22.
The recent specter of mutiny cast an uneasy atmosphere over the cafeteria. Where once groups of friendly co-workers sat in comfortable repose with refreshing beverages, the employees now sat in cloistered groups of twos and threes downing outrageous amounts of caffeine and refined white sugar and wondering how a traitor could have roamed freely among them.
There was one steadfast hero who remained unmoved by the recent brouhaha. No matter what the distraction, his personal agenda drummed to a single minded beat.
“Is this seat taken?” Spike stood beside Buffy’s table looking defiant. Anyone who knew him well might have detected a sliver of nervousness as well. His left knee jiggled a fraction in apprehension but Spike made it work for him. Restless and ready for action was his motto.
Buffy paused in mid chew, startled by that voice. She looked up from her lunch to see Spike standing over her. With the recent commotion in the science labs the tension in the work environment raised a couple of notches. It wasn’t exactly at fever pitch yet but Buffy didn’t have the energy to argue. Besides, she had some thoughts of testing the waters where Spike was concerned. This seemed like a good opportunity to see if he could play nice in the work place.
“No.” Buffy swallowed her answer and took a sip of her juice. So far, so good. She noticed a small plastic container of pudding dangling from his fingers. He’d need to do better than pudding if that was his idea of an adequate peace offering. At least it was chocolate. “Not sitting with the cool kids today?” Buffy looked across the room to where Wesley, Lorne and Fred were deep in conversation. Lunchrooms always gave her that creepy, high school dTja vu and wherever the senior staff sat was definitely the cool table.
“I sit where I please,” Spike declared and did exactly that.
“Me too.”
“No Angel, today, I see.”
Buffy tried to remember how Angel had begged off of lunch. “Harmony needed something or other.”
“What are we doing, Buffy?”
“I don’t know about you but I’m having my lunch.”
“You’re not happy.”
It was too early in the day to go there. Happiness? Spike wanted to discuss something as monumental as happiness in the employee cafeteria? Buffy wasn’t going to take the bait. “I am so. I’m perfectly happy,” she asserted a little too brightly. “I’ve got food, a place to live, a job…”
“Well, I’m not happy.” Spike confessed. With a quick wrist movement, he snapped off the lid on his pudding and licked a blob of chocolate off his thumb.
“No, huh?” Apparently the pudding wasn’t for her. Damn.
“And you’re not happy either. I see things. I know things.”
“You see things? You know things?” Immediately Buffy went on the defensive. Were there things to be seen? She tried to think. Granted, flipping her hair at Spike during her bio-breaks wasn’t the maturest of strategies. There were also a few times she laughed a little too strongly at Angel’s ordinary office anecdotes. She may have been over compensating just a little. Nevertheless, Buffy made a decision and she was sticking to her principles. “I’m not quitting my job.”
Spike clenched his jaw and waited until his impulse for homicide fizzled enough for polite conversation. “I want to make this right. Can’t we find a compromise?” Spike scooped out a spoonful of pudding and proceeded to curl it over his tongue.
Oh God. The pudding was for her. Damn.
Buffy mindlessly licked her lips. “There’s no…” Her mind wandered a naughty highway as she watched his tongued acrobatics across the plastic spoon. Another scoop of pudding. Another slow sweep of his tongue. Buffy’s upper lip began to sweat. What was she saying again? “Um,” she camouflaged her confusion with a sweep of her napkin over her trembling lips. “There’s no negotiating my employment situation. Period.”
“Fine,” Spike responded calmly. “The topic is off limits.” Another scoop of pudding disappeared into his mouth.
Never before had Buffy considered the erotic nooks and crannies of a spoon. It was a passable weapon and an adequate catapult but to get the tinglies observing its primary function was something new. “Um, okay. Good.” She didn’t want to argue the point but Buffy was a little disappointed that Spike seemed ready to let it go. The whole wanton pudding display was making her feisty and verbal sparring was better than nothing.
“You’ve been working hard lately.” After the two last spoonfuls of chocolate, Spike licked his fingertips in slow succession.
“Yeah, I have.” Buffy could have slapped him with a line about his habit of lurking but the fact that he was keeping such close tabs on her was incredibly romantic. She didn’t even mention the tidy pile of cigarette butts she found outside Angel’s place. That discovery gave her a little nostalgic thrill at the time.
