HA! Finally got this done. The reason behind the long gap (apart from school and work and other fics, which are actually all very major reasons) was the daunting nature of the contents of chapter fifty-four--not this chapter, which was actually fairly easy to write. I didn't want to rush through the easy stuff only to smack my head on the solid wall of problematic content that is chapter fifty-four and have no room to maneuver. But now I've got it all worked out (well, mostly), so we're ready to resume play. That was the last major obstacle of the season, so with any luck, I'll actually be able to get this thing finished in the near future. Now then, enjoy!

Anxious to reassure himself that he had not given his friend bad advice, a fortnight after the prom, Wesley decided to seek out this Doyle character on his own. It wasn't until he left his apartment, however, that he realized that he had no idea where Doyle might be found, nor did he even know what he looked like. Annoyed at his own short-sightedness, he nevertheless thought he could try a couple of popular demon haunts to see if he could track him down before he would resort to enlisting Angel's help.

There were rather more vampires at Willy's when Wesley arrived than he had hoped would be there, and a few of them glanced in his direction as he made his way to the bar. He discovered to his enormous satisfaction that mentally reviewing his training sessions made it surprisingly easy to appear dignified and unaffected under their stares, rather than becoming the quivering jumble of nerves and false bravado he had been when he stopped vampire Willow from attacking Miss Chase.

"What can I get you?" asked Willy, walking towards him across the bar and setting aside the mug he'd been wiping clean.

"Actually, I was hoping you could help me find someone," said Wesley, keeping his voice low so as to hopefully prevent anyone from eavesdropping. "You wouldn't happen to have gained any, er, new patrons lately, would you?"

"Hey, business might not be booming, but it ain't exactly unusual to see a new face every now and then."

"Of course," said Wesley, "well, the one I'm looking for is a half-demon by the name of Doyle."

"Ye won't 'ave to look far," said a mildly amused voice from a few feet to his right. Wesley started and looked around. A black-haired man—Doyle, evidently, was looking at him with raised eyebrows. A small cluster of empty shot glasses sat on the counter in front of him, but his gaze was quite steady. "Judgin' by yer Queen's English and the amount of starch in that suit, I'd wager ye're vamp-man's Watcher friend."

"That I am," said Wesley curtly, unable to suppress a stab of indignation at the way Doyle seemed to view him as an object of satirical humor.

"Allen Francis Doyle," he said, sticking out his hand.

After a very brief pause, Wesley extended his own and they shook. "Wesley Wyndam-Pryce."

"So, come to check out my story, eh? 'Bout time." said Doyle, taking a swig of whatever was in the large mug next to the shot glasses.

"Indeed I have."

Wesley and Doyle gave each other long, calculating looks while Willy glanced nervously from one to the other.

[o]

Faith left the apartment of the (as of now) late Professor Lester Worth only a few moments after she had entered it, filled with a chilling feeling of job satisfaction. If she had any reservations about killing an unarmed old man, they were quashed by the conviction that she only did it to protect the Mayor—a justification that she refused to admit was at complete odds with the sense of having and wielding untouchable power that the act had given her. She clenched her hands into fists. There was no actual blood on them this time; she had been very careful to avoid that.

[o]

Not even Willy, who had watched the whole thing and supplied the alcohol, quite understood how it had happened, but an hour later, Wesley and Doyle were both thoroughly drunk and laughing their heads off at a fairly mediocre joke one of them had just told, arms around each other's shoulders as if they'd been friends their whole lives. What Wesley intended to be a brisk interrogation had quickly mutated into a drinking competition and finally concluded with his jovially offering his own couch for Doyle to sleep on for the remainder of his stay in town.

On the whole, this was a much-improved situation for Doyle. First of all, he no longer had to expend his bordering-on-meager funds on a room at the cheapest hotel he'd been able to find in Sunnydale, but more importantly, Wesley had much better means than he did for dealing with hangovers from hell, as he himself had somehow lacked the presence of mind to pack for such eventualities when he was sent to bring Angel back to L.A.

The next morning—or, early afternoon, as was indicated by the clock on the wall—Wesley and Doyle could be found sitting across from each other at the former's tiny kitchen table, though "sitting" was perhaps not the most accurate word for it, as they were both slumping heavily against the tabletop in a stupor. Every so often, one of them would revive enough to drink a few gulps of either water or orange juice, or would shovel down some of the canned fish Wesley had dug out of the pantry—all as they waited for the extra strength headache pills to kick in.

"Now," said Wesley, wincing, "I'm not sure I remember much of anything we talked about at the pub."

"Be surprised if ye did," said Doyle groggily, attempting to smirk, "ye English lightweight."

Wesley couldn't muster the energy to find a snappy comeback, so he simply ignored the slight on his nationality. "Well, I offered you the sofa, so it would appear that I decided I could trust you."

