FIC: Tiger by the Tail (6/?)

["Shadowlander" <Shadowlander1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Tiger By The Tail (6/?)
Author: Shadowlander
Email: Shadowlander1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx - or - Tankesly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters commonly associated with
Buffy the Vampire Slayer; they are used without permission. No
copyright infringement is intended.
Note: Yoshiro belongs to Kirayoshi who I had hijacked and put into this
fic without his knowledge or consent.
Pairing: Buffy/Willow
Archive: The usual places all others ask first.
Spoilers: None everything is my own little universe.

TIGER BY THE TAIL (6/?)

Angel gave himself one last pat, careful made his way over to Willow,
and Buffy, only mildly startled when a sudden flash signaled that
Cordelia had indeed retrieved her little pocket-camera from its latest
hiding place. 'I knew she was much to pleased with herself after we got
back to the office', he said to himself, wondering just when the office
was going to be plastered with Cordelia's latest round of candid images.

'I am going to kill that little fashion demon for getting her interested
in taking pictures.' Okay so Carlo wasn't technically a demon, but
still that was just plain mean of him to get her hooked on photography,
although Cordelia did have a natural flare for it. And her photos did
help in identifying the more "photogenic" members of the demon world,
not that Angel was ever going to admit that to her, or she would have
video equipment next making tapes of him and Wesley in the office. He
just knew she would do it too, especially after he heard her on the
phone with Amy discussing a spell that would make vampires show up on
film - well transparently but they would still be there. He had
nightmares for a week of Cordelia sneaking up on him while he was
sleeping, in the shower, or eating and taking a picture.

Pushing aside thoughts of his secretary and the mischief, he just knew,
she was going to get into with her little camera; Angel turned his
attention to Willow. And suddenly found himself having to consciously
keep his game face from slipping on at the site that greeted him.
Tentatively brushing the side of her face, trying to make some sense of
the face before him, his rational side was calling for calm and clear
thinking. While his demon half was yelling for blood and dismembered
body parts - this was his childe.... well she would have been if he
hadn't of gotten re-cursed with a permanent soul. But he had already
made a claim on her, she was going to be his one way or another, and
after getting re-cursed it had to be the other way. Which really didn't
matter all that much to Angelus, even he had to admit he had been one
screwy bastard on his last rampage without his soul, and the soul wasn't
so gung-ho to keep him locked up all the time now so that was a good
thing too. Although the demon wasn't ever going to admit that he felt
anything but contempt for his "soul" he would never live it down. Spike
and Cordelia would both make sure of that.

With a defeated sigh Willow gave the vampire a small little grim
recognizing the look of murderous rage that was lurking in the dark
vampire's eyes. It wasn't all that hard to miss; she had seen the same
look in Buffy's eyes when she had seen the damage to her left eye
moments ago. "Its okay", Willow said, getting the same look of
disbelief from Angel she had received from the Slayer. 'What have they
been doing? Practicing synchronized facial expressions?' she questioned
herself. With another sigh "really, its not as bad as it looks."

"She's right, it isn't as bad as it looks. She's just blind in that eye
and the nerves are pretty much shot so she's not feeling any pain aside
from the phantom ones every now and then." Yoshiro cut in dryly,
knowing that his traveling companion wouldn't tell her friends and
family everything she had gone through to get home, wanting to spare
them the agony of knowing the whole story and the guilt - no matter how
misplaced - over not being able to save her.

"You are not helping!" Willow growled at him, wondering if in fact
Yoshiro and Cordelia had not been separated at birth after all.
Sometimes his honesty drove her crazy especially when she was trying to
keep her insanely overprotective friends from doing really evil things
they may not ever regret.

"Who?" Angel growled his demon surging forward at Yoshiro's words. He
just wanted a name that is all he needed - just a name to put to the
being he was going to merrily torture, kill, and even let Cordelia
videotape so he could always relive the moment.

"It doesn't matter", Willow replied closing her eyes momentarily to
collect herself. 'This was a really bad idea.' At another growl from
Angel followed closely by one from Buffy and possibly Xander, "It
doesn't matter," she stressed again, "Yoshi ate him."

"Hey! I did not eat him.... I merely swallowed", Yoshiro defended with
a look of outrage. "I did not chew." Noting the somewhat puzzled look
he was getting from Amy and Cordelia, "I was a lot bigger at the time,
in my true form."

"True form? Are you a demon?" Amy asked recalling Willow's earlier
comment about it taking several minutes to get Giles to let him in too.

"Me? A demon? Oh no, I'm a dragon", he replied. "But a good dragon, I
don't go around kidnapping princesses or trying to burn down kingdoms.
I'm a luck dragon; I help people", he assured them, hating the fear and
loathing that always came into a human's eyes once they found out what
he was. Only to be amazed by the acceptance in their eyes, apparently
in Sunnydale a luck dragon in the shape of a human was no big deal.
'This place may not be so bad after all.'

"You didn't chew? Well couldn't you make an exception and chewed just a
little bit?" Xander questioned once again opening his mouth before his
brain had time to properly register what had been said.

"Chew? On a fungus demon?" Yoshiro replied a look of disgust on his
face. "It was bad enough I swallowed him, but to chew on him too...
that is just ewwww!" he finished with a shudder; sometimes humans could
really be gross when they wanted to be. 'How else did Barney and the
Teletubbies get invented if not from the mind of a sick twisted
individual?' he wondered briefly.

