[X] Buffy does the watch commercial, possibly saving Hank's job. She'll have to deal with the consequences.
-[X] She comes out to the group on the car ride over. It'll only be super awkward.
The whole group had arrived separately, but with the sun having just barely set and a need for some haste Buffy had managed to get everyone piled into her dad's car for the trip to Sour's weird filming cave on the edge of town.
"I think next time we can probably use your motorcycle Buffy, it's pretty late," Harmony said. Buffy had invented an excuse that the sun might be hiding behind some buildings to make sure they at least had a car ride for her to figure out how to do this. She hadn't been able to summon up the courage to do it immediately, and doing it at the cave with Sour jeering in the background was totally unacceptable too.
Her dad spoke up. "I think it's kind of nice. I remember all those days of driving you and your little friends around LA in this car. It passes by so fast." His eyes drifted to the mirror to meet hers. "Hey, do you want to stop for ice cream? Just for old times' sake?"
"I can still sort of taste pistachio," Harmony said hopefully, sitting on her right with an unnecessary blanket draped in her lap.
"Summoning does work up an appetite," Andrew said from the front.
"We're on a timetable," Kathy worried. "It wouldn't be responsible to be late." She was squeezed in on Buffy's left. Buffy had avoided the front seat mostly so she could covertly signal Harmony before the big reveal happened, but that hadn't been going so well. Things kept distracting her from the script Buffy had passed over.
Should she try to ease her dad into it, step by step? It'd worked pretty well for the supernatural a week ago, but that'd been more… prepared. This situation was not. Rip the whole thing off like a band-aid? Even if he didn't have a heart attack, he was driving. They might crash.
She hadn't really entertained trying to keep it secret any longer. Refusing Sour's offer would've needed an explanation of its own, and it wasn't like she'd planned on keeping her relationship a secret forever. Adding a bunch of new lies when she was planning to come out already was a bad idea no matter how tempting it was.
At least there was only one real variable to consider. She couldn't imagine how Andrew or Kathy would react, but it didn't matter that much. Kathy barely knew her to begin with, and Andrew was mostly harmless. It'd have been better to get them into a separate car, but they'd both arrived with her dad in the first place, so -
"Earth to Buffy!" Her dad interrupted playfully. "You're in charge of a whole city now, can you decide on ice cream pickup? Yay or nay?"
"Umm," she gave Harmony a last glance, but she still looked clueless, the script forgotten in the folds of her blanket.
Harmony mistook it as asking her opinion, "I mean, what's Sour gonna do, just leave? He must be totally desperate for this commercial thing if he'd give up so much for so little."
"Harm, it's time." Buffy said.
"Sour gave an actual time?" Harmony inspected her watch confusedly.
"No, time for the other thing. You know. The telling thing," Buffy said.
"The telling thing?" Her eyes widened. "The telling thing! Really? Now?" She examined the people in the car again, as if she was checking if she'd missed anyone. "Are you sure?"
"No," Buffy said. "But we're doing it anyway."
"I feel a little out of the loop, is this some kind of demony Sunnydale thing?" Her dad asked.
"It's not very professional to play secret games on official trips like this," Kathy said waspishly.
Andrew turned in his seat to face them in the back, just looking confused.
As time stretched out, the excitement on Harmony's face started to turn to nervousness.
This was already awkward enough. There couldn't be any dressing it up. Buffy forced herself to say it. "I'm in a relationship with Harmony."
Andrew's eyes went wide behind the little headrest-bars.
"I'm sorry, I think I misheard you, what did you say Buffy?" Her dad asked.
"I'm dating Harmony." Buffy said. It was easier the second time.
"The slashers were right," Andrew whispered incomprehensibly.
Her dad looked stunned in the mirror, and started pulling the car over, but didn't say anything.
"That's a really crass joke," Kathy said. "And I'm not sure I appreciate you jerking us all around like that for cheap laughs."
"It isn't a joke!" Harmony yelled at her. "It's real! What do you know, you've only been here a week!"
"I'm three thousand years old! You're just a filthy half-breed that crawled out of a dumpster three months ago!" Kathy waved her hands wildly in the confined space of the backseat. "Buffy can't have an actual relationship with you any more than I could have one with a dog!"
