Chapter Four - Never the Same
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Most people like summer holidays. Summer holidays are like, an excuse to be a kid again, beaches and picnics and ((okay, not everything was kidly)) long languid nights with rather interesting companions of the opposite sex.

So, imagine my surprise, when summer rolled around, and all I felt was dread.

The problem wasn't, exactly, with summer itself; it wasn't the lack of school, or the laughing friends, or the promises of endless days of beach-ly goodness; it was the fact that my laughing friends, that my loving sex slave, would be here, in one-Starbucks Sunnydale, while I jetted off to L.A to stay with a man I felt I barely knew.

Hello, Hank. Want to watch me stake a few vamps? I'm getting awful good - you should be proud!

Yeah. Right.

I couldn't exactly tell Dad about my hobbies; I hadn't even told Mom, and she had to *live* with the freak show that is me. She saw all the blood, and the weird stuff, and she'd shaken Angel's cold-as-stone hand, but never, not once, had she gotten the clue that something may be wrong.

If mom didn't, dad *definitely* wouldn't. He didn't know about my weird habits; he didn't know about my weird friends.

It felt like he didn't know a damn thing about me at all.

"Go to sleep, woman," Angel groaned, my fidgeting finally getting to him. "Some of us have been up since the crack of noon."

I pouted, and rolled over in his arms, gazing at his mostly-slumbering face. "I'm not tired."

He pulled me closer, and rolled onto his back so I lay atop his chest. "You *must* be tired," he tells me. "We fought *twelve* vampires tonight - and then had our *own* fun. *Three times*. How can you not be tired?"

"Slayer," I explained with a shrug. "Part of me is still waiting for a fight."

He cracked one eye open, arching his brow. "You're not still convinced I was flirting with the gum girl, are you?"

"You were *totally* flirting with the gum girl!" I exclaimed, my train of thought veering recklessly all over the tracks. "You were all mysterious and sexy, and she was all come-hither gum cracking! Don't tell me that wasn't a blatant come on."

"Because lime green Hubba-Bubba is just so seductive."

"Are you saying I'm paranoid?"

"You're cute when you're paranoid," he told me, all curving lips and rumbling laughter.

Aww. That's so sweet I could almost forgive him for calling me paranoid.

"I am not!" I snap. "Well, I mean, I am cute, but I am *not* paranoid. Danger lurks around every corner, buddy!"

"The gum girl is a danger now?"

"I don't know, you tell me!" I pretty much shrieked, feeling something giving way in my chest.

"This isn't about the gum girl, is it?" my lover asked patiently, finally awake, finally completely and utterly devoted to sorting out me and my neuroses. His fingers hook under my chin. "Buffy?"

Caught out.

"I don't want to go away," I told him, my lip trembling as it had months ago, standing on the docks when I refused to believe that he was really going to get on that freighter and glide away from me.

Of course, he didn't, so that moment in no way makes this one any easier.

His hand moved to my head and started sifting through my rumpled hair, weaving in and sliding out, joining, separating, twisting and tangling.

My god, I can make anything sound like sex, these days.

"I don't want you to go away either," Angel told me, and I pressed my forehead against his, "but maybe it'll be good for you."

"Good for me? How could being away from my friends and family and *sacred duty* possibly be good for me? How could being away from *you* be good for me?"

He pulled himself into a sitting position, dislodging me a little from his chest. I moved away a little, and sat there, staring at him, some dim, insecure part of me waiting for him to start in on a diatribe about the proverbial 'space'. Like, you know, the 'Honey, I think we need some' variety.

I tried not to be so negative, because Angel has done nothing to make me believe he might want space. I mean, he cleared out half his dresser for me, and when he goes shopping, he buys bottles of my brand of shampoo, and if I go out and sit on the sofa, I know that my favourite fleecy blanket will be within arm's reach of my favourite curling position.

In fact, if I go out and sit on the sofa, *Angel* will be within arm's reach of my favourite curling position.

"Well, you've got some issues with LA that you never really deal with," he reminded me. "Maybe it'd be healthier if you sorted out all the crap that happened there."

"It's over, though," I shrugged. "*So* over. The 'relationships' there? Irreparable. Not even worth trying."

"What about your father? Don't you want to try with him?"

