Another Life by Inamorata
Summary: "Birthday", turned upside down and shaken.
Spoilers: No spoilers; AU pure as the driven snow.
Notes: This is for Dazzle, who gave copious encouragement and outed my inner hedonist. She gets huge thanks, and co-exec producer credit on my first fic.
Sunset at sunset.
The Strip's busy tonight, jammed with cars, the young and the beautiful partying
like tomorrow the world's gonna end. She stands on her patch and watches the
cars sail past. She makes up stories about faces she glimpses as they rush past
at fifty miles an hour, going places while she stands in one place, waiting for
business to come to her.
Life is literally passing her by. Somebody somewhere must be laughing at that
joke. Maybe whatever forces are in control of her life these days, now that she
isn't anymore. The Powers That Be.
A classic black Chevy glides past, the young woman in the passenger seat pawing
the driver, a much older and not particularly attractive man. The story -- she's
a Model/Actress/Whatever, he's something low- down in television, she thinks he
can get her in the door. The ending -- three fucks, max, and the poor dumb bitch
will be looking for another ride. That's how it works.
She wishes she'd known that before she came to this city.
She pulls down her skirt, a pointless action as there's barely enough leather to
cover the lacy tops of her stockings. The chill wind whips her hair into her
face, mixing dyed platinum strands with her natural chestnut brown. Two months
ago, Frankie decided she'd bring in more business if she turned blonde; she told
him no, then spent a week covering up the bruises his powers of persuasion left
all over her rib cage. She'd been right, of course -- her regulars didn't like
the change, and new clients preferred the natural blondes. Her takings had
fallen, and that had earned her more bruises. Now the blonde is growing out, and
she can't afford to cover it up with something approximating her natural color.
She looks cheap and she knows it.
Another car goes past, this time bearing a well-dressed young woman, an
executive on her way home after a late night at the office. It halts for a few
seconds at the intersection; the woman dabs at her lipstick, then glances out of
the car. For the briefest of moments their gazes meet and the contempt in the
eyes of the woman in the car is undisguised. Trash, she's thinking. Hooker.
Whore.
Cordelia stares right back at her, unflinching. The other woman looks away
first. Then the car accelerates down the street, out of Cordelia's life and into
a better one.
Cordelia can't follow her, but she closes her eyes wishes she could. She makes a
wish to be transported to another life -- maybe the life she used to have, when
she had money and a future and the toughest choice she faced was whether to go
to college at UCLA or Duke. Even now, she finds it difficult to believe that
this is real, that this is her life, this is who she is now.
And the worst part is, as much as she wants to blame Cameron or Frankie or
everyone else who let her down or screwed her over since she came to L.A., she
can't. She made every decision along the way that brought her here all by
herself. And now there's no way back.
Cordelia blinks fast, her chest trembling with gasps that aren't -- quite --
sobs.
"Are you okay, honey?"
Cordelia's glad to hear Val's familiar nasal New York accent, and the genuine
concern in her voice. Val has left her patch to make sure Cordelia's all right;
she's walking over to join her, unsteady in black thigh-length boots with
four-inch heels. Cordelia's clothes are scarcely less ridiculous -- a leather
mini skirt, a blouse with studs instead of buttons, for easy removal, and
fishnet stockings. Fishnet stockings, Cordelia thinks. She's a walking cliché.
"I'm okay, Val. I'm gonna take ten minutes, get a cup of coffee. Can you
cover for me?"
Val nods. "If Frankie drives by, you're with a client."
"Thanks, Val."
Cordelia ducks into a side alley and starts walking quickly in the direction of
the closest McDonald's. Once, she would have died before sullying her reputation
or her shoes by venturing into nasty, dirty back streets like this one. Places
like this were for junkies, muggers and whores, not nice, rich girls like
Cordelia Chase. Now, these streets no longer frighten her -- they belong to her
as much as to the druggies and thieves -- but she still picks her way through
the used needles and soiled condoms, being careful to keep her feet clean.
"Going somewhere, sugar?"
Cordelia looks over her shoulder, disinterested. "Just taking a break,
Ray."
She doesn't know what his real name is, but the shabby, greasy guy standing in
her path is known to all the working girls as Sugar Ray due to his habit of
addressing all of them in the same way. He has one lazy eye, and always appears
to be staring at a point just above and to the left of the face of the person
he's talking to. Depending on his mood, he either tries to save the girls' souls
with his unique brand of hellfire and damnation religion, or he comes on to
them. Which is rich, Cordelia thinks. As if any of them would give it up for
free.
