Ethan had taken Rupert up on his offer to tag along on patrol for once, and now, here they were, lounging on a bench in a cemetary, passing a thermos of tea around and staring at a fresh grave. This Slayer gig was clearly not as glamorous as it was made out to be.
“Why do you always laugh when I talk about Angel?” Buffy demanded, glaring at Ethan.
He smirked. “The last ‘Angel’ I knew was our fifteen-year-old incontinent Chihuahua.”
“You had a Chihuahua?”
“Uh, two of them, in fact,” Rupert said, “Angel and Precious.”
“Henceforth, no doubt,” Ethan added, “to be referred to as the crazy old coot’s dogs.”
“Ok, I sense a story.” Buffy looked at them both expectantly.
“Um. Possibly not the best--” Rupert began.
Ethan cheerfully ignored him. “My first job was working as an assistant in this tiny bookshop, run by this doddering old woman named... Marlene or somesuch.”
Buffy... bounced. “Awww, is this gonna be one of those heartening tales with the old woman who seems nuts at first, but then she takes you in like a surrogate grandchild and feeds you cookies and makes your life all better with her gentle but profoundly wise advice?”
Ethan was brought up short by this, and for a moment, the only sound was the crickets. Eventually, he relocated his poor, derailed train of thought, in a very distant ditch, and continued, “Um. No. The woman was completely senile, got worse every year, until eventually she just croaked one Friday evening. And, you see, she didn’t have any family, just the dogs, and I didn’t work weekends so I came in Monday morning and--”
“Ethan!” Rupert cried, an edge of pleading in his voice.
“Angel and Precious were eating her.”
“Eww!”
Giles set the thermos down, pointedly.
“And Rupert blamed *me*!” Ethan said.
“Well, you were always going on about how she went on about her dogs. I just thought for a second that perhaps--”
“I’d cursed them so they’d murder her. Chihuahuas!”
“Well, that *was* what the damned tabloids made of it, too, so don’t blame me for thinking it.”
“Oh, honestly. Even if I had offed her it would have been a mercy killing.”
“Wait a minute,” Buffy cut in, her nose delicately wrinkled in disgust, “so you, like, adopted the corpse-eating dogs? Eww, again.”
“Well, they were starving,” Rupert said, “they had to eat something.”
“Fifteen years later, and Rupert *still* gets defensive over those pathetic little runts. And still insinuates that I used them to eliminate my employer.”
“You see, this is why we could never have children. He even gets jealous of the dogs.”
“So, did you ever have any other dogs?”
“Baxter,” Ethan said, “A beagle. Now *that* was a real dog.”
“We got him as a puppy from a friend of ours who bred hunting dogs. He was a beautiful animal,” Rupert said.
”Got him shortly after Angel died, actually,” Ethan continued, “so we traded one wobbly, miniature dog who peed on the rugs for another wobbly, miniature dog who peed on the rugs.”
“So, are you guys gonna get another one?”
“Uh, well, not--” Rupert said, then paused, “Not for awhile.”
He didn’t meet her eyes.
“Why not?”
The truth, that this was temporary, that in all likelihood, they’d be going back too soon to bother getting a puppy that they’d then have to cart back across an ocean, hung in the air. Rupert was speechless. Ethan stepped in before the silence dragged on too long.
“The lease doesn’t allow pets,” he said. He wasn’t used to lying for social niceness, but in this case it was the only thing to do.
“Aww,” Buffy said, “Too bad. Puppies are cute.”
Then the vampire roared out of its grave and Buffy bounced to her feet.
“Oops, destiny calls, gotta go.”
The End
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