What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Part Four: Buffy's Story
by Elizabeth Ann Lewis
It was an icky, smelly, grungy, low-rent version of Motel 6. Buffy pulled her dad's Explorer into a empty space and shut off the engine. "Well," she sighed, "here goes nothing."

Room 15 didn't respond to knocking. A warped cardboard "Do Not Disturb" sign prevented entry. "You are exceedingly disturbed," Buffy muttered to the man whom the police had picked up for vagrancy after... someone called in a complaint. Angel handed her the key, and she turned it in the lock, convinced that she was going to find an empty room.

"Daddy!" She ran to her father's side and dropped to her knees. Hank Summers was drugged and tied to a chair in the scuzzy room.

The piercing shriek of his offspring was enough to wake him from a stupor, and he blinked groggily at her. "Buffy?" he said, his voice slurred.

Buffy worked at the ropes that bound him to the cheap chair. "Hang on, we'll have you out of here in a minute."

"We?" Hank tried again, turning to look at the doorway. Angel was a dark shape blocking most of the light from the streetlamps.

"He's a friend. He's helping me. Can you stand up?"

Dazed, Hank didn't protest when Angel took his other arm and he and Buffy helped Hank out to the car. Depositing him in the back seat, Buffy drove home. They got him up the stairs to the condo without incident, and Buffy disappeared into the kitchen to turn on the coffee machine.

"Now we've *really* got some 'splaining to do," Buffy muttered under her breath when she came out with a cup of black coffee. Beginning to wake up, Hank took it gratefully.

One sip later, he blinked his watering eyes and tried manfully to smile at his daughter. "Honey... this is, um, a bit hot. Could you add some cold water?"

"Sure." Anxious, Buffy hovered over him. "How much?"

"Ah... about half the cup," he said weakly.

Three cups of much-watered coffee later, Hank was ready for answers. Buffy had gotten better at fabrication over the past year. Hank bought her story of a weirdo who knocked on the door and handed her the key. He bought that she hadn't called the police since they couldn't do anything until he was missing for forty-eight hours. And he bought that she had called an old friend (*very* old, Buffy said silently) to keep her company, so she wouldn't be alone.

All in all, Hank swallowed everything she told him.

It was a couple of hours before dawn when Angel got to his feet. "Don't go. You must be exhausted. We can make a bed up on the couch, right, Buffy?"

Buffy took a good look at the couch, right in the path of the huge windows in her dad's living room. "Um..."

"I'm fine. I don't have that far to go."

Hank offered him his hand. "Thanks for your help. And for watching out for Buffy. I really appreciate it."

Buffy stood on her tip-toes to kiss her dad's cheek. "Go to sleep," she said sternly.

He brushed his hand over her hair. "I will. I love you."

"Love you too. Night."

Buffy walked Angel to the door, and just outside of it. "Do you have a place to go?" she asked quietly.

Angel nodded. "Don't worry, I'll be fine."

"Okay." They looked at each other for a long moment. Then Buffy leaned up to kiss his cheek as she had with her dad. "Thank you. Really. You don't know..." Her voice trailed off in a shudder as she thought of what might have happened.

"I'm glad I could help."

"I, uh..."

Angel smiled at her, slightly, neither the strange half-reluctant smile nor Cryptic Guy grin. He touched her cheek lightly, opened his mouth as though to say something.

Then turned and walked away.


* * *
Buffy spent the next day fussing over her father, who finally shooed her off. "I'm fine, I'm fine!" He grinned at her. "I never thought of you as a worrier."

"Well... you disappeared. I *was* worried."

Hank lifted one hand to smooth the line that was getting to be permanently etched between her brows. "You heard what the police said. That vagrant they picked up... for whatever insane reason--"

"And we do mean insane."

"--he decided to take out his anger on me. I suppose having a serial killer in your hometown might make even a normal person crazy."

"Yeah," Buffy echoed faintly. The story that Waring had told her was true, she could tell that much from the watered-down version that the police got from Australia. Fifteen years ago, vampires had descended on a small town. The part that Waring *didn't* seem to get was that they left almost immediately, after doing some significant damage.

He'd been unable to admit that he couldn't help the ones who had died, so he believed that he could help those who were still alive -- never mind that they weren't in danger any longer.

Buffy was curled on her dad's couch, ignoring the TV that was laughing at its own cleverness with canned giggles. Lost in thought, she was startled by someone knocking on the door. Hank was in his room, making an early night of it, so Buffy answered the door.

Angel stood outside it. For the first time Buffy could remember, he wasn't wearing black and white. A dark slate-blue silk shirt covered his chest, and charcoal grey pants covered the rest of him. Buffy just goggled for a few moments.

Gravely, he offered her a white rose. "I know this is kind of last minute but... would you like to go out with me?

Buffy finally regained the power of speech. "Out? Like on a date? Dinner, movie, dancing, that kind of thing?"

His mouth quirked in its accustomed half smile. "We'd have to skip the dinner, but yeah."

"Why?" she asked. The flower was cool in her fingers, the scent sweet. And the thorns sharp.

