FIC: Another Stop On The Road (R) (SPN/AtS/BtVS) Third in the Roadhouse series
Another Stop On The Road
Third in the Roadhouse Series
A Supernatural/Angel/Buffy crossover
by mhalachaiswords
Summary: Seeing Angel three times in three months was going to Ellen's head. If she wasn't careful, she might get used to him being around.
Fandoms: Supernatural, Angel the Series and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters: Ellen, Jo and Ash v. Angel and Willow.
Genre: This wasn't supposed to swing into het (Ellen/Angel), but the characters had different ideas.
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to the CW and Kripke. Angel belongs to Joss Whedon. No profit has been made from this fic, and the only benefit to me is personal satisfaction and the creative process. Plus the pretties!
Rating: R for an implied horizontal mambo.
Words: 3,715
Spoilers: Contain vague spoilers for Supernatural 2x06, No Exit.
Note: Less actiony, more thrilling heroics back story and character study.
Sequel to Shadows Behind and Destination... Somewhere.
Cross-posted to my lj, sn_crossovers and crossoverfic
Comment about Angel's happiness clause
In the Buffy verse, it was assumed that Angel's season 2 moment of happiness, the soul stealing moment, related in whole to sex. The thing with Buffy then pow, Angelus. However, in the Angel verse, when Angel and Darla knocked boots, there was no soul-losing to be had. After all, it wasn't a moment of perfect happiness (although we knew it could cause a baby, 'cause Conner).
Going at it from that angle, I have thusly decided that Ellen and Angel getting slightly horizontal back in the day could just be sex, and Angel was in no danger of getting fangy.
PS It's my party and I'll mess with canon if I want to.
~~~~~~
The red-head bouncing through the door wasn't unexpected, but still, Ellen was surprised to see Willow again.
"Hi," the girl said in a bubbly voice that really didn't match her dusty on-the-road appearance. She stopped by the bar and shrugged her bag off her shoulder, something flickering across her face. "It's Willow," she added when Ellen didn't respond.
Ellen smiled. "I remember who you are, honey, just give me a second." With a click, the door of the safe under the bar creaked open under Ellen's hand. "You caught me in the middle of something." Ellen dropped the previous night's cash into the safe, on top of her wedding ring and a box of dragon ashes, then kicked the door closed. "How you been?"
"We're doing great," Willow said with a grin.
"So you and Angel are still on the road together?" Ellen asked. "Go on, sit down."
Willow fidgeted. "Actually, I was wondering where the... um..."
Ellen hid a laugh. One of the perils of being a woman on the road all the time. "They're through the back," she said, jerking her thumb in the direction of the bathrooms.
Willow took off like a shot, leaving Ellen alone at the bar. Ellen shook her head. It was late, and the Roadhouse was practically empty. There was always a weird lag in summertime, when the nights were short. Half the monsters in the world were taking a vacation, while the other half were making the most of the short nights, keeping hunters busy.
Speaking of things that went bump in the night, Angel was standing in the Roadhouse doorway.
"You coming in?" Ellen asked, feeling the knot of tension in her back begin to relax.
"I was thinking of it." Angel pushed off the doorjamb and slowly crossed the floor to the bar. He had that familiar smirk on his face, the one that always seemed to make Ellen's insides melt. "This is starting to become a habit."
"You're going to lose your stalker merit badge if you keep showing up when I'm not in peril," Ellen said, reaching for a glass. "Drink?"
Angel shrugged. "Sure."
He took a seat at the bar, as far from the mirror as he could get, and pulled over Willow's bag. Even though she was burning with curiosity, Ellen waited until she put the drink in front of Angel to ask, "What have you two been doing?"
"You know," Angel said, raising the glass to his lips in a mock-toast. "Violence and mayhem."
"Don't listen to him," Willow said, crossing back to the bar. She slid onto the bar seat next to Angel. "We keep things at comic book levels of violence."
"What about that lamia in Omaha?" Angel asked.
"That so doesn't count."
Ellen listened to the easy banter between the unlikely pair, and didn't know how to feel. On the one hand, part of her was glad that Angel had a partner who he could work with, someone who was so suited to the life. At the same time, the part of her that would always be that nineteen-year-old hunter who wished that--
No, Ellen told herself firmly. No sense in wishing for things she couldn't have.
"So, Willow, can I get you a drink?"
Willow frowned, looking so cute doing so that Ellen wanted to sigh. "Could I have a beer?"
"Coming right up."
After giving Willow a bottle, Ellen left the confines of the bar and went to bus the tables. It was so quiet that Jo had taken a few hours off, but instead of doing something fun, she had locked herself in her room out back to do more research. She'd come out at some point, Ellen knew, when she needed Ash's help with some sort of computer search.
Still, Ellen couldn't be too upset that Jo wasn't around, especially given that Angel was back.
After filling a few more drink orders, Ellen drifted back to the bar. Willow had pulled an old book out of her bag and was leafing through the worm-bitten pages, while Angel tried very hard not to look at Ellen.
