"New Beginnings"

Author: Indie
Email: indiefic@hotmail.com
Notes: This takes place in late May 2025.

The loud crash startled Angel and he instinctively slapped his hand over his racing heart. Turning, he surveyed the source of the noise. He groaned aloud, looking wearily at the mess of papers scattered all over his office floor. Bending, he started the irritating task of returning the loose sheaves of paper to their proper folders.

"Do you need some help in here?" queried a cheery female voice from the partially open doorway.

"No, I'm fine," Angel sighed. "I just knocked over a box. I'm almost finished." He turned to offer a smile of thanks to the well-meaning secretary as he shoved papers back into the file.

She made a disapproving clucking noise at him and said, "You're going to work yourself to death, Professor. Classes don't start for another three weeks so it won't be the end of the world if you don't get your office in order this afternoon."

"You're probably right, Grace," he admitted, "but I just got here and I need to make a good impression. I don't intend to spend the rest of my career teaching Intro History to a bunch of freshmen who could care less." Angel punctuated his admission with a wink as he sank completely to the floor and began alphabetizing papers. Grace shook her head, laughing, as she retreated from the office leaving Angel to his mess.

Three hours later the office was finally finished. It was only shortly past six in the evening, but the entire building was completely empty and quiet, most of the employees having rushed for the exits the second the clock hit five. Angel collapsed into the chair behind his desk with a groan. The office was finally in order but he still needed to prepare the syllabus and readings for the intro history class he would be teaching at the beginning of summer session.

What would have amazed Grace was that the ever-driven Professor Jacobson didn't start preparing. Instead, he sat at his desk and looked out through the open window at the vibrant summer sky. He reached into one of his freshly organized desk drawers and pulled out a small flask. Unscrewing the lid, he took a sip of bourbon, sighing as the comforting liquid burned down his throat.

He was back in Sunnydale. And he was human - and sore and tired, but that came with the territory. Angel laughed bitterly to himself. He was finally an average, ordinary man. He was also more alone than he had ever been in his entire timeless existence. The depression crept over him despite the beautiful setting, the new job, the cheerful co-workers. He was back in Sunnydale and that fact alone made him unable to deny the reality of how low he had sunk, how much he had squandered, how much he had destroyed.

The battle at the End of Days took place more than two decades ago but it still ate at him like a fresh wound. The forces of good prevailed, but did not escape unscathed. He and Buffy fought side by side – but not together. They were estranged. Their last encounter, shortly after the End of Days and his Shanshu, was horrible and public. They didn't speak now. They didn't inquire about each other. Their final argument, in front of scores of bystanders, was full of accusations, revelations and recriminations. He confronted Buffy about Parker, Dracula and Riley. He seethed about Spike. Buffy in return shared her knowledge about his recent sordid relationships with Darla, Faith, Cordelia and a slew of nameless, faceless women, both human and demon.

They somehow managed to refrain from coming to physical blows, but the verbal ones were infinitely more vicious. Neither of them pulled any punches, and they both hit below the belt. His newfound humanity only added fuel to Buffy's fire. She screamed her hatred for him in front of a sea of witnesses. She ranted her glee that at least the world would be spared his presence sometime in the foreseeable future.

It was an ugly festering memory that was always resident in his thoughts. And now he was in Sunnydale. And so was she. They could undoubtedly go on avoiding each other until one of them died. That would probably be for the best. With that bitter thought in mind, Angel grabbed his worn leather satchel and headed to his small apartment close to campus.

In his cramped living room, Angel leaned back against the wall and slid down it into a tired lump on the floor. He took a deep breath, curling his hand around the bottle. The first week of summer session was almost over. Professor Jacobson, as Angel was now known, had forty-two students in his Intro to History class. They seemed to be a good group. A lot of them were overachievers trying to get a semester ahead, rather than underachievers forced to repeat, as he had feared would be the case.