"I don't *know* him, Angel!" I cried, feeling my hands start to shake. "The girl he knows *died* the second she felt her first taste of vampire dust on her skin. I don't want to *be* that girl anymore, and even if I did, I wouldn't have the foggiest of how to go about it."

His hands, large and smooth and infinitely gentle, covered mine, easing their shaking. "So introduce him to the new Buffy. Let him get to know her."

I looked at our hands. "What if he doesn't like her?"

A moment's silence, and then I heard Angel's sigh. "Then he's a moron. A big one."

I was drawn into my lover's arms, where I nestled and felt safe. When I woke, I felt only marginally better about my trip to see my father than I had the night before.

--

Our goodbye, a few days later, was predictably tearful, and when I pressed myself close to him, I panicked, worrying that I'd never see him again, that he'd die some bloody, painful death without me sobbing by his side.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that he's 250 years old and doesn't need me to protect him.

We parted at his apartment, and it nearly killed me to think about how long it would be before I saw him again. "I love you," I said, and I kissed him, a kiss that would be forced to fuel my dreams for months to come.

"I love you," he promised, his voice thick with longing and devotion and missing-you-already, and then I was out the door, moving into the thick summer sun.

Every step was not-Angel, not-Angel, not-Angel.

--

"This all you got, honey?"

I stared at my father with barely concealed resentment, and nodded, because, honestly, he'd just packed my three stuffed to bursting point suitcases in his SVU ((And what does he need an SVU for, anyway? Mid-life crisis meets 90's excess, much?)) and how much more could one girl possibly need? Even *this* girl? As it was, one of my cases was half full of weapons, and I'd only put them in as an afterthought.

"Yes," I said, and smiled weakly at him. "Just don't pack like I used to, I guess."

The bus station we stood before was quiet, the mid-morning rush having all but died away. When I stepped off the coach that had brought me here from Sunnydale, I'd half expected not to see my father, but there he was, dirty blonde hair and big remembered hands and all. He'd hugged me, and I'd tried not to freeze up at his touch.

Since then, everything had been all tickets and baggage, and I'd barely had to say a word to him.

I stepped into his mid-life crisis on wheels, and fiddled with the radio, quickly discovering that Dad had invested in a CD player. I felt a sudden longing for some nice, loud, don't-have-to-talk-to-your-father rock, and took out a compilation I'd stolen from Xander months before.

I turned the volume up, and barely said boo to my father for the rest of the drive.

--

On the drive back to my father's new apartment, we passed the house I lived in for 15 years of my life. In the front yard, there used to be a tree, but that was gone, now, and I felt my heart twist painfully for a moment. I know I told Angel that I didn't want that girl back - and, in extension, that I didn't want that life back - but, sometimes, I falter. I can't help it. Sometimes I long for sunshine and laughter and simple, simple, simple.

There were orange curtains hanging in my window. *Orange*. What if they had replaced my flawless blue wallpaper with some seventies-vibed monstrosity? What if the picture window in the kitchen had been knocked out and, in it's place, there was a gross stained glass window?

All that meant we could never go back. And, though I'd known it for a long time, this new confirmation twisted at my heart.

Sometimes, I just want to be young again.

--

My Dad's new apartment was very guy-like, and that irked me a little. It was all grey, or black, with big leather chairs and a massive television, and everything was sharp and new and not at all Buffy-like. It made me long for Angel's secluded little cave, with his comfy couches and maroon curtains, with sculptures and paintings and that little bit of age.

Dad's apartment... it seemed more like an office. Large. Impersonal.

It made me sad, and, in a bit of a panic, I looked around, searching for something - *anything* - that would indicate an actual person living in this bleak ocean of grey.

My heart slowed as I saw a bunch of photos on the mantle - I counted four of me - and a few magazines on the coffee table, and a discarded mug sitting on top of the stereo.

Little things, but they were enough. The photos, especially, warmed my heart just that little bit I needed to be able to speak to him again.

"You really haven't scrimped on the colour, have you?" I said brightly, rubbing my hands before me as if they were getting chills from the entire *lack* of rainbow.

"I haven't had much time to decorate," my father told me, flustered, and I could see how nervous he was. "I've been working a lot."