"Where to, sugar? Can Ray come?"
His habit of talking about himself in the third person is more than a little
creepy, and always an indication that Ray's link with sanity is that little bit
more tenuous than usual. "To answer both your questions -- none of your
damn business, and no."
Some nights a sharp put down is enough to make Ray shamble off again to wherever
he goes between times. But tonight it only seems to raise his ire. "Little
tramp. Little whore. You're damned, you know. Your soul's all black, all black
inside. Ray knows. Oh yes, hell yeah, Ray can see you're on the way down."
He starts to laugh at that, a nasty, gurgling cackle that's thick with catarrh.
"If I'm going down, it sure as hell isn't on you. Get lost, Ray."
He takes a step nearer to her, and Cordelia moves back. Ray's undernourished,
but he's a big guy, and he's got at least five inches and a hundred pounds on
Cordelia. For the first time, she starts to feel a little threatened. His eyes
brimming with tears, Ray says, "But YOU'RE the one who's lost. Can't you
see it? Don't you, can't you? Ray can help. Ray's gonna put you back on the
righteous path, sister sugar."
Then, with a deceptively fast movement, he reaches into his shabby gray overcoat
and pulls out a knife.
Oh, fuck, Cordelia thinks.
Distract him. Keep him talking.
"Hey, Ray. I'm going to the McDonald's on the next block -- why don't you
come with me? I changed my mind."
Ray shakes his head sadly. "It's too late to change your mind, sugar.
Decision's already made."
He lunges at her.
Cordelia turns, and runs.
She's careering down the alley, screaming for someone, anyone who might hear her
-- but it's dark and she's just finding out she doesn't know the back streets as
well as she thought she did, and she can't run in the stupid stilettos she wears
when she's working and ohshit she's tripping and sliding and falling down into
the crud into the gutter, hands out to save herself but nothing's gonna save her
now and she wishes more than anything things had been different --
She crouches down, curls up, and waits for the pain to start.
Nothing.
She stays still, perfectly still, for twenty seconds, a minute, two minutes. The
part of her mind that isn't huddling, terrified is trying to figure out what the
hell is going on. The only explanation she can come up with is that Ray
blundered past her in the dark, somehow overlooking her after she fell. It
doesn't make a lot of sense, but neither does the fact she's still alive.
Whatever happened, she has to move. Get somewhere safe.
Come on. MOVE.
Cordelia makes herself get up. The first thing she sees when she turns around is
Ray's body lying on the ground behind her. His head is pointed in one direction
and his chest in the other. The look on his face is one of dumb, stupid
surprise.
Her first thought is: Talk about dumb luck, he slipped and fell too --
Then she feels her skin prickle and go cold. No one ever tripped and twisted his
neck around the wrong way on the way down.
Now she realizes she isn't alone.
The figure in the shadows is standing absolutely still, blending almost
perfectly with the surrounding darkness.
In the distance, Cordelia can hear the noise of traffic on the Strip, horns
beeping, distant voices, the sound of human lives being lived. It's never
sounded so precious or desirable. If she bolts, she might just make it back to
the street --
She tenses, gets ready to flee again.
"Don't -- don't run. Please."
The voice from the shadows is hesitant, and the last word feels artificially
tacked on, as if the speaker is having trouble remembering the finer points of
polite conversation. But that isn't what stops Cordelia from bolting.
It's the fact that she recognizes the voice.
"Come out of there," she says. When the shadow doesn't move, she
injects a note of the old haughtiness into her tone. "Come out where I can
see you or I'm leaving on the count of three. One, two --"
As her tongue begins to shape the word 'three', the figure comes forward, into
the reflected glare of a neon sign.
He looks a little different than she remembers him -- which is crazy, because
he's the last person she'd expect to change. But there is a difference, one she
can't quite isolate. Black shirt and pants, leather and hair gel -- these things
are the same. Maybe he's lost weight, if vampires can do that. Maybe his eyes
are a little more sunken, his cheeks a little more hollow. Maybe he's just
tired.
"Angel. Hi." Cordelia is quietly amazed at her ability to keep her
voice so steady, her tone so casual. And they said she couldn't act.
"Cordelia."