Professor Jacobson was a big hit as usual. That was how he got this job. Students loved him. He had a Ph.D., but it was from some forgettable school. He earned the degree over years of night classes, his days spent eking out a meager living. His paper credentials were not outstanding.

In the classroom, however, Angel was magic. His certificates did not do service to the vast wealth of knowledge he possessed. His passion for the subject was a palpable presence. The distant façade with which he approached everything else in his empty life melted away to reveal a burning thirst for knowledge and learning. He was amazing to watch. People were drawn to him.

Especially women.

Professor Jacobson was very popular with his female students and colleagues. Angel aged, as humans are wont to do, but very gracefully. At forty-eight human years, his hair was still thick, but the dark brown was beginning to be peppered with streaks of gray. Wrinkles lined the corners of his eyes and mouth. His eyes still had their piercing gaze, although it now shone from behind a pair of stylish glasses. He was still in amazing physical condition, running five miles and lifting weights each day. He enjoyed the irony that after being blessed with mortality, he found himself doing everything to avoid it.

Well, almost everything, he thought wryly as he took a pull off the icy cold bottle. He winced. Vodka was not his favorite drink but it made for neater hangovers. When one drank as much as Angel recovery time counted for quite a bit.

Impatiently, he kicked off the lid of a nearby cardboard box with his toe and reached out to pull it near. He had put off unpacking for weeks, as if he were afraid something would send him fleeing from Sunnydale at a moment's notice. He had to admit that while that scenario held a certain appeal, it wasn't very realistic. He had a job and responsibilities. He was also getting older. He couldn't keep living a vagabond lifestyle. Absently, he rummaged through the contents of the box and suddenly went deathly still. He cursed fluidly as he slouched back against the wall, eyeing the box as if it were going to mount some sort of offensive strike.

Angel had lived in at least twenty different places in the last fifteen years and there were always certain boxes that never got unpacked. This was one of them. He continued to watch the box, taking another deep drink from the bottle. He sat there for long minutes, steeling his nerve. Eventually, his patience wore through and with a muffled curse, he leaned forward and pulled out some of the contents. He stared at the wall dully, refusing to visually inspect the minutiae of the items he held. They were so innocuous on the surface – a picture, a book, a ring, the standard keepsakes every person possessed, reminders of a long lost youth. So why did it kill something inside of him to look at these things?

Taking another drink, Angel stared up at the ceiling. He could not bring himself to look at the items he held. Of course, he didn't need to look at them to see them in his mind's eye. He had long ago committed them to memory so completely that even years of drowning himself in drink couldn't begin to mar the images. The first picture was of Buffy Anne Summers at her high school graduation. He knew the image intimately, Buffy surrounded by Willow and Xander, all of them in their dark red graduation robes with the yellow tassels, all of them full of life and potential despite the fact that they knew they would be fighting for their lives later that day. Underneath the graduation picture was Buffy's senior picture, a beautiful black and white of her looking demurely at the camera.

Without glancing down, Angel ran his fingertips over the pictures, as if in touching them he could touch the part of himself that had existed all those years ago. It was a futile wish. What he had lost, he knew he could never regain. Human or not, he was a wretched creature, fit company for no one. But the irony was that he was lonely. Lonely in a way that could not be assuaged merely by surrounding himself with people. He had taken scores of lovers, but sharing his bed with them had never chased away the darkness the way merely being friends with Buffy had done.

Buffy. The name echoed in his mind and his eyes misted with tears he would not allow to fall. What would she think of him now? Would seeing how he squandered his humanity enrage her more than she was at the End of Days? Would she even care? Perhaps his life or death would now mean nothing to her at all.

His stomach clenched in nausea that had nothing to do with the massive amounts of alcohol he had consumed. How could he have been so stupid, so petty as he was that cursed day? Three goddamn centuries on this planet and he was never anything more than a stupid teenage boy where Buffy was concerned. She alone had the ability to enrage him beyond means, to bring out every snarky, biting, despicable facet of his personality. What did that say about him? How could he treat the only woman he had ever loved in such a manner? He didn't know. Shouldn't his love temper his reactions? Of course, maybe it was the other way around. Cordelia had been married twice since he broke things off with her and it hadn't bothered him in the least. Yet merely thinking about Spike touching Buffy, even twenty years after the fact, was still enough to make him want to hunt Spike down and dismember him with a pair of pliers.

