SECTION 2 - ANGEL CITY

I got a buncha boys
We make a lot of noise
Little bit crazy
Playing with chemical toys
We're such bad ass dudes
I almost can't stand it myself
I wanna get the c**bs
In my elegant rags
Make my mom and daddy uptight
I wanna be an intellectual
Heterosexual, Angel City tonight.

(Motorhead, Album 1916)



Chapter 2.08
Wednesday, May 8th, 2002

Buffy squared her shoulders and walked into the hotel for the third time that night. The foyer was still lit, the outer door still open, but there was no-one in sight.

"Hello-o. Anybody home? Angel?"

"I am here." A large well-muscled male figure straightened up from the far side of the circular sofa and gave Buffy an ingenuous smile. "Perhaps I may be of some assistance. Do you require the services of an investigator?"

"No. You must be Cordelia's .friend? I'm Buffy. I'm an old friend of Angel's. I'd like to speak to him."

"Angel and Cordelia are upstairs trying out bedrooms .for Connor, I mean. Would you like me to fetch him?" the man offered.

"Yeah, that'd be good."

Buffy turned and jumped up to sit on the former reception desk swinging her legs while she waited. She watched the large, rather formal stranger retreat up the stairs. She wondered why she was here? What was it she wanted to say? They had both moved on. Why did she feel like she needed his approval? What the.? Did she even just think that? If that was what this was about then maybe she should just go.

"Buffy." Angel came down the final flight of stairs.

"Angel. Hi! .again," Buffy was suddenly awkward.

"I thought you'd gone for the night?" his voice was neither welcoming, nor cool, more cautious.

"Had some catching up to do with people of the human variety, figured you would still be up and about when I'd finished."

"Where's Spike?"

Buffy shrugged. "He took the car, said to give him a ring when I need picking up. I think he decided we were more likely to get to the talking stage if he wasn't around."

"I guess so. Since we seem to actually be talking this time. Do you want a drink? Tea, coffee?"

"We just had one. Thanks. Don't let me stop you if you want one. Or blood or anything." Then she remembered that Angel didn't like to feed in front of her. She'd got so used to Spike and his "I drink blood. Deal with it." attitude that she'd forgotten how repressed Angel had been. She looked across at Angel wondering why she just didn't feel anything much except disappointment. They had had something that she had thought was special, but it turned out to be nothing more than a wrong turning. So much of her energy had gone into it, and so many of her hang-ups were because of it and at the end of the day it just didn't mean that much.

"I wouldn't mind. Fancy moving through to the kitchen?"

"Sure. Wherever." Buffy followed him through and grabbed a seat on one of the worktops while he prepped some blood.

"Where are we going with this, Buffy?" Angel asked. "Are you here to talk about you and Spike or to ask me about Connor?"

"Mostly me and Spike, mildly curious about Connor but I reckon it could keep until you know better yourself what the situation is with him, more curious about you and Cordelia."

"Wha-? How did you know? .There's nothing to tell."

"How do you think I know? Who can walk in a room and read everyone in it? Not to mention working out where to go for more information. According to Love's Bitch you two are a done deal even if she hasn't worked it out yet."

"He's got it wrong. We're close. She's my best friend but she's with someone else."

"Someone who went out this morning and she didn't even realise he'd gone until she wanted to introduce him to us when we arrived. He's not going to be around for the long haul, however much he might want to be."

"Yeah? Well I suppose time will tell." Angel seemed to draw some comfort from her words but then he sighed. "I suppose that just leaves you and Spike. as topics for conversation that is."

"Guess so... You know he's changed. I think when he stopped hunting, he became a lot more like the man he used to be." Buffy tried to make a start on what she wanted to say.

"This from the one who told me demons don't change?"

"Just because he's my Mr Right doesn't mean his first name is Always," said Buffy.

"Buffy, just because he has a chip that prevents him from harming humans doesn't mean he's good. He still has a demon inside him. He's still inherently evil."

"I don't believe that. Your guy that was here earlier with the green skin, does he have a soul? Is he evil? Spike's inherently violent, confident to the point of arrogance as far a certain things go. He's possessive, fiercely protective and out and out predatory. He gets all that from his demon side, but none of what I've just described makes him evil. It might make him act like a bit of an asshole now and again but that's about it.

His violent side is channelled into helping me patrol and to be honest I think he prefers the odds on the white hat side of the fence. He'd rather be fighting something twice his size or outnumbered five to one or helping take on a god."

"Buffy, without a soul, he has nothing to guide him, to tell him right from wrong."

"Bullshit! He knows right from wrong. He was taught it as a child and he's intelligent enough with the passage of time to work out how much of what he learned was due to the foibles of the age and what was truly wrong. Or to apply the rule about if it harms no other. Right and wrong are primarily intellectual. Children have to be taught to share, not to just take everything they want. They have a soul, but it doesn't mean they know right from wrong until someone teaches them. Will may not be wracked with guilt if he does something wrong, but most of the time he still knows it's wrong.

Without your soul, you became evil, but to give you the benefit of the doubt it may be that your individual demon is particularly malevolent or it may just be that you're far more weak-willed than Spike. Having a soul didn't stop you stealing from your father to fund your drinking and your womanising when you were human. You used women with never a thought as to whether they'd end up pregnant, disgraced or diseased, never mind thinking of their feelings. You only cared that you had your fun. In fact, I'm fairly positive the soul you were cursed with probably isn't the one you originally had otherwise chances are, even with it, you would still act like Liam.