"What brings you two back through?" Ellen had to ask.
"Willow needed a night off," Angel said before Willow could respond. "We were in the neighborhood."
Willow gave Angel a strange look. "We were two states over--" She closed her mouth with a snap. "We were in the neighborhood."
It would have been more convincing if Ellen hadn't heard Angel kick Willow in the leg.
"So, how are things here?" Willow continued. "Any big bads?"
Ellen shook her head. "Things tend to stay away from here." She leaned against the bar. "What about you two? Where are you headed?"
Willow turned her book around and pushed it towards Ellen. "There's something out in Montana that's digging up dead bodies, attacking dogs. We think--"
"You think," Angel interrupted.
"Fine, I think it's a crocotta."
Ellen looked at the illustration in the worn book. "What's a crocotta?"
"Little frickin Cujo from hell," Angel said. He knocked back the remainder of his drink.
"It's this weird dog-thing," Willow explained. The animation on her face made her seem about five years younger. "It unearths and eats dead bodies, and prowls farms and ranches, but only targets real dogs. It lures them by imitating the voices of their masters, then attacks them and eats them up."
"They also occasionally attack humans, but this one hasn't done so yet, not that we can tell." Angel looked into his empty glass. "We were in Tennessee when one of the girls got in touch with us. We're on our way to check it out."
Something seemed out of place in Angel's explanation. "Girls?" Ellen asked.
Willow bit her lip. "Just a bunch of people we know," she said quickly. There was obviously something that she wasn't saying, but Ellen hadn't stayed in business for so long by asking hunters to spill their secrets. "One of them spotted something weird and texted me."
"So we're going," Angel said. "After Willow takes a night off." He turned to the young woman. "Why don't you go play pool?"
Willow looked over her shoulder at the pool table, where Ash was playing a solo game. "You mean with pool cues and everything?"
Ellen frowned. How else would someone play pool?
"Why not?" Angel asked. "Just don't play for money."
"But why wouldn't I..." Willow looked at Angel, then at Ellen. Her eyes went wide. "You know what? Why don't I go play pool? Over there, which is not here?" She slid off her seat and, grabbing her bag and book, hurried over to the pool table.
Ellen turned her head. Angel was watching her with those dark eyes she remembered so well. "Nice girl."
"She is," Angel said in a level voice.
As much as Ellen didn't want to know, she had to ask. "Are you and her together?"
Angel shook his head, his eyes never leaving Ellen's face. "She's just a friend, that's all."
Ellen put her elbows on the bar and leaned a fraction closer to Angel. "Friends in this business never stay 'just' friends."
The corner of Angel's mouth twitched up in a smirk. "Willow's family, then."
"Like a sister?"
Ellen didn't want to know what caused those ghosts that passed through Angel's eyes, but she couldn't take the words back.
"Like a sister," Angel finally said.
Taking a stab in the dark, Ellen leaned even closer. "That thing that was possessing you... it took your sister?"
Angel twisted his glass on the bar, not meeting Ellen's eyes. "It did," he finally said. "The first of many."
Ellen didn't know a lot about Angel's past. When she was about twenty, she'd dug a little deeper, had found mention of a monster named Angelus, that had raped and pillaged his way through a couple centuries. She'd been sickened, she'd been appalled, and the next time she saw him, she had been an inch away from chopping off his head with a machete.
He'd told her an insane story, of a thing in the shape of his body, evil things. He'd convinced her somehow, and to this day she swore to herself that it was her brain that had done the thinking, not her hormones. Even though she'd gotten herself knocked up that same night.
Angel drew Ellen's attention back to the present by pushing his glass away and standing up. "I'll be outside," he said, a dark look in his eyes.
More passed between them, words unspoken, then Angel turned on his heel and walked out the front door.
After the door banged shut, Ellen let out a shaky breath. What the hell was she doing? She wasn't nineteen anymore, she had responsibilities and obligations, none of which involved walking out that door into the night.
While Ellen tried to talk herself out of going outside, Jo wandered into the bar, stretching her arms over her head. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, and her shirt was rumpled, and Ellen knew she'd been curled up into a ball on her bed, researching like her life depended on it, so serious about fighting evil.
Ellen had tried so hard to keep her daughter away from the hunter's life, the life that had taken Billy, John Winchester, so many other good men. She didn't know how much more she could do.
"Hey, Mom." Jo rubbed her eyes as she ducked behind the bar to pour herself a soda. "Anything happening?"
"Not tonight." Ellen pushed herself off the counter. "Feel like taking a break from the books?"
"Why?" Jo added a lemon slice to her soda.
"I just need a bit of a walk."
Jo lowered her glass and stared at her mother for a moment, then looked around the bar. Her searching gaze stopped at the pool table where Willow was carefully racking the balls. "A walk."
"Yes."
Jo raised an eyebrow at Ellen. "Are you sure about that?"
"Can you watch the bar or not?" Ellen snapped, half-hoping her daughter would display that famous contrariness and refuse, which would make Ellen's decision for her.