Angel took another drink, emptying the bottle. Automatically, he hefted himself to his feet, mindlessly bringing his box of memories with him. Inside the freezer was another bottle of vodka that he wasted no time opening. Half a bottle later the memories were finally beginning to cloud to acceptable levels. He sighed deeply as he leaned against the ancient refrigerator. How big of a mistake had he made by returning to Sunnydale?

After Friday's class Angel was swamped with students. It was Murphy's Law that the day he was besieged by a pounding headache was the day they chose to swarm. They asked questions about office hours, attendance policies and a plethora of other things he covered in his earlier lectures. Despite his foul mood, he handled them all one at a time until he was down to the last. "Hi," the student said, extending her perfectly manicured hand, "My name is Clarice Jenkins."

The mound of aspirin he took earlier was beginning to kick in and Angel took the proffered hand, smiling. He had noticed Clarice on the first day, not that it was easy to miss her. She was very attractive, tall, dark hair, deep olive skin that hinted of Mediterranean ancestry, fresh out of high school. Angel was very good at reading between the lines and he had little trouble with Miss Clarice Jenkins. She wanted him. The realization amused him more than anything. He was still a little off-kilter thanks to a sleepless night spent drinking and thumbing through memories of a life with Buffy.

Clarice wasn't from the West Coast. The cut of her expensive designer clothes, the slight accent, all pointed to the East Coast. Probably New York. Probably Manhattan. Angel would also hazard a guess that her father was very, very wealthy and that Clarice was accustomed to getting what she wanted. It definitely helped that she reminded him in no way of Buffy Summers. "Professor Angel Jacobson," he replied coolly.

Clarice smiled and a slight blush crept into her cheeks. "This is going to sound kind of silly," she said offhandedly. Of course, Angel knew that it was not an offhand comment. Everything about this woman screamed premeditation. He felt himself being hunted. "I know you said your field of expertise is medieval weaponry," she continued. "I have this, well, relic, I guess. It's a knife. My grandfather gave it to me years ago. I was just wondering if you could take a look at it to see if it's worth anything, or if it's important."

"An old relic?" Angel asked. Clarice obviously prepared, he hadn't heard a pickup line that original in quite some time. It was rather flattering that she went to the trouble.

"Yes, but I don't have it with me at the moment," she explained.

"Well, maybe you could bring it to class next week and I'll take a look at it," Angel offered casually, being certain that he did not make the first overture.

Clarice blushed again. "Yeah, or perhaps I could bring it by your office sometime," she suggested.

Angel regarded her carefully. She was nervous, but undeniably aggressive. Fortunately for her, he was very sexually frustrated, very available and a still little drunk. "I'm free this afternoon," he said. "I'll be working on a paper, but I don't have any meetings scheduled."

Clarice smiled with satisfaction disproportionate to their innocuous conversation. "That works for me, I'll be there at 4:30," she said.

"See you then. Do you know where my office is?" Angel asked. Clarice held up the syllabus with his office number and phone clearly listed. She waved at him and sauntered off.

Angel laughed under his breath. He hadn't had one this lively in quite some time. Clarice was exactly the way he liked his lovers, aggressive, rich, and young. Angel wasn't in a financial position to take care of anyone besides himself and the age difference always made a convenient reason to break off the relationship after a month or two. Being aggressive was also an important trait. He needed his lovers to know what they were doing. He wasn't seducing anybody. Let them attack, it made it less likely for him to get turned in for disciplinary action.