All your soul does is provide a negative incentive against what you've been educated to believe is wrong. Will has a positive incentive to do what's right, the people he loves. He wants our approval, our acceptance, our love. He doesn't need a guilt complex, he just wants to make us happy, doesn't want to disappoint us and for him it's enough.

So which is better, acting out of love or acting on the fear of feeling bad afterwards?" Buffy challenged the Souled One.

"Hey, back off a bit. I just want to make sure you know what you're up against here. You honestly believe that if the chip stopped working tomorrow he wouldn't go back to feeding from humans?"

"Do you honestly think I'd be engaged to him if I didn't?" Again, Buffy looked at him with a raised eyebrow and he couldn't get over the way her and Spike seemed to have grown together. "Let's cut all the crap here. You find out I'm getting married, which one would be worse, marrying Will or marrying Riley."

"Marrying Riley!" Angel didn't hesitate even for a fraction of a second.

"So all the soulless chipped vampire stuff doesn't really bother you that much at all, does it?" Buffy asked.

"I guess not."

"So how about you stop pretending it does, and we try to all be friends, assuming you can avoid attacking Will the next time you see him."

"Didn't Spike say we'd never be friends."

"Never is a long time, feelings change. Our lives have gone in different directions."

"Hey, well, if you can get married to a guy that called you "Slutty the Vampire Slayer", then anything is possible.

"He what? He is so dead. well, he is dead, but he'll be deader."

Angel let out a low chuckle at her blustering, and Buffy quietened.

"Angel, there's something I have to tell you. I didn't say anything before because I knew we wouldn't have the conversation we just did if I had. Did that make sense?"

"Just about. So what is this news?"

"When you went out before, Spike and me sort of followed you." Buffy proceeded to describe what had happened at Holtz's motel after Angel had left. ".Stephen got there just before we did. Whoever killed him must have stabbed him with a screwdriver or something. They left two puncture wounds in his neck. The woman, she was acting as if she'd seen you do it-"

"And you wait till now to tell me this?" Angel punched the countertop making a dent in the stainless steel finish and then began to pace to and fro.

"What were you planning on doing, huh? She's human. The person she killed doesn't officially exist. He's a non-person. It's even possible he inflicted the wounds himself. Dru isn't conveniently hanging around for you to lock them up together. And if she was meant to die wouldn't it have just been simpler for the Powers to let her die in the bar? You've got to remember we only see our part of the picture. Hear me out."

"We gave a few forensic-type arguments as to why we didn't believe her and let the kid make up his own mind. We offered him a lift back here, but he said he wanted some time alone, so once we helped him carry the body back up to his room and Will made sure the room was paid for through tomorrow, we left him be. He's not exactly big on demons and what with you and Will being in the middle of a fight the first time we saw him, we probably weren't the best people to be there.

With a bit of luck he'll show up here of his own accord tomorrow, but I don't think you're in a position to push. He might accept you didn't kill his dad, but he feels like you deceived him and stopped him being there to prevent it, so you're partly to blame.

You're going to have to be careful not to crowd him."

"Gunn and Fred were supposed to be looking after him." Angel wavered between concern that the couple hadn't come back and anger that they'd failed in their duty.

"Yeah, but if that kid decides to run off I defy anyone to catch him and to paraphrase a friend. He's a sixteen-year-old boy and even if everything was normal he'd still be a hormone bomb just waiting to go off. Chances are he'd run away anyway. We know he's somewhere safe even if he is alone in a room with a dead body. Gunn and Fred are probably driving round looking for him. Maybe you should ring and let them know he's okay, sort of."

"Gunn and Fred were the ones who found out he was staying at the motel. They would probably try there first."

"In which case they might be with him now, and if you rang them they might be able to give you an update.

Look, there's nothing more I can tell you. We'll be in touch. I'll just ring Will and then I'll wait out front." Buffy gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze as she passed through on her way to the foyer.

"Hey!" Cordy's voice greeted her as she moved back into the room. "Whatcha do with the big guy?"

"Left him in the kitchen moping into his mug of blood. Isn't that always the way it goes when we meet up. Except it isn't always a kitchen, and he never used to drink blood in front of people... And for once I'm just a messenger and not the cause of the moping." Buffy wandered over to the office where Cordy and her apparent ex-to-be were sitting, the man massaging her neck.

Cordy gave her a slightly guilty look. "So how did things go with Wes? I mean whatever impression you may have got before, I do still care about him, it's just that right now Angel is my priority and I can't be there for both of them."

"Yeah, well I guess Bitchy Buffy made a bit of an appearance as well. As to how things went." Buffy shrugged. "Don't think I know him well enough to tell. Will and him seemed to hit it off. They went all English and started talking about some Owen guy and some Semen guy but apparently it's spelled different. I got kinda lost off.

Look, I need to ring Spike to get him to come pick me up. Do you have a phone I can borrow?"

"You mean it's not your peroxide blond chain smoker that's been pacing up and down in front of the doors for the last five minutes?"

Buffy looked out into the darkness beyond the glass doors able to make out almost nothing of the night beyond the reflected hotel interior, nothing that is except for a halo of white-blond hair and the orange glow of a lit cigarette. "Yeah," she said softly a smile coming unbidden to her lips. Her next words firmer, "yeah, that one's mine." To Cordy's amazement she took off across the foyer at a run and pushed through the revolving door as fast as the hydraulic mechanism and her slayer strength would allow. She threw herself into the arms of the waiting vampire, who grabbed her and spun her round till she was breathless, their coats fanning out behind them like costumes in a bizarre fetish ballet, before letting her feet return to the ground and kissing her soundly.