If he's as surprised to see her as she is to see him, there's no indication of
it in his voice. Or, for that matter in his face, although it's more difficult
to tell, there: he has one hand raised, as if to hide his yellow eyes, ridged
forehead and fangs. Just this once, Cordelia's grateful for the Sunnydale
upbringing that makes this sight less frightening than Sugar Ray with a knife.
Angel lowers his hand; slowly, his face smoothes and his eyes darken. Cordelia
isn't sure, but she doesn't remember the change taking this much time or
conscious effort. "Still a vampire, then?"
He nods.
This established, Cordelia moves on to the other important question on the Angel
checklist. "Are you evil?"
"I don't think so."
It's hardly the vigorous denial Cordelia would have liked to hear. She points at
the body on the ground. "You killed him."
"He was going to rape you and then murder you."
Angel says it with as much feeling as if he were telling her that the capital of
France is Paris. But it's true, and that knowledge -- how close she came to
being Jane Doe on an autopsy table -- slams into Cordelia like a physical blow.
She feels something inside her turn to water; her insides are sloshing around
and suddenly she can't stay on her feet. She sinks down and stretches out on a
bed of empty fast food containers and cigarette butts, and shuts her eyes.
"Oh God. Oh God. He said I was dirty -- that my soul was black --"
She doesn't know why this, more than the fact that Ray was ready to slash her
open with a knife, pushes her over the edge, but it does. Cordelia hears her
voice dissolve into incomprehensible sobs, and hates herself for buckling like
this. But she can't stop crying.
"Cordelia --" When she opens her eyes again, Angel has moved a step
closer. He's holding his arms out from his sides, as if he wants to help her up
but can't or won't touch her. "You are dirty." He swallows, then tries
to make awkward amends, "I only meant -- your clothes are filthy. Maybe it
would help to -- would you like to get cleaned up?"
Hot water and soap and skin that isn't sticky with dried cum. Yes, Cordelia
thinks, she would like that a lot. But -- "I share a place with some of the
girls. I just don't -- I don't want to be there, right now. Maybe a motel
somewhere, a room with a shower --"
Angel hesitates, as if what he's about to say is difficult. "I have some
extra space. You could come with me. Just for tonight."
Leaving her patch early for Frankie to drive past and find deserted, going with
a vampire back to his lair -- rationally, Cordelia knows that accepting Angel's
offer is deeply stupid on every level there is, plus some levels that haven't
been explored at all yet. But right now the idea of being lifted out of this
life, just for one night, is irresistibly seductive.
"Have you got a spare room?" she asks.
***
Angel has sixty five spare rooms.
"You have got to be kidding me," Cordelia says as he pulls up his car
-- a vampire with a convertible, how the hell does that work? -- outside the
back entrance of what seems to be a deserted hotel. "When did you move into
real estate?" Then she remembers the mansion on Crawford Street, back in
Sunnydale. Angel does seem to have a talent for finding desirable, vacant
property; in another life, he would have made one hell of a broker.
Angel doesn't answer, just gets out of the car and pushes open the rusting iron
gates. After a second, Cordelia follows him through a weedy, overgrown courtyard
and past a dried-up fountain, and into a cavernous space that might once have
been the hotel's lobby.
The lobby is dark; dust sheets cover the furniture, and there are no obvious
signs of life. But then, Cordelia thinks, when the sole resident is a vampire,
signs of life are the last thing you should expect to see.
"This is the Hyperion," Angel says. And then, as if it explains
everything: "I live here."
"Sure. Right," Cordelia mutters as he walks past the reception desk
and up the grand, creaking staircase. Angel doesn't look back once he starts
climbing, and it seems to Cordelia the available options are either follow him
or stand in the lobby all night. She follows him.
She catches up with him on the second floor hallway, where he's standing outside
one of the bedrooms. As she draws near, he opens the door for her. The room
inside smells musty, but it's tidy and the bed is made-up.
"This room's plumbing works," Angel says. "The pressure comes and
goes, but there should be enough hot water for a shower. Do you -- want a
T-shirt?"
He's looking at her outfit -- the blouse that shows everything, the little
leather skirt, the fishnets and the come-fuck-me heels -- as he says it. It's
the first indication Angel's given that he knows or cares what she was doing
when he found her, and Cordelia feels herself starting to flush. Sometimes, the
only thing that lets her survive her new life is the knowledge that no one from
her old life knows about it. As grateful as she is to Angel for getting between
her and Ray tonight, he's a Sunnydale face, and seeing him is bringing back
memories of high school and better times.
Suddenly, she doesn't want to look at him anymore. She doesn't want him looking
at her.