"Yeah, I'll watch things," Jo said. She picked up a rag from the counter and flashed a sarcastic smile. "Go. Enjoy your walk."
Ellen would have felt a little better about this if Jo hadn't made air quotes around 'walk', but she gathered up her pride and quietly headed outside.
Walking across the darkened parking lot to the tree line had never taken so long, and it gave Ellen more than enough time to think about what a fool she was making of herself. She wasn't a kid anymore. Women her age weren't supposed to be wandering out into the dark with immortal, handsome men. Women her age were Supposed to Know Better.
There was a line of darkness at the edge of the field, where the thick weight of night pressed back on the feeble lights from the Roadhouse. A shape, darker than the darkness, stood just inside the trees. Ellen had a moment's fear, then she recognized the slant of the man's shoulders.
"I was starting to think you weren't coming," Angel said, his voice brushing over Ellen's skin, sending shivers down her spine.
"What would you have done if I didn't?" Ellen asked, stopping a few inches away from him. This close, she could feel the weird energy Angel always had about him.
In the faint moonlight shining through the trees, Ellen could see a flash of white as Angel smiled, almost feral, almost possessive. "Brood."
He might have said something else, but Ellen didn't bother to waste any more time talking. She closed the distance between them, putting a hand behind Angel's head and pulling him down to her.
No matter what else was going on in their lives, Angel and Ellen had always been very good at one thing, and this, hands moving under clothing in the dark, away from people and buildings and reason, this was it.
Angel's mouth tasted like scotch and copper, the way she had always imagined sin must taste. His skin was cool under her hands as she pulled his shirt out of his pants. The metal of his belt buckle pressed into her stomach, a sudden discomfort forgotten as his hand slid under her bra.
Ellen held no illusions about what they were doing. It wasn't star-crossed lovers in the night, or anything with deep meaning. This was two people who weren't really all that different, taking comfort in each other. It was the way it had always been.
It wasn't until Ellen felt the rough bark of a tree against her back that she pulled away from Angel's kiss. "These trees aren't that sturdy," she said. She almost didn't recognize her own voice. She told herself that it had just been a long time since she'd done anything like this.
"Got a better idea?" Angel whispered in her ear before licking a line down her throat.
The shiver of adrenaline, of danger, clenched low in Ellen's stomach. It took her two tries to speak. "There's a picnic table deeper in the woods," she said.
Angel stepped away, his hand running down Ellen's arm until he could grasp her hand, pulling her with him. They were almost running, and it should have been ridiculous, but it wasn't; it was in the need and the blood pounding just under Ellen's skin, that made this real.
The old picnic table was hidden under the trees, shaded in the day and silent in the dark. Angel's hands went around Ellen's waist as he lifted her onto the table. She pulled him closer, settling him between her knees as she reached for him once again.
"You sure about a picnic table?" Angel asked. His cool fingers unbuttoned her shirt with more speed than grace, and she was convinced she heard a button pop off the cloth in his haste.
"We've done it in weirder places that this," Ellen pointed out, yanking open his belt.
"Like in the cab of a pick-up truck? Or in the back of a pick-up truck? Or on the hood of a pick-up truck?"
"I was thinking about the mausoleum--" Her sentence was cut off as Angel kissed her again, hard and fast, his tongue cool in her mouth.
Finally, breathing became an issue and Ellen had to push him away to get some air. "Ellen?" Angel whispered. His hands went back to the top button on her jeans, pulling her closer. "Shut up."
She slapped him on the ass. "Don't tell me to shut up."
He huffed out a laugh, chest moving against Ellen's. "Have you ever listened to a thing I say?"
Ellen smiled. "Never."
~~~
"You wrecked my shirt."
"Did not."
"Did too." Ellen gave up on trying to right her blouse, and sat back on the picnic table. Angel was beside her, a still presence in the dark. "I'll never find that button."
"Hrm."
Ellen bumped her shoulder against Angel's arm. "What?"
"What, what?"
"What's up?"
Angel shrugged. "I was thinking."
Ellen waited for him to finish.
"About Jo."
Right. "What about her?"
"Is she... I mean..."
Ellen had never heard Angel sound so uncertain before. It made her realize how little she knew about the man. She sighed. "Billy, he was... he was about twenty years older than me. He'd been in Vietnam, got shot up pretty bad while he was there. He couldn't have kids."
There was a long silence, one Ellen had expected, because really, how do you expect a man to react when you tell him that he's got a grown daughter he never knew about? "So he knew he wasn't Jo's father."
"Yeah." Ellen remembered the day she'd had to tell Billy she was pregnant, the silence that had been between them for months afterwards. She'd offered to leave, hadn't wanted to force him to raise a baby that wasn't his, but Billy, as angry as he was, hadn't wanted to let her go. "But it didn't matter, not after the first time he saw Jo. He loved that little girl more than anything in this world."
Angel let out a shaky breath. "Good," he said after a minute. "Children need fathers that love them."
The bitterness in his voice was too thick, too deep, to have much to do with Jo.
