The next morning, Buffy woke up early to wait for Angel's call despite staying out late with Willow and Tara the night before. Carrying her filled laundry basket under one arm, she blearily made her way downstairs, making a detour in the kitchen to start her coffee before heading for the basement washer. While the water boiled in her kettle, she peeked in her fridge for something to eat. She extracted a half-smashed jelly donut from its wrapper and proceeded to give it an experimental bite. “Breakfast of champions,” she concluded approvingly.
Before she could take another bite, her landline rang. Dropping the donut on the kitchen island, she reached with the other hand to shut off the stove before rushing towards the phone on the wall, picking it up before the second ring.
“Hi, Buffy. It’s me. Can you hear me okay?” Angel’s voice was transmitted perfectly from eight thousand miles away.
“Angel, hi! Yes. How are you?” Buffy responded excitedly.
“Fine, fine. You?” he asked warmly.
“Just great. What have you been up to?”
“I’ve mostly just been going over the prep for opening statements today,” he answered. Leaning back against the wall, Buffy listened as Angel launched into an explanation of how the team wanted to make sure that the gory facts were presented to the court as explicitly and unambiguously as possible to stave off any sympathy for the defendants, who were all very old men in mostly poor health. He shared his concern that firsthand accounts of the systematic atrocities would not be made over the course of the trial. As she closely followed what he told her, Buffy reiterated her faith in his judgment several times.
“How’s work?” Angel asked her after he finished describing the judges who would be presiding over the trial.
Buffy didn’t want to burden him with her petty problems, but she felt the need to vent her frustrations a little. “Ugh, I had another run-in with that ADA. You remember Pratt the prat?
“Did he put up another fight? I thought you persuaded him to help the boy?”
“No, he did. Finally.”
“So what’s the problem now?”
“He’s just so obnoxious. I mean he’s nosy and disrespectful and mean—“
Angel laughed. “Sounds like a real charmer. But I’m sure you can handle him. Remember, take no prisoners.”
“What about hostages?” Buffy asked mischievously. “I might be able to shanghai his paralegal. Not to Shanghai, of course. Maybe just—Monterey Park.”
Angel made a sound that started out as a laugh but ended as a yawn. “Anything else on your mind?”
“Nah. I just miss you.”
“I miss you too, Buffy. Look I’ll try to call you tomorrow, but Tuesday at the latest, ok?”
“Sure. I love you. Goodnight, Angel.”
“Love you too, bye.”
As Buffy hung up her phone, she glanced at the calendar and noted that he had been gone more than a month already. Seeing the marking for the date of summer solstice, she realized that it would actually be winter before she saw him again. Everything had happened so suddenly before Angel’s departure that she hadn’t fully wrapped her mind around what it would be like when he was gone and she was living in his absence day after day. Pushing her gloomy thoughts aside, she picked up her basket off the floor and got on with her morning errands.
Across town, William was waking up with a pounding headache that was being aggravated by the steady sound of drilling from the grounds of the Mormon temple a short distance away. Of course, he knew the primary reason for his pain was that he had had too much to drink after the unexpected and somewhat unnerving encounter with Buffy the night before.
He padded slowly into his bathroom and rummaged in his medicine cabinet over the sink for an aspirin. Staring in the cabinet mirror, bits and images of the previous night flitted through his mind. It had been a strange evening, all in all. For the fifth time in as many weeks, Cordelia had joined them. She was an interesting addition to the group although the places she insisted on choosing were always posher than William liked. Gem was no different, although the music there was better than most.
She came along ostensibly to spend time with Xander, whom she had dated briefly in high school to apparently disastrous effects. Somehow the two of them had recently reconnected over Facebook and decided to renew a friendship. William wasn’t too concerned about his friend facing the wrath of his live-in girlfriend, as it was obvious to him that Cordelia had her sights set on Wesley, although he couldn’t quite understand why, as Xander had revealed that she tended to prefer her men with power or money and preferably both. In any event, she was meeting with little success in her attempts to draw Wesley out with her periodic appearances and practiced flirtation. The real obstacle was not her rather transparent methods, however. She was certainly an attractive woman and as the son of an upper-class family Wesley was not averse to a woman with a haughty veneer, especially when a nicer person frequently emerged from beneath it.
Though the other man hadn’t talked about it in a long time, William suspected that Wesley was still mourning Fred, the girl he had been in love with who had tragically died two years earlier. He and Gunn had met the spritely physicist at the same party, but Gunn being the bolder man had made his move straight away and Wesley had faded into the background to pine for the woman he couldn’t have. When Gunn and Fred’s relationship ended and Wesley’s chance finally came, it was cruelly snatched away. Fred contracted a rare blood disease just days after they began dating that proved fatal with astonishing speed and Wesley was left broken-hearted. William had often wondered but never asked Wesley if in retrospect he regretted not saying anything to Fred earlier. He supposed that Wesley had preserved Gunn’s friendship by letting things play out, but he didn’t think that the principled way he had handled things could provide much more than cold comfort to him.
Not for the first time, he felt relieved not to be caught up in any of the awkward relationship histories and triangles of his friends and acquaintances. After the humiliations and failures of his youth he had abandoned the idea of lasting attachments. He simply blamed his mother’s overly romantic nature and idealization of her own tragic love for the childish dreams that stubbornly persisted, unfulfilled, in his innermost being.
Among his friends his nonchalant attitude towards women was generally accepted as part of his idiosyncratic package. Of course, Xander liked to remind him every chance he got that casual dating and hooking up was a poor substitute for a real relationship, but William knew that Anya partially put him up to it—that she grew bored with her boyfriend’s bachelor friends and would have preferred the company of another couple. William was quite certain however that he didn’t want to trade his isolation for the train wreck that Xander’s own long-term relationship seemed to him destined for, no matter how content Xander was in the meantime. It wasn’t as if Los Angeles offered many candidates for serious consideration, anyway. Among the women he picked up or who picked him up, the majority of them were much less interested in who he was than in what he could do for them, whether it was in the bedroom or anywhere else. Or perhaps it was all him. Perhaps he had slowly become too much of a misanthrope to appreciate sincerity anymore.
He mind seemed to stick on the idea for a few moments but to no purpose. As he moved into his kitchenette to search his cupboards for the ingredients for his customary Sunday morning English breakfast of beans on toast he idly pondered what the next week would bring. His thoughts turned again to the night before. He still couldn’t figure out what Buffy was playing at. She had practically confirmed that she didn’t belong at the agency let alone in charge of it and yet given no explanation as to why she was there nonetheless. He knew very well that he had a chip on his shoulder the metaphorical size of the Grand Canyon towards those who had had it easy in life, and he had to grudgingly admit that although consistently insufferable, she hadn’t turned out to be as naïve as he’d expected. The file on Richards had been very useful in his interrogation, during which it had been like pulling teeth to get him to verify the events to them that he had already related once to Buffy. He tried and failed to recall why she had asked to observe the second interview. Not like she was very forthcoming about her motives for anything although he supposed he was partly to blame. Even for him, his merciless behavior towards her had been extreme. Something about her just stuck in his craw. He smiled, thinking about how she had totally lost her temper in his office. He decided that he would be more conciliatory around her. Or try to be, at least.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I had just a bit more to add to Week Two. I have already been working on Week Three and will post that as soon as I can. Thank you so much for your reviews! I am really happy to hear it when you tell me you are enjoying the story. If you have questions, suggestions, or there's stuff that doesn't make sense to you I'd love to know that too. (Haven't found a beta yet either.)
Chapter End Notes:
If you are liking it, please let me know! Or if you want a spoiler~