Clarice didn't show at 4:30, in fact she didn't make it to his office until just before five - right when all of the office staff left for the day. Damn she was good. Angel had played the seduction game with students before, but always with former students. He knew the dangers in becoming involved with one of his current students and he would not normally have been willing to risk his job for something so stupid. Normally. Of course, normally he was working with more than forty-five minutes of sleep. Normally he hadn't spent the last eighteen hours in varying degrees of inebriation. And normally he didn't miss Buffy with a hunger so violent that it made even the merest promise of finding oblivion in a warm, willing body – any body – enough for him do the unthinkable.

Clarice walked into Angel's office and he eyed her up and down with a desperate hunger he did not bother to try and hide. She smiled with satisfaction as she took a seat on the corner of his desk. Leaning back in his chair speculatively, Angel asked, "Did you bring your relic?"

"Of course," she said coyly. She opened the designer backpack she was carrying and pulled out an elaborately decorated dagger.

Angel was somewhat startled, but eyed the piece with interest. He half wondered if there really was a relic. Indeed it seemed there was and this one was much more than a feeble excuse. Carefully, he took it from her proffered hand, studying it intently. The dagger was amazing. The craftsmanship was completely beyond anything he had seen in ages - literally. "Where did you say you got this?" he asked.

"From my grandfather. He gave it to me when I was just a child," she said.

"Do you know anything about its origins?" he asked, truly intrigued by the piece.

She regarded him carefully and then answered slowly, "No."

Angel easily read the impatient tone in her voice and turned his gaze on the beautiful young woman. Clarice gently took the dagger from his hands and set it on the desk. He smiled to himself as she stepped between him and the desk, standing between his splayed knees. Warning bells went off in his alcohol addled mind, but Angel ignored them. He was so lonely, so frayed that any respite would be welcome, even if it ended with him getting fired. In their current positions, her sizeable height towered over his seated form. He looked up and studied her face. "Is there something else you want, Clarice?" he asked quietly.

"You know there is, Professor Jacobson," she answered in a sultry whisper. With that, she placed her hands on his thighs and pushed him and his rolling chair backwards about a foot until they hit the wall behind his desk. Angel's breath caught in his throat, but he willed himself to remain still. Few of his lovers had been so daring with initial contact – at least when it wasn't instigated in a darkened nightclub. With deliberate slowness, Clarice knelt between his legs. Angel looked at her with a calm that belied his inner turmoil, his hands resting on the arms of the chair. Clarice leaned forward and began unbuttoning his shirt. Angel growled deep in his chest as she uncovered his bronzed skin, kissing wetly down his chest.

When the shirt was completely unbuttoned she pushed it open and drew one of his nipples into her mouth. Angel sucked in breath sharply and curled his hand in her hair, fingers twining through the dark locks. Clarice smiled against his heated flesh as her nimble fingers moved to the crotch of his pants. He was hard, pushing against the constraining fabric but as she moved to undo the button, he curled his free hand around her wrist. Pulling back, Clarice looked at him questioningly.

Angel smiled wryly. "I don't have … anything with me," he said. "I'm a little disorganized this afternoon."

With a wicked grin, Clarice leaned forward and whispered against his lips, "Disorganized? Is that what you call a five martini lunch?" She giggled and said, "Besides, you don't need to worry about anything, I'm on the Pill."

Her hand once again moved to the fly of his slacks and once again Angel stopped her. This time her expression was impatient. He shook his head very slowly. "I don't take chances," he said.

Clarice's bottom lip stuck out in a pout that Angel quickly captured between his lips, pulling her up on her knees against his body. Never breaking the kiss, he urged her into his lap. It didn't take his talented fingers long to find their way beneath her designer skirt and into her equally expensive panties.

Long minutes later, she rested against his chest, panting harshly as she recovered. She shifted, reaching once again for the tented front of his trousers. Angel caught her hand and brought it up to his mouth, sensually kissing her fingertips. She cocked a speculative eyebrow at him. "You don't want me to return the favor, Professor?" she asked.

Angel watched her, his gaze hooded. He was sobering up enough to know that what he was doing went beyond stupid. Sex in his office with a student might not land him in jail, but it was definitely enough to cost him his teaching position. He was also sober enough to know he might be too drunk to perform. The thought of being fired and sexually embarrassed were enough to temper his desire. "Not today," he said evasively.