"If I'd seen you again, I would have told you," Ellen said.
"Does she know?" Angel asked quickly. "Jo?"
"No, and she's not going to," Ellen said. She hopped up off the bench, paced away in the dark. "She has a father who loved her and that's all she needs to know."
"Fine." Angel stood up, quicker than anything human. "Fine, so she doesn't know I'm her father." Ellen started to get mad, but something told her that Angel wasn't actually speaking to her. "It's not like this is a surprise, I should be used to this crap by now..."
Ellen shook her head. The last thing she felt like dealing with was an emotional man. Turning on her heel, Ellen started to make her way back to the Roadhouse.
"Ellen?" Crashing footsteps followed her. There was the sound of trip, then three hurried steps. Ellen couldn't help it. She started laughing. It seemed that whatever Angel was, wasn't any more graceful than a normal human.
Hands caught her around the waist, then slid around her stomach. Ellen didn't plan on stopping, but her body made the choice for her, even though there were a million reasons why she should have just kept walking, in the dark like this, her body still vibrating from Angel's touch. She let out a sigh and relaxed against Angel's chest.
"But she's good, right?" Angel asked, his breath cool against Ellen's cheek.
"Yeah, she's a good kid." Ellen watched the lights on the Roadhouse twinkle softly. "She's got a hell of a mouth on her, and some stupid ideas about fighting evil, though."
"I wonder where she gets that from," Angel murmured.
After a minute, Ellen made herself pull away. "So," she said after she cleared her throat. "You said that girl in there saved your soul, did that have anything to do with the being possessed thing?"
"What?"
"Willow."
Angel nodded. "Witch."
Ellen frowned. "You know more than one Willow?"
"Oh, no, not which Willow. Willow's a witch."
Ellen clamped her mouth down on the obvious, clichéd question. "That so?"
"Yes." Angel stepped around her, heading back to the roadhouse. "And the answer is, 'good witch'."
Ellen restrained the urge to hit him as he passed her. Something about Angel always made her feel nineteen again, when all she had to worry about was hunting evil. No responsibilities, no burdens, no one to depend on her for anything.
But that wasn't now. Straightening her shirt and hoping that Jo wouldn't be in a very observational mood, Ellen walked back to the Roadhouse.
~~~
Hours later, Angel and Willow were gone, along with Ash's rent money. Ellen would have thought by now that Ash would know better than to play for money, especially with hunters who swore up and down they'd never played the game before.
Jo brought the last of the dirty glasses over to the bar, then rested her elbows on the counter and stared at her mother. Ellen didn't react. She knew that if Jo wanted something, she'd speak up.
"You're missing a button on your shirt," Jo finally said.
"That so?" Ellen continued arranging the glasses behind the counter.
"Mm hmm." Jo drummed her fingers against the wood. "And there's a hicky on your neck."
Ellen pulled her hair around to cover her throat.
Exasperated, Jo blurted out, "I think Willow was hitting on me."
Ellen looked up. "What do you want, Jo?" she asked.
"What's going on?" Jo demanded. "These two show up again, and everything changes. You're acting like you're my age or something."
It was late, Ellen was completely exhausted, and she just couldn't whip up the motherly concern to ask Jo exactly when she'd been ducking behind the Roadhouse with boys. "So?"
"So why?" Jo threw up her hands. "You're doing all this weird stuff. It's like I don't even know you."
Ellen knelt down to open the safe. "What do you want me to say?"
"Explain why you're acting like..." Jo leaned over the counter. "I don't know. Do you ever wish it had gone different?"
The change in topic was enough to make Ellen look up. "What are you talking about?"
"You know." Jo was trying very hard to keep her face blank, but Ellen had always been able to read her little girl. Jo was nervous. "You met Angel when you were nineteen, right? How if things had gone different from there?"
Ellen kicked the safe closed and stood. She put her hand on top of Jo's. "You listen to me now, Joanna Beth. There is no life I'd want other than this one." Her throat was closing up, and she could feel threatening tears, but Ellen wasn't going to cry. Even if the months-old memory of almost losing her daughter was still almost too much to bear. "I got what I want, right here."
Jo smiled weakly, and Ellen decided to not push her luck. She set about with the nightly inventory.
A snippet of the previous conversation came back to Ellen as she counted beer bottles. "Jo, did you say Willow hit on you?"
"I think so." Jo, who had been fending off advances from male hunters since the day she hit sixteen, blushed. "But she may have just been doing it to distract Ash from the pool game. Whatever she was doing, it worked." Jo smirked. "Hey, do you think they'll get their corpse-eating crocotta thing?"
"Probably." Ellen hefted the tray of dirty glasses and carried them back into the kitchen, Jo on her heels.
"Do you think we'll see them again?"
Ellen remembered the sound of Angel's voice when he was asking about Jo, his daughter. "I wouldn't doubt it," Ellen said, setting her burden down by the dishwasher.