"Oh," I said, as if that surprised me. My father has always worked a lot. My father is like Giles, only minus the dusty books and demons, and plus a wife and child.

"I wanted to have a few weeks off," he added. "While you were here."

Okay, *that* surprised me. Floored me, even. "Huh?"

"I-" he stopped, and smiled tightly. "I wanted to spend some time with my daughter."

I bit my tongue to stop the scathing retort bubbling up inside of me, recognizing that he was trying, making a genuine effort. I thought of Willow, who lived with her parents, but rarely saw them, and of Xander, who had more contact with his uncle than his own dad.

I thought of Angel, who never felt loved by his father his whole life.

"That'd be nice," I said finally, and then looked away, out the window at the Los Angeles smog. One thing about Sunnydale: clearest air you'll ever find. It's almost as if the Hellmouth acts as a giant air purifier.

"So where am I sleeping?" I asked my dad, eyeing a large sofa suspiciously. I *hate* pull-out couches. If there's one place I refuse to sleep, it's a pull-out couch, with those metal contraptions designed to scrape your arms in the middle of the night, and those lumpy sections where the bars stick through, and the absolute *refusal* of the damn things to let you sleep in any sort of a comfortable position.

"There's a room," Dad said, relaxing a little, because he knew that this was good news to me. "It's a little bare, but maybe we could - work on it. Together."

I felt like I was living in some weird dream, and that any moment Dad's head was going to turn into a pineapple. Or maybe a tangerine. I wasn't too clear on that part.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Okay," I said, shrugging.

It's not that my Dad has ever really *neglected* me, or anything. When we're both in the same vicinity? He's big on the Buffy-love. It's just that since I moved to Sunnydale, I can count on one hand the amount of times I've seen him. It makes me sad, because, really, he can be kind of cool. I know he loves me. Sometimes, though, I wonder just how much.

Blood of his blood, but how much does that really mean to him?

"How have you been?" I asked, following him into the room that was, apparently, mine.

"Like I said, busy," he said. "Yourself?"

"Likewise."

"Still having problems with that teacher? What's his name?"

"Snyder," I told him, my nose wrinkling with distaste. "And, yes, there's much of the trouble. I believe the term is 'impotent little Nazi'."

My father smirked at me, and I felt my heart tugging for days gone past. "And I'm sure you've done nothing to warrant such a frosty relationship."

"Me? I'm the picture of innocence!"

When you get in a spot, deny, deny, deny.

"Uh-huh," he replied, and I knew he was remembering getting a phone call from the police, telling him that his daughter had engaged in a little funky pyromania.

"I *am*," I whined. "He's out to get me."

My father laughed, then, and it felt wonderful.

I felt forgiven.

I hugged him, quickly, nervously, and said, "It's good to be here, dad."

And it was. Except I missed Willow, and I missed Xander, and the Dingoes were playing at the Bronze that night, and Cordelia was throwing a pool party, and just about every part of me wanted to double-check the likelihood of apocalypse with Giles.

I won't even get into how much I missed Angel.

Oh, okay, if you insist. I missed his hands, and his laugh, and those ever-twinkling eyes. I missed crawling into his bed after patrol, and I missed his shower, full of steam and soap and naked-Angel. I longed for his voice, and his kindness. I wanted to feel his lips against mine.

I just wanted him, full stop. We'd been kind of hip-like, lately, as in joined-at-the, and not seeing him, not hearing him, not sharing with him, was making me itchy. I missed him so much it felt like a constant drum in my chest.

My father smiled at me, though, glad to have me in his life, and I felt like maybe the sacrifice was worth it, if I could get him to understand the new me.

As if it was that simple.

I looked around the room, taking in the big, clean window, and the double bed, and the soft grey carpet beneath my feet. I could work this room; I could make it Buffy-like, a home away from home, a place where I could meet my Dad and still be me.

I could meld my life with his, a little.

I mean, I had three months of not-Angel, not-Angel, not-Angel to spend. What better way than sharing a little of myself with the man that used to mean the world to me?

If Dad could make an effort, so could I. I mean, rebuilding relationships wasn't really my forte, but if I could hold the world together, prevent apocalypse, and fight massive demon foes every night, this should be easy, right?

Deny, deny, deny.