Clarice shrugged, unable to completely hide her perceived snub. Angel was disinclined to soothe her wounded ego. He had his reasons for his actions and he didn't particularly care to share them with Clarice. Rather huffily, she levered herself off of his lap and straightened her clothes and hair. Once again looking immaculate, she said, "So the dagger, you'll look into it for me?"

"Yes, give me some time. I'll let you know," he answered easily. She turned to leave his office, checking one last time to make sure no evidence of their tryst was visible. She closed the door behind her, leaving him alone in the building.

Angel let out a deep sigh, sinking back into his chair as he willed his erection away. Vanity, he thought, as he reached for the flask in his desk. Vanity was a very important trait in his lovers. Aside from the fact that it meant they were always neat and fragrant, it usually assured selfishness as well. Selfish, vain women didn't want an almost-destitute, aging, associate professor as a husband. Neither did they didn't want to watch their perfectly toned bodies swell with a growing child.

Angel pressed his eyes shut tightly against the memory. Despite Clarice's obvious vanity, he wasn't about to have sex with her without taking other precautions. He made that mistake once. He got involved with a very young, very sweet student during his first year teaching. Amanda was a far cry from the jaded, callous women whose company he now kept. She had been innocent and refreshing. She had been too much like Buffy, or maybe even Willow.

Angel took a steadying drink of bourbon. He broke Amanda's heart and probably ruined her life. She was terrified when she found out about the pregnancy, but beneath the fear was a true sense of joy. He could not share her enthusiasm. To his eternal shame, he was enraged. He made it clear he would not marry her and he would not have a bastard child running around. The revelation crushed Amanda. Angel didn't have to push hard after that. She was a thousand miles from home and he was her only friend. He coerced her into an abortion. Angel knew she would have been willing to go home and raise the child without him, but he didn't want that. He couldn't have a child.

And now he didn't. He sold his piece of shit car to pay for her procedure and in the process lost whatever glimmer of humanity remained in him. Now Angel didn't date nice girls. He dated women who sold their souls for money, power and beauty. He dated women who wanted nothing more than a good time from him.

Most of the time he could manage to deliver a good time. He sure as hell couldn't give them anything more substantial. He didn't have anything more to give. As long as he stuck to his criteria, he was usually safe; vain, selfish, beautiful and young – don't forget young. Young women were great for a myriad of reasons, and not all of them physical. Firm bodies were nice, but Angel had been around enough to know that older women tended to be much more interesting in bed. Experience could often compensate very well for a toned ass.
However, older women tended to see through his charming bullshit act and find the moody drunk lurking underneath. So he made sure they were young. They bought his lies, loved his cock, and didn't ask questions.

Life trudged forward and soon Angel was into his fifth week of the summer session. For lack of anything better to do, he was still seeing Clarice and still drinking entirely too much. Sunnydale necessitated his need for oblivion, be it in the form of alcohol or a willing body. If Clarice had complaints, she kept them to herself. Angel might have been taciturn and prone to drinking too much, but he wasn't a stumbling-down drunk – and he still looked fantastic. She wouldn't criticize his moods as long as he could keep up with her in the bedroom, which he did quite easily. She didn't give a shit about his pain.

Angel for his part was rather disgusted with himself for continuing the relationship, such as it was, with Clarice. Being with her didn't make him feel young, it made him feel old. The realization made him laugh. Saying he was older was pretty much the understatement of the millennium. But when he was with Buffy he hadn't felt older. She made him feel younger. Whatever magic had existed between them was destined to never be repeated. Angel looked at Clarice and merely saw their differences. They had nothing in common, save sex and while that was satisfactory, lately it had been leaving Angel more empty than usual.

