Willow looked at the computer in the corner of the library and sighed. It had been three weeks. Three blasted weeks, and no response.
She turned the computer on, hearing the resonant hum of the machine warming up. "Three weeks," she muttered to herself, settling into the chair. She clicked on the PPP connection and waited for the oddly calming jangle of the modem.
She knew that the blunt approach would have been better. It obviously worked for Buffy, she thought to herself, sighing slightly at the thought of Angel. But blunt just wasn't her. It could never be her.
She opened up her inbox and began making her way through her day's email. "So I'm a chicken," she muttered to herself. She straightened up suddenly. "No," she said, a bit more sharply. "I'm subtle." She collasped back into the chair and stared at the screen bleakly. So much for email right now....She opened Netscape.
You would think he would look at his bookmarks at least once, she thought to herself. After all the work she had done for him, setting up the computer, connecting it to the ISP, getting all those esoteric URLs from Ms. Calendar....and he never used to damn thing. She clicked on the one bookmark she had added three weeks ago. While it was uploading, she returned to her email. She scrolled down through her mailing list digests, the various pieces of spam....She froze suddenly. "No....it couldn't be...."
She clicked on the file, still not believing it.
"Willow. Found the bookmark on my browser. An interesting proposal. Shall we set a date? 8 o'clock tomorrow? Giles."
Willow leaned back against her chair, trying to put some thoughts together. After some time, she shouted. "Yes!"
"Giles, you must have seen that site twenty times. Aren't you ready yet?"
"I just don't know, Willow. I mean, it's all so new-"
"And that's exactly why you should do it. Don't you want to be known as an innovator in...Watching?"
"Well....um....I don't understand how this will change things."
Willow sighed tiredly. "Having a small website will let other researcher of paranormal phenomenon know what's going on here in Sunnydale. You just have to set up the basics."
Giles looked at the computer petulantly. "Why can't you do it?" he asked.
"Because I'm not a Watcher, Giles. I don't know all your secret passwords or handshakes or whatever."
"We don't have handshakes....we just have a few passwords and rings...." Giles frowned when he realized he was babbling. "Anyways," he said, shaking his head. "Must we really do this?"
Willow sunk into the nearby chair. "Giles, it was hard enough for you to get e-mail. You wanted this website, so gosh darn it, I'm not wasting another Saturday making excuses for you!"
Giles lifted his head to look at her, opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it once he saw the look on her face. Just humor her, Rupert. You can't expect the girl to be a Watcher if you don't make it seem interesting. "Well, he finally said, after looking back at the computer. "Shall we start?"
Willow collapsed into a nearby chair, grinning. It had been a stressful three hours, but, finally, after several false starts, HTML and UNIX errors, and countless explanations ("No, Giles, you have to chmod everything before you can see it. It allows people to view it."), they had finally done it. Willow looked over at Giles affectionately, taking a certain, almost motherly pride in seeing him scroll through the small introductory page they had set up.
Giles noticed her looking at him and smiled, revealing the overly curious schoolboy he must have been. "This is really quite...different," he said. He pointed to the short HTML document. "We spent three hours making that little thing?"
Willow smiled, an ironic tilt to her lips. "If you had just done what I said, it would have taken less time."
Giles was about to retort, but was interrupted by the library doors opening. "Hey you two," said Ms. Calendar. "What's going on?"
Willow looked up at Ms. Calendar, grinning. "Giles just got a website."
Ms. Calendar looked at Giles in stunned happiness. "Really? Oh...Wow!" She quickly made her way over to the computer. "Let me see!"
Giles pointed to the screen. Jenny looked at the site, then looked at Giles, grinning. "What a great beginning!" She kissed him on the top of his head, then turned to Willow. "How long did it take?"
Willow shrugged. "Oh, not long, " she said cheerfully. "Only three hours or so."
Jenny mouthed "Three hours?" back at Willow, then grinned again. "Congrats, Willow. You just helped Rupert into the 21st century."
This Angel/Buffy the Vampire Slayer story was written by Kate Bolin. If you liked it, there's plenty more at http://www.dymphna.net/fanfic/. And you can feedback her at dymphna@dymphna.net.