She just wished she could shake that feeling of foreboding, of what might happen if Jo found out the truth about Angel.
the end
Monster footnote: Crocottas
Third in the Roadhouse Series
A Supernatural/Angel/Buffy crossover
by mhalachaiswords
Summary: Seeing Angel three times in three months was going to Ellen's head. If she wasn't careful, she might get used to him being around.
Fandoms: Supernatural, Angel the Series and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters: Ellen, Jo and Ash v. Angel and Willow.
Genre: This wasn't supposed to swing into het (Ellen/Angel), but the characters had different ideas.
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to the CW and Kripke. Angel belongs to Joss Whedon. No profit has been made from this fic, and the only benefit to me is personal satisfaction and the creative process. Plus the pretties!
Rating: R for an implied horizontal mambo.
Words: 3,715
Spoilers: Contain vague spoilers for Supernatural 2x06, No Exit.
Note: Less actiony, more thrilling heroics back story and character study.
Sequel to Shadows Behind and Destination... Somewhere.
Cross-posted to my lj, sn_crossovers and crossoverfic
Comment about Angel's happiness clause
In the Buffy verse, it was assumed that Angel's season 2 moment of happiness, the soul stealing moment, related in whole to sex. The thing with Buffy then pow, Angelus. However, in the Angel verse, when Angel and Darla knocked boots, there was no soul-losing to be had. After all, it wasn't a moment of perfect happiness (although we knew it could cause a baby, 'cause Conner).
Going at it from that angle, I have thusly decided that Ellen and Angel getting slightly horizontal back in the day could just be sex, and Angel was in no danger of getting fangy.
PS It's my party and I'll mess with canon if I want to.
~~~~~~
The red-head bouncing through the door wasn't unexpected, but still, Ellen was surprised to see Willow again.
"Hi," the girl said in a bubbly voice that really didn't match her dusty on-the-road appearance. She stopped by the bar and shrugged her bag off her shoulder, something flickering across her face. "It's Willow," she added when Ellen didn't respond.
Ellen smiled. "I remember who you are, honey, just give me a second." With a click, the door of the safe under the bar creaked open under Ellen's hand. "You caught me in the middle of something." Ellen dropped the previous night's cash into the safe, on top of her wedding ring and a box of dragon ashes, then kicked the door closed. "How you been?"
"We're doing great," Willow said with a grin.
"So you and Angel are still on the road together?" Ellen asked. "Go on, sit down."
Willow fidgeted. "Actually, I was wondering where the... um..."
Ellen hid a laugh. One of the perils of being a woman on the road all the time. "They're through the back," she said, jerking her thumb in the direction of the bathrooms.
Willow took off like a shot, leaving Ellen alone at the bar. Ellen shook her head. It was late, and the Roadhouse was practically empty. There was always a weird lag in summertime, when the nights were short. Half the monsters in the world were taking a vacation, while the other half were making the most of the short nights, keeping hunters busy.
Speaking of things that went bump in the night, Angel was standing in the Roadhouse doorway.
"You coming in?" Ellen asked, feeling the knot of tension in her back begin to relax.
"I was thinking of it." Angel pushed off the doorjamb and slowly crossed the floor to the bar. He had that familiar smirk on his face, the one that always seemed to make Ellen's insides melt. "This is starting to become a habit."
"You're going to lose your stalker merit badge if you keep showing up when I'm not in peril," Ellen said, reaching for a glass. "Drink?"
Angel shrugged. "Sure."
He took a seat at the bar, as far from the mirror as he could get, and pulled over Willow's bag. Even though she was burning with curiosity, Ellen waited until she put the drink in front of Angel to ask, "What have you two been doing?"
"You know," Angel said, raising the glass to his lips in a mock-toast. "Violence and mayhem."
"Don't listen to him," Willow said, crossing back to the bar. She slid onto the bar seat next to Angel. "We keep things at comic book levels of violence."
"What about that lamia in Omaha?" Angel asked.
"That so doesn't count."
Ellen listened to the easy banter between the unlikely pair, and didn't know how to feel. On the one hand, part of her was glad that Angel had a partner who he could work with, someone who was so suited to the life. At the same time, the part of her that would always be that nineteen-year-old hunter who wished that--
No, Ellen told herself firmly. No sense in wishing for things she couldn't have.
"So, Willow, can I get you a drink?"
Willow frowned, looking so cute doing so that Ellen wanted to sigh. "Could I have a beer?"
"Coming right up."
After giving Willow a bottle, Ellen left the confines of the bar and went to bus the tables. It was so quiet that Jo had taken a few hours off, but instead of doing something fun, she had locked herself in her room out back to do more research. She'd come out at some point, Ellen knew, when she needed Ash's help with some sort of computer search.
Still, Ellen couldn't be too upset that Jo wasn't around, especially given that Angel was back.
After filling a few more drink orders, Ellen drifted back to the bar. Willow had pulled an old book out of her bag and was leafing through the worm-bitten pages, while Angel tried very hard not to look at Ellen.
"What brings you two back through?" Ellen had to ask.