“So, what have you been doing for fun?”
“Not much.” Buffy decided that two could play the sexy eating game. She had a straw and a beverage and the will to make it happen. It was only orange juice but straw twirling could be sexy. “I booked a facial at Harmony’s salon. Does that count?” Talking, twirling, drinking and thinking about doing it in a sexy way was a little too much to coordinate on demand. While attempting a coy draught of her juice, a loud and unintentional slurping sound echoed through the entire cafeteria. In reflex, she stopped the slurp abruptly but a few renegade drops squirted onto her nose. Very sexy. At least she didn’t stab herself in the cheek. If Spike even noticed her clumsy tactic he didn’t acknowledge it.
“Sounds interesting.” Spike nodded. He simply wanted to spend time with her. Near constant surveillance supplied dispassionate facts but Spike needed friendly conversation too. He sat in rapt attendance as Buffy fumbled with her straw. It was an awkward yet charming display.
Finally, Buffy pushed her beverage aside. “I’ve been working my way through Angel’s DVD collection.”
“Yeah? Anything caught your fancy?”
“Elvis Presley sure made a lot of movies.”
“He did at that.”
“You know, Angel has the weirdest tastes.” Buffy leaned across the table to share some private thoughts. “He has, like, no comedies at all.” Buffy shook her head. “And if anybody needed a laugh it’s– I mean, who can live without Adam Sandler?”
The corner of Spike’s mouth started to curl. Buffy had obviously given this some thought.
“Those are the classics!” she continued with a strangled whisper. “Angel hasn’t even seen ‘Home Alone’.” She made it sound like a criminal offense. “Can you believe that?”
Honestly, Spike could. Angel never meshed well with the ebb and flow of popular culture of any era. “Explains a lot, doesn’t it?” Spike leaned forward as well, resting his chin on the heel of his palm.
“Does it ever.”
With both parties making an effort not to argue and with the neutral topic of Angel’s cinematic preferences, Spike and Buffy managed to have an enjoyable and engaging conversation.
*
With each passing day, the Think Pink team worked tirelessly to resolve one urgent intrigue or another. Under Harmony’s leadership, demon factions once caught in the throes of blood feuds came together to negotiate mutual co-existence pacts. Success in this venture meant that little known clans were encouraged to pursue less lethal relations with their enemies. Greedy self-interest and a healthy profit margin, as it turns out, were highly motivating incentives. The work was fraught with difficulty and benefited from the gentle finesse of a feminine hand.
Angel did his level best to make sure that initial meetings went on without a hitch. When a large, lumbering amphibian requested a traditional beverage, Angel jumped to his feet to fill the request. Just as he left the office to puree some dragonflies for the prospective client, a familiar squeak caught his attention. A quick glance through the glass revealed Harmony wrapped in a length of demon tongue struggling precariously over its ravenous mouth. The curious image put Angel’s reasoning on pause until a loud explosion sounded within the office. Chaos then descended with a generous coating of repugnant demon innards.
“Harmony! Are you okay?” Angel rushed back into the office.
Harmony roused from the floor covered with the entrails of the former amphibious demon. “Ew! The guy popped like a zit! Ew! Charles, I wasn’t briefed on that. Why wasn’t I briefed on that? And EW!!” More and more Harmony became suspicious that Holland Manners’ fabled Big Bad Duo-Tang and accompanying pamphlets didn’t tell the real story. Being CEO was turning into a flying by the seat of your Victoria’s Secrets kind of deal, with copious amounts of slime.
Charles Gunn stood gripping the door frame, coughing and shaking his head, unable to speak due to aspirating a small amount of the viscous material.
Wesley wiped a palm over his face, scraping the aromatic sludge aside. “They are a xenophobic species and highly unpredictable. I did urge strenuous caution if you’ll recall.”