"I don't need anything else," Cordelia says shortly, and walks into
the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
The water that comes out of the shower nozzle is hot, although the pressure's so
low it's hardly more than a dribble. Cordelia makes do as best she can, and as
she washes off the night's grime she feels the warmth suffusing into her
muscles, relaxing them. Mechanically, she scrubs between her legs, then washes
her hair, behind her ears, between her toes, and every other part of herself she
can reach. By the time she's ready to towel herself off, she feels pleasantly
weak and raw.
Her clothes are lying where she dumped them, in the middle of the floor, and she
can't bring herself to put them back on. Standing here, naked, she's herself;
it's the clothes that push up her tits and squeeze her ass that turn her into
the girl on the street-corner. She pushes the soiled heap to one side with her
toe and sits down on the bed, still wrapped in the faded blue towel she found
hanging on the rail in the bathroom.
The bedroom is cool, and she can see moisture evaporating off her skin, rising
in faint clouds before dissipating into the air. Her arms and shoulders are
rising in goosebumps, and she's starting to get cold, so she lets the damp towel
fall to the floor and gets into the bed.
Initially, this isn't much of an improvement -- the bed is frigid, the mattress
cold underneath her. She scissors her legs between the blankets, trying to build
a little heat by friction, then curls her arms around herself. Her last
conscious thought before she falls asleep is to wonder whether it would be rude
to go and find Angel and ask him if he owns an electric blanket.
She dreams that she's back in Sunnydale, hooking outside The Bronze in the snow,
shivering in her little leather skirt while Xander and Buffy and Willow and
everyone she ever knew take it in turn to sneer at her. So when Angel drives up
in a black convertible and offers her a ride anywhere she wants to go, she
smiles at him and gets in.
***
Cordelia is woken up by a sound unlike anything she's ever heard before.
She sits up in the bed, momentarily confused about where she is and how she got
here. She remembers Angel, the hotel and Sugar Ray, in that order, then looks at
her watch. It's the cheapest one the drugstore had -- the DeVille she loved, her
sixteenth birthday present, got stolen months ago. The glowing digital numbers
tell her it's just after two o'clock, and the darkness outside the bedroom
curtains indicates that means two in the morning. She's only been asleep for a
couple of hours.
For a moment, Cordelia wonders if the noise that woke her was just traffic
passing in the street below. Then she hears it again. No way is that traffic.
Half way between a howl and scream, it sounds like an animal being tortured. The
hairs rise on the back of Cordelia's neck, and she remembers that no matter how
happy she was when Angel showed up tonight, right now she's alone in a big empty
building with a vampire who has a nasty habit of turning evil at the drop of a
soul. Cordelia barely knew Angel in Sunnydale, and she's only just starting to
realize she doesn't know what's been going on with him since he left. No more
than he knows what's happened to her.
She can stay in here and cower, or she can get out of here as fast as possible.
Cordelia has never been a big fan of cowering.
She throws off the blankets and reclaims her clothes from the crumpled heap in
the corner of the room, leaving the stockings but pulling on the skirt and
blouse, for the modicum of modesty they afford her. The clothes are crumpled and
dirty, and they're no one's idea of a fantasy; Cordelia wishes she'd taken Angel
up on his offer of a clean T-shirt.
She pushes the bedroom door open gingerly, trying and failing to remember if the
hinges squeaked last night. They don't, and a moment later she's standing in the
hallway. The stairs leading to the lobby below, the exit, and escape are within
sight.
As quietly as possible, Cordelia tiptoes along the corridor, barefoot, holding
her stilettos in her right hand. She's passing room 217 -- is right outside the
closed door -- when she realizes this is the source of the noises.
But it's not an animal she hears. The screams and whimpers are human.
Or, more accurately, vampire.
Cordelia bites her lip, and looks toward the door of 217. If she left now, she'd
never see -- or have to see - Angel again. And, really, what is he to her? The
ex-boyfriend of a girl she went to high school with. Someone her own
ex-boyfriend didn't like much. A weirdo with odd dietary requirements and
limited social skills. No one important.
But Cordelia isn't anyone important these days, either. What is she to Angel,
that he was there when Sugar Ray decided to pull a knife on her? She owes him
this much.
"This is so stupid," she says out loud. "This is SO stupid."
But she goes to the door of room 217, and tries the handle.
It's open; the room beyond is dark. Cordelia takes a breath, and goes in.
