The Cure:
Disclaimer: Do I need to state the obvious? I'm not Joss, I'm not Mutant Enemy (although my partner might disagree), I don't know the Kuzuis, and I have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with Fox and/or WB... and besides, suing me would be like, well, like a Slayer falling in love with a Vampire... you can try and try, but ya ain't gonna get nothin' out of it but pain... (i.e. I'm not making any money from these stories, thus, I have no money -- although I do have a job-- so don't bother suing.)
ANYHOO... the story picks up more or less at the beginning of "Graduation Day, Part 2"... so if you haven't had the pleasure of even seeing a poor internet bootleg of the ep, this is a MAJOR spoiler. Of course, if you haven't seen it, you wouldn't know that until you HAD seen it... but I digress. The rest of the Ep doesn't happen, and it would appear most of Season Three didn't happen, either. No mayor, bare mention of Faith, no Ascension, etc.
Chapter Two
Buffy gave the shopping cart another Slayer/Vampire-strength shove, and still the damned thing wouldn't budge.
'Why the hell is this my job? Why don't I get to go pick out the wine?' She thought with a mental groan.
Because she didn't know anything about wine, that was why. Culture was Angel's job.
'I'm the young American...technically...I'm the one who should know about culture...'
Picking TV shows, Buffy could handle. Telling you the latest dress length, what happened to "alternative" music, and the latest in slang... what more to culture was there?
"Hmm. Let's see... proper English, opera, theatre, literature, fine art, and classical music, for a start..." Angel would tell her. "There's more to life than what you can see at the mall."
What did he know? He'd only been to the mall once, that she knew of, and that was to destroy the world, not shop at Fashionable Male.
The real reason, of course, was because her mom was coming to dinner at their house the following evening. Angel always became 'must-impress-boy', when that happened...sending Buffy to do the gathering, fetching, and cleaning, while he insisted on taking care of the actual cooking and ambiance.
"It's your mom." He said, as if God were coming to dinner, "You should always go out of your way to show your parents respect..."
Of course, he'd shown his parents respect by eating them... so she didn't take his opinions on family life very seriously, most of the time...
The grocery store was deserted, of course, it being 3 a.m. on a Tuesday. Her only company were stoned stockboys, occupied by walkmans and shelving canned goods, and the gut-wrenching muzak version of "Beat It"...
She looked again at the list, written in Angel's carefully neat and elegant script.
Adobo. The next item.
'Isn't that what plains Indians lived in?' She vaguely recalled it was some kind of mud... or rocks or something. She stared at the word in bewilderment. Then, she saw the next line:
(It's a spice. In the Spanish food section.)
That was her sweetie, always thinking of her culinary limitations...
She hunted down the Spanish food section with a vengeance usually reserved for the undead (with the exception of Angel, of course... oh, and herself...), and was dismayed to find there were two types of the evil spice.
'With or without pepper?' She wondered.
She grabbed one of each. 'Mom better love this.' She thought...
Joyce patted her face with one of Angel's formal hunter green linen napkins, and smacked her lips in appreciation.
"Angel, that was wonderful." she told him.
He beamed proudly. The dish had taken two hours to prepare (not counting Buffy's shopping nightmare), and five minutes to eat. But alas, he knew that was the joy and pain of gourmet cooking...
"Coffee, mom?" Buffy offered, beginning to clear the enormous dining table. Angel rose to help her. "No, that's okay, I've got it." She told him.
"I'd love some, thanks, honey." her mom said.
Buffy, her arms now laden with dishes, left.
Unfortunately, the usual awkward silence settled between Joyce and Angel. What could they possibly have to talk about?
'So, Angel,' Joyce thought with bitter humour, 'You've thoroughly destroyed my daughter's life... killed her, actually... what's next?' She had no idea where to begin a conversation with a recovering monster who looked for all the world like a polite, handsome, wealthy young man in love with her daughter...
"So, Mrs. Summers, how are things at the gallery? I read about the medieval exhibit you're doing in the fall... I have some pieces you might be interested in..."
Did she mention cultured, well-educated, thoroughly traveled, beautifully spoken, charming, and terribly interesting?
"Really! That would be wonderful! The focus will really be around the metalcraft of the period...armor, weapons, household items..."
Buffy returned to find them bantering easily, two colleagues in the ever-so-fascinating world of antique collectibles...
'Old stuff.', Buffy muttered to herself, 'Boooorrrinnng...' She was always trying to talk Angel into redecorating the mansion a little... at least adding something that wasn't older than she was... But after the mirror incident, Angel had kind-of nixed her expeditions into the world of home fashion...
She handed her mom the cream and sugar, and Angel his black decaf.
"Thanks, Buffy." Angel interrupted his diatribe on torture devices or whatever, to tell her. She gave him an insincere smirk and settled into her chair for a long open-eyed snooze.
"Buffy, have you given any more consideration to college?" her mom said, out of nowhere...
Maybe not as long as she thought...
Both Buffy and Angel halted mid-cup lift, unprepared for Joyce's 360. Of course, Angel recovered first... Buffy sat in dopey silence for a minute.
"Uh..." came her carefully thought-out reply.
"I'll take that as a no. We've talked about this, Buffy! Whatever your..." she struggled for the right word, "...situation might be now, you still need an education..."