"Been meanin' to say thank ye fer that. Sofa's a far cry better'n that crap mattress at the room I 'ad."

Wesley waved his hand vaguely as if to say, "It was nothing, old chap," nearly knocking over his orange juice in the process. "Did I get round to asking what kind of demon your demon half is?" He frowned, thinking that he probably would have been able to navigate that sentence better if he was fully sober.

"Brachen," Doyle grunted.

"Ah," said Wesley. He racked his brains, but nothing occurred to him except the increasingly familiar thought that he really shouldn't have had that last shot of whiskey.

To elaborate, Doyle obligingly caused his face to transform.

"Oh, yes," said Wesley, "Brachen, of course. Now I remember. A peaceful sort, though perhaps not the most popular amongst other demons."

"Not so much, no," said Doyle as his face reverted to its human appearance, his expression somewhat darker than before.

"He's going to go with you, you know. Angel, I mean."

"Really? Well, that's good. I was startin' to get a bit worried that I blew the sales pitch, an' I wasn't exactly lookin' forward to getting' the negative feedback on it from upstairs. Partly why I was at the pub to begin with."

"Yes, well, you should know that the situation here in Sunnydale is rather dismal at the moment, and I sincerely doubt that we can spare Angel until after Graduation Day. But that's not even a week off, now."

"Good enough to be gettin' on with."

Doyle's voice was slightly muffled by the surface of the table, which he was once again using as a pillow, but at his words, Wesley glanced at his watch and jumped out of his chair in alarm. "Oh dear, I'm late!" he cried, then let out a quickly stifled yelp as his head protested against his sudden movements with a particularly horrible throb of pain. "I was going to try my fencing skills against Mr. Giles!" he groaned, clutching his head in one hand while he searched for his briefcase.

"Have at it," said Doyle dully, his right hand drifting feebly towards his glass of water.

[o]

"Did you say Wes was hung over?" asked Angel incredulously.

"Yeah. Sounded like he and your vision guy are drinking buddies now," said Buffy, her lips twitching at the memory of how categorically Giles had won the fencing match because of it—despite the fact that most of his attention had been on the newspaper article about the murder of one Professor Worth at the time. "I guess that bodes well, trustworthiness-wise."

Angel nodded distractedly, looking mildly put-out about something. Glancing up from the stack of very professionally worded (and therefore impossible to understand) papers through which she had been riffling, Buffy caught sight of his expression and smirked. "What, are you sulking because Wesley didn't ask if you wanted to go too?" she teased.

"No," said Angel defensively, before he pulled a smirk of his own. "Besides, I would've turned him down anyway. I already had plans."

Buffy couldn't help blushing a little at this, but she asked sweetly, "So…does that mean you'd choose spending time with me over going drinking with the guys?"

"Every time."

Her bright smile in response only lasted a second before it gave way to a grimace, and she flapped one hand through the air in an aggravated sort of way. "Okay, moratorium on flirting until we're somewhere that's not a crime scene."

"You're right," said Angel, looking sheepish.

They quickly finished their search, hoping that Giles would be able to make something of the box full of volcano research. Buffy rolled her eyes at Angel's gallant insistence to be the one to carry the box, but didn't protest and led the way out past the police tape they had dislodged earlier.

"Do you know when you'll start looking for a place in L.A.?" she asked when they reached the street.

"Thought I'd save it until after graduation," said Angel. "Once this thing with the Mayor is over." He looked at her and realized what she was really asking. "Want to help?"

Buffy beamed at him, then reverted to her teasing tone from before. "Well, yeah, I mean—someone's got to make sure you don't get some completely not girl-friendly basement with no mirrors or places for me to put my stuff."

Angel seemed to wilt. "I thought you liked my apartment," he said. He looked so much like a wounded puppy that Buffy took pity on him at once.

"I'm kidding," she said. "I do like it." And she did, a lot. The decor definitely wasn't what she would have picked herself, but it was just so completely Angel that it was impossible for her not to love it. "I am serious about the mirrors, though. As much as I love when you tell me my scary bed hair looks great, that's something a girl always has to see to believe."

Angel chuckled. "Okay, I promise I'll take you with me, and I won't get a place without mirrors. Happy?"

Buffy turned to him to reply in the affirmative, but the words died in her throat. Angel lurched slightly where he stood, and they both looked down at the six inches of wooden arrow shaft protruding from his chest.

*dramatic chord* Okay, I know Buffy and Angel's conversation was maybe a touch lighthearted for the investigation of a murder scene for which Faith was responsible, but as we all know from our experience with the Jossverse, sudden badness is much more jarring and painful when it interrupts unsuspecting contentment. And they'll have plenty of time to agonize over Faith's role in all of this later on, anyway. But really, what I love about this chapter is Wes and Doyle's hangover conversation.