"Angel? It's me. I mean Cordelia. Not wanting to barge in, but it sounded
like you'd cut yourself shaving or, or --"
He's not in the bedroom; the bed is rumpled but empty.
From the bathroom, Cordelia hears a whimper. It sounds almost like a child
crying.
Angel's huddled into the space between the shower cubicle and the sink unit.
He's naked, but he's folded up on himself so tightly that all Cordelia can see
right now are arms and legs. Nevertheless she keeps her gaze firmly focused
front and center, on his face.
Which is difficult, too. Angel's crying.
Tears stream down his face, brimming out of vacant dark eyes. He's about as far
from the leather-clad vigilante who saved Cordelia tonight as it's possible to
get. Cordelia can't figure out what the hell is going on here, but she's sure
it's not healthy. And somehow she's landed in the middle of it.
"Angel? Angel, are you hearing me? C'mon, Angel."
Can vampires develop drug dependency? Cordelia considers that idea, then rejects
it quickly -- there's no sign of any drugs paraphernalia, no tell-tale marks on
his arms (and if he did shoot up, how could he get a hit without blood
circulating to his brain?) She thinks she can smell alcohol off him, but she's
never seen liquor produce this kind of effect, no matter what quantity it's
taken in.
Angel doesn't respond and Cordelia, growing braver, leans forward and gently
slaps his cheeks. His face remains dazed and void; wherever he is, he's not
coming back anytime soon.
"Let's get you back to bed," Cordelia says. She takes his hands in
hers, and tries to pull him to his feet. She's not strong enough, and on the
first attempt he barely budges. But when she's pulled again, harder, several
more times, the small part of his brain that's still responding to external
stimuli starts to get the message. Clumsily, he gets up, and almost immediately
falls forward on to Cordelia's shoulders.
He's still naked, and now there's no way of avoiding it. In two years working
the streets, Cordelia's seen enough examples of male genitalia to rid her of any
residual embarrassment at the sight of a penis, but this feels different. He
probably doesn't even know she's here, and even glancing down there feels like
taking advantage.
Walking backwards and almost bumping into the door, Cordelia leads him back into
the bedroom, and somehow maneuvers him into sitting on the edge of the bed. She
was right about the smell of alcohol -- there's an almost-empty bottle of
whiskey on the dresser, a tumbler beside it. But somehow she doubts that's
Angel's problem.
She pushes his shoulders, and he goes down without resistance. Then she lifts
his legs and turns him so he's lying flat on his back. Throughout, his face
stays fixed in that same, eerie blankness, except for the quiet tears that won't
stop running down his cheeks.
She pulls the sheets up to his chest, then stands for a moment, looking down at
his dull, dead eyes.
There's nothing more she can do here. She starts to turn away.
"Don't go. Please."
His voice is fragile, like it might crack open any second and everything inside
him come pouring out. He sounds just like he did in the alleyway last night,
when he asked her not to run away. She wonders how many people just run away
from him.
He reaches up and takes hold of her wrist with his hand. His grip is strong, but
he's disoriented; if she really wanted to get away, she could. The look in his
eyes is distant, but it is a look.
"What can I do?" Cordelia asks.
"Are you real?" Angel asks.
"I'm real."
He shuts his eyes. "Sometimes I can't tell -- for hours -- or days --
what's real --"
Vampires aren't real, Cordelia thinks. Everyone knows that. Well brought-up
girls who go to the big city and slip between the cracks into a life they never
even thought about -- they stop being real, too. Just like vampires, the rest of
the world walks on by and pretends the things that do exist, don't.
"We're both real," she tells him. "I'll prove it."
Taking his face in her hands, she leans down and kisses him on the mouth. His
lips are cool -- it feels weird, but not unpleasant. Just when she thinks he's
not going to respond, his mouth opens, and the tip of his tongue brushes her
lips, as if seeking permission to come inside her mouth.
He's tentative, uncertain. But that's okay. Cordelia knows what she's doing.
She locks her lips around his tongue, then squeezes and releases it, over and
over. She can feel his body tensing as he raises his head, letting her take his
tongue deeper into her mouth. His face and mouth are growing warm, and when she
moves, he moves with her, as if he can't bear to break the contact.
Firmly, she places her hands on his shoulders and pushes him down. Angel gives a
small moan as she forces him back, but he's still disoriented enough to let her
set the pace. Cordelia knows that will be better for both of them.
