

"That's not how I remember it."

"Teenage angst, Angel. It will blow anything out of proportion." She sets her cup back down and meets his eyes. "I saw a couple of nights at the graveyard, one or two missed parties or bad marks, and I thought it was the end of the world." She smiles. "I died too soon, that first time. Before I knew it, Kendra was around, and then Faith."

"But neither of them supported you." He hates to say it of Faith, knowing the invaluable person she's become, but it's the truth. "You still fought alone."

"But I wasn't alone. In the back of my mind, I could say – if worse comes to worst, someone else can do it. And I was right. When I almost lost Sunnydale, Faith rode in, fresh from prison, to pick up the slack."

He chuckles. "That's not how she remembers it."

"Funny. It's what it felt like." Buffy drags the back of her hands down her cheeks, unknowingly leaving traces of tomato sauce on her face. "Great. I've become a big weepy mess. Damn hormones."

"I don't think that's it," Angel remarks kindly, moving to sit on the arm of her couch, tempted to wipe her skin with his fingertips. It's the closest he's been to her in years, he realizes, as he spent every other encounter on the other side of this room. "And I don't think you want to be alone."

"Don't tell me what I want, Angel," she snaps, drawing away from him.

That might be the hormones.

"All right," Angel says, keeping his voice soothing. "Then I'll tell you what I want. I want you to be safe, not because I think you can't take care of yourself, but because you don't need to do it alone." He puts a hand on her shoulder, and she doesn't move away. "I want you to stay out of danger for the next few weeks, and I'm not fool enough to believe that those runes will protect you forever."

"Willow made them!"

"And someone will figure out a way to break through the spell," he responds, glad when she doesn't argue further. "It's only a matter of time."

"You want to save me," she says, spitting the words as if she's bitten into a lemon.

"Exactly." When she gasps, shocked at his candid admission, the corner of his mouth quirks up. "Like you said, we work well together. It's just a couple months, Buffy; you can survive my white horse and shiny armor."

"I can say no."

"I'll do it anyway."

"That's not fair."

"And, if I left, you wouldn't get to taste my masterful chamomile-making skills again."

She fights down a smile. "Is that supposed to be blackmail?"

"Depends." Angel laughs. "Is it working?"

Instead of a vocal answer, she reaches for his wrist and moves his hand towards her abdomen. "If we're going to work together, you have to meet the Bun."

He thanks all gods that he doesn't need to breathe. He figures his bafflement shows enough in his face, at least until he focuses on what he's touching.

After that, there's wonder.

The denim is rough against his hand, a texture he has never associated with Buffy. That's not the only change. He once learned every detail of her body, committed to memory how her muscles flexed in battle and her breathing patterns during sleep. This is not the body he remembers, and yet… "The Bun?" …in some things, she stays exactly the same. "That's awful, Buffy!"

And there he'd thought referring to the baby as 'it' was bad form.

She shrugs. "Better than 'William'." When he opens his mouth, she tuts at him. "'Liam' is out of the race, too. This one is living in the twenty-first century."

Perhaps drawn by the voices over him, the Bun picks that moment to make his presence known. "Connor was a kicker, too," Angel says, and when he sees Buffy smile happily, he keeps to himself that Darla hated every second of it. "You really are pregnant," he whispers, amazed that it's just sinking in.

Buffy is having a baby.

Buffy is having a baby.

Buffy frowns. His expression must explain everything, because her face softens and she lets out a cheerful laugh. "What, you thought I'd tucked a watermelon under my clothes?"

THE END