The old adolescent eye-roll overtook Buffy. "Mom, it's not like I can have a career or anything!"
"School's not just about a job." Angel added, oh-so-helpfully. Buffy shot him a 'you-shut-up-and-stay-out-of-this' look. He might be 200 something years her senior, but he was not her parent.
"Angel's right, sweetie. You need to flex your brain as much as you do your body..."
Buffy couldn't imagine paying money to spend four more years doing what she had only just finished spending four years trying to avoid. Besides, with Angel always foisting his stupid beloved 'classics' on her, pumping her head full of Philosophy, Latin, and history, she hardly felt she needed to spend what little free time she still had glued to a desk in a musty classroom, listening to a stuffy, Giles-esque loser who she'd outlive by centuries, babbling about stuff she didn't understand most of the time, or give half a crap about.
She hated it when they ganged up on her. She didn't care if they might be right, only that it wasn't fair. Buffy was defenseless against two "mature", "grown-up", "responsible" people...
'And Giles makes three...' she thought bitterly.
Destiny or no, Slayer or no, Immortal vampire-type chick or no, it seemed Buffy couldn't outrun the long arm of "reason"...
Angel felt bad, later, that he had backed Joyce up against Buffy... Buffy had clamped her mouth shut like a vice after insisting it was her ... un-life... and thus her decision, and they should just stay the hell out of it.
The evening only got worse from there, and Joyce left early, giving Angel his first "mother-in-law" kiss. Her lips were warm, and the gesture felt like forgiveness and acceptance... a precious gift. Buffy had turned her back on the goodbyes, only barely tolerating her mother's embrace.
Angel knew exactly what she was feeling -- cornered, outnumbered, and her own opinions on the matter of her own life soundly ignored, as though she were a child.
When Angel came to bed, Buffy was facing away from him, her bedside lamp extinguished. He got in beside her, and propped up his pillows to "talk" position...
"Buffy..." he said.
She pretended to be asleep. He reached out and softly touched her shoulder, which she violently yanked away, scooting farther toward the edge of her side of the bed.
"Buffy, come on... I'm sorry."
She rolled over and gave him a sorrowful, angry look that only made him feel worse.
"Oh? Really. For what?"
Angel hated it when she forced him to recap what he was apologizing for. It made him feel like a mentally challenged three year old. But he always complied, knowing it was the only way to get her to talk through it.
"For not letting you make your own decisions about your life. And for taking your mother's side against you. But I'm worried about you, Buffy... It feels like you're just treading water, not trying to move forward at all. And you're so smart and have so much potential, it seems like such a waste..."
"Now you sound like Giles." She snapped, sitting up, "Where's Angel... He's my boyfriend, you know... backs me up..." she looked around the room sarcastically, as if searching for him.
"Come on, Buffy. Don't be such a brat."
Oops. He immediately realized his mistake when he saw the anger flash in her eyes.
"Oh. Ok. Brat. Right. Fine." She jumped out of bed, grabbed a blanket and pillow, and headed for the guest room.
Angel sighed and rolled his eyes at her display. He wondered how many centuries it would take for Buffy to grow up. He knew he needed to be easier on her, right now... after the incident with the Hunter, when he'd almost lost her, she seemed to be in a perpetual snit, and nothing he offered seemed to shake her out of it, even a little.
He got out of bed and padded barefoot down the hall to the guest room. He stood in the doorway for a moment, watching Buffy pretend to sleep and considering what to say.
She saved him the effort, rolling over and looking at him forlornly.
"I don't get why you guys seem to think it's so easy for me to just slip right back into my old plans for the future..." she sat up, "Old rules don't apply anymore, you know? I'm dead." She tapped her chest for emphasis.
Angel sighed once again. So there it was. She wasn't planning for the future, because she didn't feel like she really had one. The old guilt washed over him again like a familiar tidal wave, blinding him for a moment. He moved over and sat beside Buffy on the bed.
She looked up at him with her mournful eyes, and once again, he regretted a million things he had done to her... He stoked her hair softly. His poor, sweet little Buffy... always manipulated by others into things beyond her control... She had less say in the major turning points of her existence than anyone really took the time to realize...
"Buffy..." how he loved to say her name... it always brought visions of sunshine and cotton candy, of convertibles and school dances and a bubbly little girl, all the lost joys of a youth he never had, to his mind. "You're not dead. You haven't ceased to exist. You do have a future. A long future, with a billion possibilities..."
A tear ran down her face. Angel gently lay his hand on her cheek and drew her towards him, kissing her softly on her sweet lips. The kiss became harder, fiercer, and he could feel his ardor rising...
Buffy pulled away and looked deeply into his eyes.
"Do you really think I'm smart?" she asked.
He smiled. "I wouldn't be with you if all you were was some hot little cheeseball."
She grinned, teasing him. "So, you're saying I'm not all that hot, then."
Angel growled and jumped on her in response, tickling her to a riot of giggles with his hands and his kisses. Buffy squealed happily, begging him to stop. She wriggled underneath his weight, and his body suddenly remembered the passion of a moment earlier...
"You are the most fascinating, most beautiful woman in the world to me, Buffy... I doubt there's anything you can't do..." he whispered in her ear.
She pulled him closer, and all discussion ceased.
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