"Willow needed a night off," Angel said before Willow could respond. "We were in the neighborhood."
Willow gave Angel a strange look. "We were two states over--" She closed her mouth with a snap. "We were in the neighborhood."
It would have been more convincing if Ellen hadn't heard Angel kick Willow in the leg.
"So, how are things here?" Willow continued. "Any big bads?"
Ellen shook her head. "Things tend to stay away from here." She leaned against the bar. "What about you two? Where are you headed?"
Willow turned her book around and pushed it towards Ellen. "There's something out in Montana that's digging up dead bodies, attacking dogs. We think--"
"You think," Angel interrupted.
"Fine, I think it's a crocotta."
Ellen looked at the illustration in the worn book. "What's a crocotta?"
"Little frickin Cujo from hell," Angel said. He knocked back the remainder of his drink.
"It's this weird dog-thing," Willow explained. The animation on her face made her seem about five years younger. "It unearths and eats dead bodies, and prowls farms and ranches, but only targets real dogs. It lures them by imitating the voices of their masters, then attacks them and eats them up."
"They also occasionally attack humans, but this one hasn't done so yet, not that we can tell." Angel looked into his empty glass. "We were in Tennessee when one of the girls got in touch with us. We're on our way to check it out."
Something seemed out of place in Angel's explanation. "Girls?" Ellen asked.
Willow bit her lip. "Just a bunch of people we know," she said quickly. There was obviously something that she wasn't saying, but Ellen hadn't stayed in business for so long by asking hunters to spill their secrets. "One of them spotted something weird and texted me."
"So we're going," Angel said. "After Willow takes a night off." He turned to the young woman. "Why don't you go play pool?"
Willow looked over her shoulder at the pool table, where Ash was playing a solo game. "You mean with pool cues and everything?"
Ellen frowned. How else would someone play pool?
"Why not?" Angel asked. "Just don't play for money."
"But why wouldn't I..." Willow looked at Angel, then at Ellen. Her eyes went wide. "You know what? Why don't I go play pool? Over there, which is not here?" She slid off her seat and, grabbing her bag and book, hurried over to the pool table.
Ellen turned her head. Angel was watching her with those dark eyes she remembered so well. "Nice girl."
"She is," Angel said in a level voice.
As much as Ellen didn't want to know, she had to ask. "Are you and her together?"
Angel shook his head, his eyes never leaving Ellen's face. "She's just a friend, that's all."
Ellen put her elbows on the bar and leaned a fraction closer to Angel. "Friends in this business never stay 'just' friends."
The corner of Angel's mouth twitched up in a smirk. "Willow's family, then."
"Like a sister?"
Ellen didn't want to know what caused those ghosts that passed through Angel's eyes, but she couldn't take the words back.
"Like a sister," Angel finally said.
Taking a stab in the dark, Ellen leaned even closer. "That thing that was possessing you... it took your sister?"
Angel twisted his glass on the bar, not meeting Ellen's eyes. "It did," he finally said. "The first of many."
Ellen didn't know a lot about Angel's past. When she was about twenty, she'd dug a little deeper, had found mention of a monster named Angelus, that had raped and pillaged his way through a couple centuries. She'd been sickened, she'd been appalled, and the next time she saw him, she had been an inch away from chopping off his head with a machete.
He'd told her an insane story, of a thing in the shape of his body, evil things. He'd convinced her somehow, and to this day she swore to herself that it was her brain that had done the thinking, not her hormones. Even though she'd gotten herself knocked up that same night.
Angel drew Ellen's attention back to the present by pushing his glass away and standing up. "I'll be outside," he said, a dark look in his eyes.
More passed between them, words unspoken, then Angel turned on his heel and walked out the front door.
After the door banged shut, Ellen let out a shaky breath. What the hell was she doing? She wasn't nineteen anymore, she had responsibilities and obligations, none of which involved walking out that door into the night.
While Ellen tried to talk herself out of going outside, Jo wandered into the bar, stretching her arms over her head. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, and her shirt was rumpled, and Ellen knew she'd been curled up into a ball on her bed, researching like her life depended on it, so serious about fighting evil.
Ellen had tried so hard to keep her daughter away from the hunter's life, the life that had taken Billy, John Winchester, so many other good men. She didn't know how much more she could do.
"Hey, Mom." Jo rubbed her eyes as she ducked behind the bar to pour herself a soda. "Anything happening?"
"Not tonight." Ellen pushed herself off the counter. "Feel like taking a break from the books?"
"Why?" Jo added a lemon slice to her soda.
"I just need a bit of a walk."
Jo lowered her glass and stared at her mother for a moment, then looked around the bar. Her searching gaze stopped at the pool table where Willow was carefully racking the balls. "A walk."
"Yes."
Jo raised an eyebrow at Ellen. "Are you sure about that?"
"Can you watch the bar or not?" Ellen snapped, half-hoping her daughter would display that famous contrariness and refuse, which would make Ellen's decision for her.