"Real nice friend you got there Wills", Buffy said again finding, that
she liked Yoshiro; anyone willing to swallow a fungus demon to protect a
friend was okay in her books. Besides she had fought a fungus demon
once, one that kind of looked like the TA in her psych class, and knew
how gross they really were. Next to a chaos demon they were just simply
ugly to look at and very messy to slay. 'At least Quin was a big help
in getting me a new leather jacket', she thought silently, remembering
the daring young man who acted as "bait" to lure the fungus-demon out
into the open so she and Spike could kill it. Although the "Committee"
he claimed to be a part of did concern her a bit especially that one
Committee member in charge of public safety, now she seemed like a
really strange person.

"So the demon that did this to you is dead?" Angel said slowly, trying
to regain control of himself a bit. On one hand he was pleased that the
creature responsible for Willow losing her sight in one eye was dead.
On the other hand he was outraged that he wasn't the one that got to
kill the fungus-demon and feed the little pieces to Oz one night during
the full moon. After all they had discovered that while in his
"wolf -form" Oz could eat just about anything and not get sick. It had
become a somewhat morbid pass time of Spike's to feed the werewolf all
kind of strange things when it was his turn to wolf-sit. Come to think
of it, they got the best and most useful information when Spike was
wolf-sitting, amazing how the threat of being fed to a werewolf just
opened all sorts of people. Sometimes they had to make the threat again
to get them to shut up.

"Yeah... very dead", Willow replied with a small grin, and then
something occurred to her. "Why did you risk coming out during the day,
wouldn't it have been better to wait for sunset?"

"We left LA a little before dawn after we got back to the office and got
Giles' message on our answering machine.... didn't want to wait until
sundown to come", Angel said, returning to his human face and giving her
a lopsided grin of his own.

"Giles called you last night?" Buffy questioned in anger, giving her
Watcher another dirty look, "Angel lives in LA and he gets a phone call,
but we live in the same city and we don't rate one... I see how it is."

"Buffy give it a rest", Willow said gently, placing a hand on her
friend's arm. "You know I'm here now that is all that matters."

"Yeah, well.... I still would have liked to have been told sooner",
Buffy continued to grumble, determined to stay angry at Giles for at
least the rest of the morning.

Yoshiro stepped back to watch Willow's friends get situated in the
living room to hear her recount the last four years. His shoulders
shaking with suppressed laughter at the brief shoving match between
Xander and the vampire over who got to sit next to Willow, only to have
the spot taken by a smug looking Cordelia, who wasted no time in making
herself right at home beside the redhead. On the other side sat a grim
faced Buffy who continued to shot hostile looks at her watcher, before
he had disappeared into the kitchen to make some tea.

Finally the two males had settled down onto the other furniture in the
room, Xander with the blanket Willow had used the night before draped
over his lower half, after Angel had looked at him with a cocked eyebrow
and commented, "nice boxers". Which had been closely followed by
another camera flash at the look on Xander's face when he realized that
he had ran across town in nothing but his boxers and a pair of
mismatched socks.

Shifting uncomfortable at the silence that had settled over the room,
Willow fought the urge to run out of the flat and not stop until she
reached Ohio. She hated being the center of attention and talking in
front of people, several of whom were not known for always keeping a
level head about them when told something they really didn't like to
hear. Then something occurred to her, "you and Cordelia were in LA?"
she asked trying to picture the vampire and cheerleader together in Los
Angeles for any length of time.

"Oh yes, Angel runs a detective agency and I'm his office manager",
Cordelia replied happily.

"Detective agency? Office manager?" Willow said the words carefully
testing them out. 'No they still sound strange even spoken out loud',
she concluded after a moment.

"Angel Investigations", Cordelia began before being cut off by Yoshiro
who so far had stood quietly against a wall content to observe the whole
reunion.

"You guys wouldn't have an Irish guy named Liam working for you, would
you?"

"Liam?" Angel questioned, his interest peeking up at the name that was
the name he used while investigating one of the sightings of the
mysterious redhead two years ago.

"Yeah, some guy named Liam was asking about Willow in a pub in Sydney,
said he was with an LA detective agency", Yoshiro explained.

"Ah, that was me... Liam is my real name, I was using it keep Rodelus
from knowing I was following him.", Angel said after a moment,
completely thrown off balance when Willow started laughing only to be
joined a moment later by Yoshiro.

Exchanging confused looks with the others in the room, Angel could only
watch as the two had laughing fits at his expense. After a few moments,
"Oh goddess, this is too rich", Willow said trying to compose herself.
"To thank this all could have been over with if we had waited."

"Huh?" Buffy questioned, trying to understand what was so funny, "Wills
you're not making any sense."

After a few more moments, Willow raised her tear-streaked face, her eyes
puffing and watering from laughing too hard. "We were there that night
in the pub, ducked out the back when the owner said some Irish vampire
named Liam was asking about us. If I had only stayed long enough to see
your face", she continued before dissolving into laughter once more. The
irony of it all was just too much, and after a moment Angel joined into
the laughter.

End Part 6


Shadow --
Director of Public Safety of the Senior Executive Committee on List
Gutter Affairs and vampire teddy bear; Official Dungeon Keeper and Big
Bad.