Angel didn't speak for a moment. "I want to be with you. I keep telling myself it can't happen, it won't work. And then I see you and... it stops mattering. I don't know what will happen when we go back to Sunnydale. Sometimes I think that, now that the Master's dead, I should leave--"

Buffy's hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, as if she needed to chain him to the spot. "No!"

He turned his hand to take hers, holding it tightly. "I couldn't go. I know that."

Buffy took a deep breath, even though her head was spinning giddily. "But you still think that we can't be together," she said steadily.

"No. I don't know," he said, frustrated. "All I know is here, tonight... it's different. We're different. And I want one night." He raised an eyebrow at her, and grinned again. "So...?"

"So? So! Oh!" She glanced down at herself in shorts and a baggy t-shirt. "Ugh. Um, give me ten minutes. Okay, fifteen. Stay there. *Don't* come in. Got it?"

"I got it," Angel said to the door slammed in his face.

Seventeen minutes later, Buffy reopened it, wearing the silver satin sheath she had just found at Nordstrom. "So... where are we going?"

Angel smiled at her, gallantly taking her arm. "There's a place I want to take you. It hasn't changed much since the last time I was in LA; I checked before I came over here."

"Last time?" Buffy asked curiously. She was distracted when they hit street level when she saw the limo. "Wow. Like the prom. But better."

A few minutes later, the limousine pulled up in front of a beautiful old hotel. (Old in Los Angeles being relative, of course.) Chateau Marmont had a beautiful plush lobby and small corners where people could just sit and talk. "This is gorgeous!" Buffy said exuberantly, tilting her head back to look at the crystal chandeliers over her head. "You used to hang out here?"

"Now and then." Finding an unoccupied bench, Angel sat down, pulling her down beside him. "I didn't spend all my time in Sunnydale, you know. I needed to move around some. There was this time...."

For nearly an hour they just talked. No disasters, no painful discussions of their respective positions in life, just a girl and a guy chatting. ~This is way too normal for me,~ Buffy thought a couple of times.

Eventually, Buffy heard music coming from a room off the lobby. Guessing that the hotel had set up a small nightclub area for their patrons, she stood up and held out both hands to Angel. "Come dance with me," she invited.

It was a somewhat older crowd in the room than Buffy usually saw at the Bronze, twenty- and thirty-somethings. The music reflected that, being a mix of current adult contemporary and Eighties hits. Luckily, whoever was spinning the disks had enough taste to pick the best.

Buffy expected it to be awkward dancing with Angel. Touching him, being that close to him. And then there was the whole height factor. But she stepped into his arms as though she belonged there, and closed her mind to the rest of it.

Three songs went by before they even thought about talking. "Angel..." Buffy said hesitantly.

"What?"

"This... this isn't going to go away, is it? What we feel for each other. It just... isn't."

Angel sighed and rested his cheek on her hair. "No, it isn't. And I don't know what we are going to do about it."

Buffy looked up, and put her hand on his mouth. "Never mind. Tonight, we're just not going to worry about it."

The next song cued up, saving Angel from having to reply. He just pulled her closer as a string section set up a dramatic beat.

"Don't ask me
What you know is true.
Don't have to tell you
I love your precious heart.
I -- I was standing,
You were there,
Two worlds collided,
And they could never tear us apart."

Buffy sighed and tightened her arms around his neck. She didn't want to talk, to shatter this moment. She didn't want the moment to end, to have to face reality again. In the shelter of the music and his arms, she could forget the rest of the world -- for awhile at least.

"We could live
For a thousand years,
But if I hurt you
I'd make wine from your tears.
I told you
That we could fly
'Cause we all have wings
But some of us don't know why.
I -- I was standing,
You were there,
Two worlds collided
And they could never, ever tear us apart."

He brought her home a few minutes before midnight. "I'm going back to Sunnydale. I'll have to leave soon to get there before morning."

Buffy nodded. "I understand. And when I get back there... what? We're going to ignore each other? Be buds? Date?"

"Buffy, I don't know." The edge of frustration in Angel's tone made Buffy smile a little. He cared. The fact that it should be blindingly obvious from all the things he'd done for her aside, it touched her that he had to struggle against what he thought was wrong so hard.

She'd lost a lot when Destiny had pulled the arm on her slot machine and come up with Buffy Summers. She wasn't about to let anything else go.

Stepping closer to him, she stood up on her toes. Almost automatically, his arms closed around her, supporting her in her precarious position. They'd kissed before, once as a tentative question, and once as a goodbye. This time, she put everything she couldn't find the words to say into it.

When they slowly parted, Buffy was relieved that he looked as dazed as she felt. Every argument they had put forth to separate them, both together and separately, couldn't deny this. No matter how hard it was, no matter how much it hurt... they just couldn't keep away from each other.

They would, however -- at least for the rest of the summer.

Buffy unlocked the door and stepped through. "Night," she said.

And shut it behind her.


* * *
Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

"Buffy?"

"Angel. So you *do* know how to pick up the phone."

"Yeah, once in a while. How are you?"

"Fine. Listen, have you seen George of the Jungle yet? Trust me, go see it, it's hysterical..."

THE END


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