"Yeah, I'll watch things," Jo said. She picked up a rag from the counter and flashed a sarcastic smile. "Go. Enjoy your walk."
Ellen would have felt a little better about this if Jo hadn't made air quotes around 'walk', but she gathered up her pride and quietly headed outside.
Walking across the darkened parking lot to the tree line had never taken so long, and it gave Ellen more than enough time to think about what a fool she was making of herself. She wasn't a kid anymore. Women her age weren't supposed to be wandering out into the dark with immortal, handsome men. Women her age were Supposed to Know Better.
There was a line of darkness at the edge of the field, where the thick weight of night pressed back on the feeble lights from the Roadhouse. A shape, darker than the darkness, stood just inside the trees. Ellen had a moment's fear, then she recognized the slant of the man's shoulders.
"I was starting to think you weren't coming," Angel said, his voice brushing over Ellen's skin, sending shivers down her spine.
"What would you have done if I didn't?" Ellen asked, stopping a few inches away from him. This close, she could feel the weird energy Angel always had about him.
In the faint moonlight shining through the trees, Ellen could see a flash of white as Angel smiled, almost feral, almost possessive. "Brood."
He might have said something else, but Ellen didn't bother to waste any more time talking. She closed the distance between them, putting a hand behind Angel's head and pulling him down to her.
No matter what else was going on in their lives, Angel and Ellen had always been very good at one thing, and this, hands moving under clothing in the dark, away from people and buildings and reason, this was it.
Angel's mouth tasted like scotch and copper, the way she had always imagined sin must taste. His skin was cool under her hands as she pulled his shirt out of his pants. The metal of his belt buckle pressed into her stomach, a sudden discomfort forgotten as his hand slid under her bra.
Ellen held no illusions about what they were doing. It wasn't star-crossed lovers in the night, or anything with deep meaning. This was two people who weren't really all that different, taking comfort in each other. It was the way it had always been.
It wasn't until Ellen felt the rough bark of a tree against her back that she pulled away from Angel's kiss. "These trees aren't that sturdy," she said. She almost didn't recognize her own voice. She told herself that it had just been a long time since she'd done anything like this.
"Got a better idea?" Angel whispered in her ear before licking a line down her throat.
The shiver of adrenaline, of danger, clenched low in Ellen's stomach. It took her two tries to speak. "There's a picnic table deeper in the woods," she said.
Angel stepped away, his hand running down Ellen's arm until he could grasp her hand, pulling her with him. They were almost running, and it should have been ridiculous, but it wasn't; it was in the need and the blood pounding just under Ellen's skin, that made this real.
The old picnic table was hidden under the trees, shaded in the day and silent in the dark. Angel's hands went around Ellen's waist as he lifted her onto the table. She pulled him closer, settling him between her knees as she reached for him once again.
"You sure about a picnic table?" Angel asked. His cool fingers unbuttoned her shirt with more speed than grace, and she was convinced she heard a button pop off the cloth in his haste.
"We've done it in weirder places that this," Ellen pointed out, yanking open his belt.
"Like in the cab of a pick-up truck? Or in the back of a pick-up truck? Or on the hood of a pick-up truck?"
"I was thinking about the mausoleum--" Her sentence was cut off as Angel kissed her again, hard and fast, his tongue cool in her mouth.
Finally, breathing became an issue and Ellen had to push him away to get some air. "Ellen?" Angel whispered. His hands went back to the top button on her jeans, pulling her closer. "Shut up."
She slapped him on the ass. "Don't tell me to shut up."
He huffed out a laugh, chest moving against Ellen's. "Have you ever listened to a thing I say?"
Ellen smiled. "Never."
~~~
"You wrecked my shirt."
"Did not."
"Did too." Ellen gave up on trying to right her blouse, and sat back on the picnic table. Angel was beside her, a still presence in the dark. "I'll never find that button."
"Hrm."
Ellen bumped her shoulder against Angel's arm. "What?"
"What, what?"
"What's up?"
Angel shrugged. "I was thinking."
Ellen waited for him to finish.
"About Jo."
Right. "What about her?"
"Is she... I mean..."
Ellen had never heard Angel sound so uncertain before. It made her realize how little she knew about the man. She sighed. "Billy, he was... he was about twenty years older than me. He'd been in Vietnam, got shot up pretty bad while he was there. He couldn't have kids."
There was a long silence, one Ellen had expected, because really, how do you expect a man to react when you tell him that he's got a grown daughter he never knew about? "So he knew he wasn't Jo's father."
"Yeah." Ellen remembered the day she'd had to tell Billy she was pregnant, the silence that had been between them for months afterwards. She'd offered to leave, hadn't wanted to force him to raise a baby that wasn't his, but Billy, as angry as he was, hadn't wanted to let her go. "But it didn't matter, not after the first time he saw Jo. He loved that little girl more than anything in this world."
Angel let out a shaky breath. "Good," he said after a minute. "Children need fathers that love them."
The bitterness in his voice was too thick, too deep, to have much to do with Jo.
"If I'd seen you again, I would have told you," Ellen said.
