Rating: PG
Word Count: 894
Genre: Angst
Series: The Coffee Shop
Summary: Two people meet in a coffee shop.
Disclaimer: Joss, Mutant Enemy, etc, own Buffy and Angel. I do not... and a good thing too.

They met in a small coffee shop on the outskirts of a nameless college town in Iowa. It was half past nine, and they were given no notice by the students coming in and out of the coffee shop. She, in gray slacks and a black tank-top, had slung her blazer over the back of her seat, and sipped a Sumatra blend from a Java House mug. He, in a conservative black suit, sat rigidly in his overstuffed, wing-backed chair, a mug of black coffee sitting untouched on the table before him.

He spoke first.

"When we last met, you were drinking vanilla lattes." It was an attempt at conversation; the silence between them had been broken only by murmured greetings when she had sat down at the small table and pulled off her blazer.

"I need the caffeine these days to keep up the late hours." she replied, her eyes constantly on him. Despite vampiric blood, he seemed to aged since she had last seen him: a brief glance at his hands when she had sat down had revealed curled and yellowing nails that seemed more like

claws. He had noticed, and now had his fingers curled politely under his palm, hands resting on his knees.

"What, no comment on demons staying up late?" It was a bad attempt at teasing: she didn't even react, her gray eyes not changing from their assessing stare. She looked perhaps five years older than when they had last met: she had been twenty-five then. Now she was sixty-three, and

hung on somehow by dint of mystical heritage to her looks. She looked to be perhaps twenty-six, and may have looked younger. But with her hair scraped back into a practical bun, her face clear of makeup, she merely looked twenty-six... twenty-six and ordinary.

"No." she replied coolly, eyes still assessing him. "I take it that Wolfram and Hart is still running?"

"O'Connor and Price now." Angel corrected her, analyzing her with golden-tinged black eyes. As he spoke, she noticed that he was careful not to reveal his teeth. "We sold Wolfram and Hart's assets and formed a new partnership."

"Wesley's still alive?" she asked politely, setting down her half empty mug of coffee. The matter didn't seem terribly important to her: she was examining a ring set with a quartz crystal that glowed faintly in Angels' presence.

"He was married last year. He sent you an invitation to the wedding." Angel said pointedly. "The wedding was in Venice."

Venice. The year before, she had taken Kennedy and Faith and been diving in the canals of Venice, hunting the sea-demons that infested them. In the polluted waters, a wound could take septic very quickly, Slayer healing abilities or not. That had been the month that Faith had resigned from demon hunting. Buffy smiled finally, a very thin smile. "I was occuppied hunting demons." she said. Demons that slithered into gondolas to devour the sleeping occupants.

"The canal demons. We offered to help with that." Angel said patiently. "Don't you remember?" Their gaze met, held, steel grey eyes contesting with gold-tinted black eyes. She looked away first.

"I was pre-occuppied." she said shortly, staring out the window at the students walking by.

"It's been thirty-eight years." he said finally, black eyes melting a bit more to gold as he became more irritated. "Considering our line of work, you should be able to put what happened between us aside."

"Considering my line of work." she corrected him, eyes drifting back to his. "I thought you had stopped hunting twenty-eight years ago. You sent me your armory."

"You had it melted down and turned into new weapons. One of Masamune's katanas was in my armory." he snapped, stung. His eyes melted fully to gold: in the dim light of the cofee-shop, they shone with an unearthly light. Buffy's ring pulsed brightly, then subsided. She barely glanced at it.

"If it was that important to you, you would have kept it." she shot back.

"What the hell happened to you?"

Guiltily, she looked down at her coffee. When she looked back up, the gold was slowly fading from his eyes. "I've been busy." she said shortly. "It's not easy being the Prime Slayer today."

"Prime Slayer." he echoed, a faint mockery in his voice. "You could have resigned at any time."

She stared at him, disgust in her eyes. "Like you resigned from hunting demons."

He stared back, lips in a thin, blood-less line, eyes melting back to scintillating gold. "I did, for you." he replied shortly. "I tried to give you a normal life. Like you wanted."

She had picked up her mug sometime between his ripostes, now she drank it down in a single gulp, and stood. "I found something of yours in my old boxes yesterday." she said, and pulled out a silver ring and tossed it into the coffee cup. "I thought you might like it back." Pulling on her blazer, she turned and walked away from the two chairs.

Angel sat where he was for a long time, eyes fading back to black, and then, reaching into the coffee-cup sitting across from his untouched mug, pulled out the silver ring and inspected it. A loud snarl echoed through the coffee-shop, startling college students and the woman serving coffee behind the counter.

The ring was a silver claddagh ring. Closing his eyes, Angel let the ring drop from his fingers back into the cup.

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