KILL
Harmony started to stutter a defense, "That's not true! Buffy really, umm, she-"
Even as Harm's words were petering out, there was a sudden rush of air. Buffy found her hand was gripping Kathy's arm. And like a terrible miracle, all her previous uncertainty seemed to disintegrate. "What the hell did you just call my girlfriend."
Kathy tried to pull her arm away, but she only succeeded in shaking the already-stopped car, and then her expression softened. "I didn't mean to insult you. Clearly the primitive social taboos of your people have made you desperate for an outlet. If you already thought that what you wanted was disgusting, well, it'd be only natural that you'd want to keep it secret, keep it contained to her. It's filthy, but it's also kind of noble, I guess.
KILL
"But Buffy, you have to understand, there's nothing wrong with preferring women. You don't have to debase yourself with that thing just because you do. Like, I'm sure a vampire can be a fun pet, but- AHHH!" The bones of her forearm snapped in Buffy's hand like dry wood, one of them piercing through the skin. "Are you nuts, or just super inconsiderate? Do you know how much work it's going to take to fix this suit?" Upon being cut, the skin had sort of slipped upward and was loose on her forearm and her hand, with Mok'tagar texture revealed underneath.
Buffy almost went for her throat next, if only to shut her up. Instead, she made an effort at regaining control. "Get out." Almost as an afterthought, she let go of her mangled arm.
"It'll be my pleasure, if you're going to act this way!" Kathy said. "I better get a stipend for this in my first paycheck!" She opened the car door and left, snapping her arm back into place as she went.
The car was silent after that, the backdoor still hanging open and everyone looking at Buffy. As her fury died down, the ramifications of what had just happened rose back up. At some point her dad had abandoned using the mirror and had turned all the way around too. She'd never seen him look at her like that. Afraid, like he didn't know if it was safe to talk.
"Thanks," Harmony said quietly. The ice that had frozen over the conversation broke a little bit.
"Buffy," Hank said, "I can't claim to understand any of this, especially not whatever Ms. Newman was saying, but you don't need to feel ashamed. College has always been a time for experimenting." He looked like he wanted to keep going but couldn't quite find any more words.
No explosion. She wasn't thrilled that he thought she was in a phase, but if he was going to at least be chill with it she'd make her peace with that.
"I know this was very sudden, but Sour kind of put me up to it." Everyone's looks got even more confused. "He figured me and Harmony out somehow, and the script has a kiss in it." Harmony made a surprised noise.
Her dad did know how to respond to that, "Buffy, that's outrageous! You shouldn't feel pressured, I had no idea that-"
"No, it's fine," Buffy said. "It's not gonna be X-rated or anything. Sour knows better than that."
"You're not mad at him?" Harmony asked. "Didn't you want a chance to get it to be perfect?"
"If Buffy beats up Sour it'll be in all the gossip rags tomorrow," Andrew said.
Buffy sighed. "I'm annoyed he put me in that position, but you don't call up a demon and expect to get something for nothing. If the price is drama, it's a price I've paid before for less. His beating can wait for when he does something worse than needle me."
"You really want to go through with this whole deal?" Her dad asked.
"I already paid the piper. Might as well get my money's worth. Drive or we're gonna be late." She reached over and shut the open door.
As they accelerated back onto the road, Andrew asked the question everyone was probably already thinking. "What are we doing about Kathy?"
Getting rid of her would be a huge mess, but just the thought of seeing her again made Buffy feel like breaking her shrew face. "I'll figure it out later."
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On the projector, Buffy danced through a (dirtier-than-Sunnydale-standard) sewer, battling a moss-covered six-legged monstrosity. The dark scene was lit by her glowing watch, showing her dodge globs of (not actually very) acidic spit while she fought back with her hammer.
"Keeping the streets of Sunnydale clean isn't easy," the commercial Buffy said to nobody in particular on screen. The sleeves of her (specially prepared) shirt had already been melted off by the enemy fire, and then a particularly big glob nailed her in the wrist, covering her watch and plunging the scene into darkness.
Real Buffy looked at real Glurble again in concern. "You're sure you're OK?" She'd hit him a little hard in one of the early takes. She'd been pulling her shots already but he wasn't quite as sturdy as he looked.