"Does she know?" Angel asked quickly. "Jo?"
"No, and she's not going to," Ellen said. She hopped up off the bench, paced away in the dark. "She has a father who loved her and that's all she needs to know."
"Fine." Angel stood up, quicker than anything human. "Fine, so she doesn't know I'm her father." Ellen started to get mad, but something told her that Angel wasn't actually speaking to her. "It's not like this is a surprise, I should be used to this crap by now..."
Ellen shook her head. The last thing she felt like dealing with was an emotional man. Turning on her heel, Ellen started to make her way back to the Roadhouse.
"Ellen?" Crashing footsteps followed her. There was the sound of trip, then three hurried steps. Ellen couldn't help it. She started laughing. It seemed that whatever Angel was, wasn't any more graceful than a normal human.
Hands caught her around the waist, then slid around her stomach. Ellen didn't plan on stopping, but her body made the choice for her, even though there were a million reasons why she should have just kept walking, in the dark like this, her body still vibrating from Angel's touch. She let out a sigh and relaxed against Angel's chest.
"But she's good, right?" Angel asked, his breath cool against Ellen's cheek.
"Yeah, she's a good kid." Ellen watched the lights on the Roadhouse twinkle softly. "She's got a hell of a mouth on her, and some stupid ideas about fighting evil, though."
"I wonder where she gets that from," Angel murmured.
After a minute, Ellen made herself pull away. "So," she said after she cleared her throat. "You said that girl in there saved your soul, did that have anything to do with the being possessed thing?"
"What?"
"Willow."
Angel nodded. "Witch."
Ellen frowned. "You know more than one Willow?"
"Oh, no, not which Willow. Willow's a witch."
Ellen clamped her mouth down on the obvious, clichéd question. "That so?"
"Yes." Angel stepped around her, heading back to the roadhouse. "And the answer is, 'good witch'."
Ellen restrained the urge to hit him as he passed her. Something about Angel always made her feel nineteen again, when all she had to worry about was hunting evil. No responsibilities, no burdens, no one to depend on her for anything.
But that wasn't now. Straightening her shirt and hoping that Jo wouldn't be in a very observational mood, Ellen walked back to the Roadhouse.
~~~
Hours later, Angel and Willow were gone, along with Ash's rent money. Ellen would have thought by now that Ash would know better than to play for money, especially with hunters who swore up and down they'd never played the game before.
Jo brought the last of the dirty glasses over to the bar, then rested her elbows on the counter and stared at her mother. Ellen didn't react. She knew that if Jo wanted something, she'd speak up.
"You're missing a button on your shirt," Jo finally said.
"That so?" Ellen continued arranging the glasses behind the counter.
"Mm hmm." Jo drummed her fingers against the wood. "And there's a hicky on your neck."
Ellen pulled her hair around to cover her throat.
Exasperated, Jo blurted out, "I think Willow was hitting on me."
Ellen looked up. "What do you want, Jo?" she asked.
"What's going on?" Jo demanded. "These two show up again, and everything changes. You're acting like you're my age or something."
It was late, Ellen was completely exhausted, and she just couldn't whip up the motherly concern to ask Jo exactly when she'd been ducking behind the Roadhouse with boys. "So?"
"So why?" Jo threw up her hands. "You're doing all this weird stuff. It's like I don't even know you."
Ellen knelt down to open the safe. "What do you want me to say?"
"Explain why you're acting like..." Jo leaned over the counter. "I don't know. Do you ever wish it had gone different?"
The change in topic was enough to make Ellen look up. "What are you talking about?"
"You know." Jo was trying very hard to keep her face blank, but Ellen had always been able to read her little girl. Jo was nervous. "You met Angel when you were nineteen, right? How if things had gone different from there?"
Ellen kicked the safe closed and stood. She put her hand on top of Jo's. "You listen to me now, Joanna Beth. There is no life I'd want other than this one." Her throat was closing up, and she could feel threatening tears, but Ellen wasn't going to cry. Even if the months-old memory of almost losing her daughter was still almost too much to bear. "I got what I want, right here."
Jo smiled weakly, and Ellen decided to not push her luck. She set about with the nightly inventory.
A snippet of the previous conversation came back to Ellen as she counted beer bottles. "Jo, did you say Willow hit on you?"
"I think so." Jo, who had been fending off advances from male hunters since the day she hit sixteen, blushed. "But she may have just been doing it to distract Ash from the pool game. Whatever she was doing, it worked." Jo smirked. "Hey, do you think they'll get their corpse-eating crocotta thing?"
"Probably." Ellen hefted the tray of dirty glasses and carried them back into the kitchen, Jo on her heels.
"Do you think we'll see them again?"
Ellen remembered the sound of Angel's voice when he was asking about Jo, his daughter. "I wouldn't doubt it," Ellen said, setting her burden down by the dishwasher.
She just wished she could shake that feeling of foreboding, of what might happen if Jo found out the truth about Angel.
the end
Monster footnote: Crocottas