“Well, they pop like a nuclear zit when stabbed with a letter opener. Oh, CRAP! My outfit is ruined. Ruined! And look at my painting and my ceiling and– Oh. My. God. NOBODY MOVE!” Harmony’s volcanic screech stopped everyone within listening distance. Her eyes stared fixed at the now empty top platform of the cat tower. “Mr. Pussy is missing! We must find Mr. Pussy!” Harmony dove back into the globular pus that covered nearly every surface of her office. Angel dropped to his hands and knees and started sweeping the floor, searching for a viscera coated kitten. He didn’t much like the pampered cat but he didn’t wish it harm. Gunn and Wesley also assisted in the search.
After some frantic moments of fruitless searching a small gurgling mewl could at last be heard.
“Harmony, I think I’ve– Got him!” Charles Gunn backed out from under Harmony’s desk with the dazed and confused and thoroughly sodden feline in tow. Harmony squelched through the demon remnants and grabbed her tiny companion from the hands of her colleague. She wiped away the slime from the kitten’s face and mouth. Fred rushed in with a moistened towel.
Nervous minutes passed as Harmony soothed her stunned feline pal and cooed gently into its ear. At last it began to sneeze and shake its head and then a steady purr sounded. The assembled team breathed a sigh of relief.
“I think he’s going to be okay,” Harmony announced.
Angel stood by her side assessing the scene. “I’ll get custodial services up here right away.” He pivoted and left the office, heading for his desk.
“What the hell happened in here?” Charles Gunn looked around at the gooey destruction. “This was supposed to be a preliminary sit down with the Skirliac Aquatic Consortium. Meet and greets aren’t supposed to end like this.”
“That was an assassin, Gunn.” Harmony bristled at the unpleasant memory. “He attacked me and my innocent pussy. Didn’t he, Mr. Pussy?” Harmony cradled the kitten near her glossy lips and cooed some calming baby talk for its benefit.
“An assassin? That ain’t good.”
“What do you mean? I’ve got enemies who are trying to eliminate me! That’s way better than being on that stupid Fortune 500 list.” Assassination attempts were categorically big league. Even the great Holland Manners himself couldn’t avoid get eaten by persistent vampires. Evading assassination put Harmony on a higher plateau of corporate competence, if only in her own mind. Her eyes glowed with satisfaction. She was able to stare down the gullet of a demon digestive tract and emerge unscathed and strengthened by the ordeal.
Gunn knew that it should be impossible for an assassin to target Harmony inside the Wolfram and Hart building. They had standards and procedures after all, not to mention the number one rule of not losing the CEO on your watch. Clearly, there was a glitch in the system or something more sinister.
“I shudder to think…if not for her vampire reflexes…” Wesley’s voice dwindled away. He knew he wouldn’t have been able to stop the assassin in time. He looked grimly at Gunn. Similar thoughts troubled both men. Such an occurrence was supposed to be impossible inside their carefully controlled security perimeter.
“I can handle grabby, but I draw the line at being eaten,” Harmony voiced her indignity. “And that sticky tongue? EW! Thankfully, I had my trusty letter opener in my hand.”
Angel draped a bathrobe around her shoulders. “I just spoke with the spa, boss. They’ve cleared a couple of hours and have a seaweed wrap with your name on it.”
Harmony did not want to disrupt the day’s business. Being a very important CEO made her an obvious target but murder plots did nothing to dissuade her mission of running an efficient and profitable enterprise. Having an office awash in thickening and decaying demon guts was a more immediate and tangible obstacle. Angel turned to Fred for some assistance.
“It will probably take the maintenance guys a couple of hours at least to clean this up.” Fred offered some needed common sense.
“I suppose I could use a good wrap to calm down.” Harmony reasoned.
“That sounds like a plan.”
“Okay, then!” Harmony seemed to perk up immediately. “Seaweed wraps for two. And a nice belly rub for Mr. Pussy.” Harmony cuddled her kitten and headed for the elevators with Fred.
“You handled that with such a cool head, Harmony.”
“I’ve been through worse, Fred.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I touched tongues with Xander Harris in sixth grade on a dare. Ugh. Now, that was gross!”
“Xander who?” Fred couldn’t place the reference.
“Two words,” Harmony held up her fingers in succession. “Godzilla tongue.”
At that prompt, the grubby vision of Cubby Puckett and his retainer leapt spontaneously into Fred’s mind. She could relate. “Oh…ew.”
Those seaweed wraps couldn’t come fast enough.