"Glurble Glurble," the messy six legged demon bounced his head in a way that she'd learned meant assent.
Back on the commercial, the view had moved to Harmony in a factory setting, dodging behind and around cover to avoid brightly streaking (blank) bullets being shot at her from offscreen. "Sometimes there's just too much to do in a day."
After a glance at her wrist to look at the time, her eyes widened and she charged right through the hail of fire to tackle the trenchcoated figures (actually some of Sour's demon girls) and end the fight. Unfortunately, a zoom from the camera had shown one of the bullets ricocheting directly off her watch.
The third and final scene had them reuniting in front of (a cropped version of) Sunnydale's skyline, a (fake and not even scientifically accurate) lunar eclipse starting right as they shared a (not particularly chaste) kiss.
And then there was the super corny double voiceover that embarrassed Buffy way more than any amount of public kissing: "But with Horae watches, we can always make time for what's important!"
Just as the eclipse reached totality, their watch alarms both went off simultaneously, the screen flashing to a split showing them both still agreeing to the second. The two of them looked up at the sky in surprise (because of course that made sense), and then they ran offscreen together, presumably to handle the new disaster they'd forgotten about until that very moment.
"That was some really quick editing," Andrew said.
"I've got a solid staff," Sour acknowledged, then glanced side-eye at Buffy. "For your part, I'm surprised you were so …" he pretended to grip for a word, but Buffy suspected it was just for effect, "Enthusiastic."
"It's not like I have anything to be ashamed of," Buffy said, as Harmony preened.
"Glurble Glurble."
Knowing there was a school of thought among some demons that said what she was doing was wrong had been some extra motivation of its own for Buffy. Luckily none of Sour's crew had shown that kind of inclination. "So you two got the deal done?"
"Everything but the signing in blood," Sour said.
"We're going to meet with Kero in LA tomorrow, but this should be a slam dunk," her dad confirmed.
"And if there are no other questions, I'll take my leave," Sour said. "Wouldn't do to be late to my own show."
"Don't forget to send tapes!" Harmony said.
"Wouldn't dream of it." There was the characteristic flash of static across the senses, and Sour was gone, along with all his equipment and followers.
"It's dark!" Andrew squeaked into the darkness of the cave.
"It is." Buffy gently grabbed him before he could crash into anything. She could barely see anything herself though; they hadn't brought flashlights this time.
"I've got this." Harmony said. Her superior darkvision was up to the job, and she took ahold of both Buffy and her father and brought them towards the exit. Buffy could've probably managed it, but she didn't mind being led.
"So Buffy, I was thinking," her dad began. "We should probably tell your mother."
Buffy had been more worried about the Scoobies, but he had a point. Her mom wasn't the most stable when big reveals happened. "Probably. Eventually." Then again, it was probably going to be painful, and Buffy felt distinctly avoidy.
"We definitely don't have to do it right now," he said. "But if I was there we could present a unified front, is all."
Buffy hadn't expected that much support. It was definitely nice, but she wasn't sure what to do about it. On the one hand, it would be reassuring to have backup, but on the other, it might just explode into a fight between her parents.
Before she could think about it too much further, Harmony said, "Or, if you don't want to have more frustrating conversations, we could just go on a date. And not be particularly careful about being seen. We could go ice skating!"
"You're a cunning temptress," Buffy said. "I'm worried about our friends too, though." Willow, Xander, and Giles were the people she'd spent the most time with over the past three years, and they were all still in the dark.
Harmony scoffed, whipping her hair cutely. "Pssh, responsibility can wait. You deserve fun! What could go wrong?"
Vote: It's 9:30 PM on Sunday night. What does Buffy do?
[] Buffy takes Harmony home to come out to her mom with dad there. He's going back to LA tomorrow morning so this is the last chance to do it as a family.
[] Buffy has her dad drop her and Harmony off at her bike, and they go on a spontaneous ice skating date. This whole past week has been a nightmare, she needs something uncomplicated and fun.
[] Buffy calls the Scoobies together and brings Harmony with her to face the music. They're her best friends, and she should tell them all properly, even if things might get a little fraught.