Per their agreement, Angel expended a good bit of effort to researching Clarice's dagger. Unfortunately, he hadn't found any promising leads. A colleague at the university suggested he try the local antique gallery, which specialized in medieval weaponry. The colleague even went so far as to recommend the proprietor, one Buffy Summers, by name. It seemed that Miss Summers was the leading assessor of antique weaponry value in the nation and one of the top three in the world. Angel thanked his colleague and decided that hell could freeze over first. He would dig through some more musty old books alone.

It was one night, after spending an eternity digging through his books and still coming up empty, that Clarice prodded him into going out for a drink. A quickie and a shower later and they were in downtown Sunnydale. It was a Friday night and even though it was summer in a college town, it was hopping with activity. Angel flatly refused to go to any of Clarice's regular hangouts. He wasn't in the mood to be recognized by anyone with Clarice on his arm. She pouted, but he refused to relent as he steered her towards Willy's.

It wasn't Willy's anymore, now it was Jack's. The demon clientele left along with Willy and the closing of the Hellmouth during the End of Days. Now, the basement level bar was frequented by an older local crowd who liked the intimate atmosphere and the pronounced lack of ear splitting music. Angel had been in several times during the last two months and he knew the bartender, Jerry, by name.

Angel and Clarice went inside and found a booth in the corner. Thanks to Jerry, Clarice didn't need to use her painstakingly produced fake ID to be served her usual vodka and fruit juice concoction. Angel ordered his usual, bourbon neat. They drank, mostly in silence, occasionally using their feet to molest each other's nether regions. The dilapidated jukebox churned out depressing jazz tune after depressing jazz tune.

Exactly when she came in, Angel wasn't certain. Buffy. She was sitting in the middle of the room at a small table and she wasn't alone. Angel had no idea who he was, but he was Buffy's type and he was sitting with her. The boy - and he was a boy - was decidedly younger than Buffy. He was solidly built with dark hair and was at least a foot taller than she. Angel fumed as he watched them together. What was Buffy doing with a boy? She had always liked older men. Angel thought about it for a moment. Buffy was forty-four years old. When they had dated, older men meant developed bodies, charm, money and a car. Now, older meant false teeth, baldness and possible incontinence. Angel could understand her change of attitude - which is not to say he liked it. He was still older, damn it! Old didn't have to mean stinking of death.

But possessive anger aside, Angel could not deny that Buffy looked fantastic. She wore a smart black suit with a pair of achingly high heels. Angel assumed that she must have come to Jack's after a business meeting. Her hair was pulled up in a sort of French twist. It was still blonde, but now darker than she used to wear it. She was radiant. She was in her mid forties, but didn't look it. You could tell she wasn't a child, but her appearance was timeless.

Angel growled as he realized he was becoming aroused simply by looking at her. Bitch. For months he had avoided her, yet had been unable to get her out of his thoughts. And the worst part of it was that even his most heated memories and fantasies of her could not begin to compare to the actuality of seeing her. She should have looked old. She should have been frumpy and wrinkled. She most certainly was not. She was every bit as beautiful as she had been that day he saw her walking down the steps of her school sucking on a red lollipop.

And he missed her so much he could barely breathe.

Angel looked down at the table. Both his and Clarice's glasses were empty. Jack's was now at capacity and the lone waitress was having difficulty keeping up. Angel rose to his feet, heading for the bar. "I'll be right back," he assured Clarice.

Angel stepped up to the bar and gave his order to Jerry. He forced himself not to stare at Buffy's reflection in the mirrored wall. It took Jerry a few minutes, but eventually Angel had the drinks. Turning, he headed back to the table - and looked directly into Buffy's face Not that he could have missed her, she was a foot from him.

"So, were you going to bother talking to me or were you just planning to glare all evening?" she asked pointedly.

"I wasn't glaring," he answered, quickly falling into their habit of bickering.

"Oh, okay, whatever," Buffy said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "I don't think your date appreciates it very much."

Angel flushed and his vision shot to the booth. Clarice was following the exchange very intently. She did not look happy. Pursing his lips together, Angel once again met Buffy's gaze. "I'm sure your little tag-along over there isn't too happy you're talking to me either," he countered.

Buffy smiled wryly. "That's rich, Angel. My ‘little tag-along'. He's twenty-four, which means he's old enough to be in here. Don't even try to tell me that ‘Miss Thing' over there didn't graduate from high school a month ago," Buffy sniped.

Angel stared at her blankly for a minute and then unable to control himself, laughed. "I think it was two months ago," he said quietly.

Buffy's irritation dissipated at his self-effacing words and she smiled gently. "How are you, Angel?"

"Old," he said laughing again. "How are you?"

"Not too bad. Busy. I work a lot."

Angel nodded. "I heard," he said. "Top assessor of antique weaponry in the nation. You probably don't have a minute of free time."

"Not really," she admitted. "I work mornings, days, nights, whatever it takes to get the job done. I'm in the middle of a big project right now. A private collector wants me to go through his entire collection, over three thousand pieces. He shipped them to me for cataloging last week."

"Hey," a voice interrupted. It was Buffy's ‘tag-along'. "I need to go, I'll catch you later, okay? Dinner on Sunday."

Buffy nodded, motioning the young man closer. "Nicholas, this is Angel. He's a professor at UC Sunnydale," she said, introducing the young man to Angel. Angel's eyebrow shot up. How had she known where he worked?

"Hello," Nick said, extending his hand.

"Nice to meet you," Angel countered with a firm grip.

"See you later, sweetheart," Buffy said, as Nick leaned to kiss her on the forehead. The boy left.

"Looks like you're alone for the evening," Angel noted.

"Looks like you're going to be if you don't get back to your table," Buffy said wryly. "Go on. I'll see you around some time." With that, Buffy left the bar. Angel merely stared blankly at her retreating form, unable to move.

Finally realizing he must look like an idiot staring at the door, Angel wound his way back to the table and found Clarice enraged. "Who the hell was that?" she demanded.

Taking a deep breath, Angel considered exactly how to answer that question. There was only one explanation that fit. "My wife," he answered very matter-of-factly.

The information stunned Clarice and she gaped at him. The usually unflappable beauty didn't have an answer. Angel was slightly amused. He wasn't lying. The night of Buffy's seventeenth birthday, Angel had married her. Claddagh rings, ceremonial taking of the bride's virginity - according to the tradition he was raised with, Buffy was his wife, and would be until one of them died. "Clarice," Angel started quietly.

Clarice seemed to snap out of her shock. "Go," she seethed. "I don't want an explanation. Just leave me alone."

Angel debated trying to soothe things over. Clarice was not accustomed to being snubbed. She could very well be vindictive enough to expose their relationship and get him fired. Angel wasn't sure he cared. He loved his job, but his life had been off-track for a very long time. If the cost of getting it back on-track was his job, he would be willing to pay. With a shrug, he stood up. He didn't owe Clarice anything. They used each other, nothing more. There was nothing between them, not even friendship. He left the bar without a backward glance.

Without transportation due to lack of Clarice, Angel set out to walk the two miles to his apartment. He should have felt like shit. He was single, broke, a heavy drinker and might very well be facing unemployment. But he didn't feel like shit. Point of fact, he felt wonderful. He felt warm all over, and oddly relieved, and it was all because of Buffy.

For weeks he avoided seeing her, even avoided thinking about her. He expected their meeting to go horribly. He expected venom, more of her throwing their love in his face. He expected her to reiterate how much she hated him, how much of a huge mistake loving him had been.

But that hadn't happened. It hadn't started off great, but it had definitely ended on a positive note.

For the first time in literally decades, Angel allowed himself to admit how much he still loved her, how much he physically ached for her presence. It was glorious. It made him feel human in a way that actually being human had never reached.

So what if Buffy had some hot, young boyfriend? Angel knew he always had a claim on her that no one else could touch. For years he avoided dwelling on that fact, abiding by her wishes that he leave her alone. Not now. He was going to do anything and everything he could to get back in her heart and her bed. Possibly in that order.