Cordelia moves on to the bed, straddling Angel but not touching him. Supporting
her weight on her knees and elbows, she positions herself directly over him, her
hair falling down into his face. "Take off my blouse," she says.
His hands fumble as he obeys. Cordelia's still not sure how much of his response
is automatic. If she has to walk him through this, step by step, she will.
The last stud pops free and her breasts spill out. Gently, she lowers herself on
to him, allowing them to brush against his face. At first he's passive, eyes
shut; then his lips part a fraction and he gently massages each nipple in turn,
his tongue caressing the darker skin that surrounds them. A second later, and
they're hard between his lips.
Last night he broke a man's neck. And now he's gentle, so very gentle --
Cordelia sits up, leaning back and resting her weight on his thighs. She shrugs
off the blouse and throws it to one side. Then she tugs away the sheet, the last
barrier between them.
Now it's okay to look.
His cock is already half-erect, flushing as it hardens. She takes his balls in
her hands and massages them lightly, rolling them between her palms. Angel's
soft groan is enough to tell her her touch is having the desired effect.
When he's as hard as he can be, she stops. Angel raises his hands over his head
and grips the bars of the bedstead, bracing himself as he raises his hips,
trying the find something to thrust against. This is what she intends to get
from him -- a response. A connection.
She lowers herself on her elbows, and kisses him lightly, first on the inside of
his thighs, and then along the shaft of his cock, working her way from the base
to the head. Once there, she flicks out her tongue, barely touching it before
alighting somewhere else. He's as cool here as everywhere else, and he tastes
clean, a faint flavor of salt and nothing else.
Angel lets out a wordless cry and bucks under her; he can't tell where she's
coming from next and it's making him crazy.
Cordelia slips the head of his cock into her mouth and runs her tongue around
it. She sucks, again, and again, building a rhythm, allowing him to find and
follow it. Now she's holding the shaft in her hand, sliding along his length and
back again, in time with the other motions.
He's working against her with a kind of desperation; she's sure he should have
come by now, but he's holding back. Between thrusts, he gasps, "Is this --
this is --"
Cordelia lifts her head, lets his cock slip out of her mouth. He's so hard he
must be in near-pain. "What?"
"Is this real?" Angel whispers.
"This is real," Cordelia affirms. "This is happening. This is
real."
She adjusts her position, supporting herself on her arms and leaning forward so
his cock rubs between the fullness of her breasts. When he comes, with a shudder
and a shout, it spills on to her and runs between them.
Angel's grip on the metal bars of the bed's frame slackens as his arms relax. He
gives a final sigh of lingering pleasure, and slides down on to the pillows,
spent. Cordelia uses the edge of a sheet to wipe her chest clean. This was just
another transaction, she tells herself, no different to what she does every
other night of the week. Angel saved Cordelia's life this evening; he asked her
for something in return and she paid him in the only currency she carries these
days. Now they're even, parting on equal terms again.
But then there's the way he's looking at her now. Most of Cordelia's clients
won't look at her at all when they're through -- if they do, it's with contempt,
and an ugly superiority. But Angel's gazing up at her with something like
gratitude, or even wonder, and it touches Cordelia in a way she can't explain.
So when Angel says, quietly, "Stay," she does, climbing into bed
beside him, and allowing him to wrap his cool arms around her. At first, he
feels as cold as the bed in her room did when she first got into it, but it
isn't long before his body begins to trap her warmth, reflecting it back at her.
Angel is better than an electric blanket, Cordelia decides as she falls asleep,
and she doesn't dream about snow.
***
Cordelia wakes up cold and alone.
There's a space in the bed beside her; at first she thinks Angel must be in the
bathroom, but the door to the en suite is sitting open and he isn't in there.
She pulls the curtains open and winces in the bright sunshine; the old-fashioned
wind-up alarm clock on Angel's dresser tells her it's almost noon. She searches
his closet and helps herself to a plain white T-shirt and a pair of gray
drawstring pants. They're musty but clean, and they smell like Angel; his scent
is earthy, a little metallic, and Cordelia's surprised at how much she enjoys
being surrounded by it.
She gives the room the once-over, but there's no note, no indication of where
he's gone, when he might be back, or if he expects her to be here when he does
return. She could go back to bed -- the idea of luxuriating longer in the
novelty of uninterrupted rest is tempting --
but Cordelia's never made a habit of sitting around waiting for something
to happen. She goes downstairs, to the lobby.
She finds the money sitting on the reception desk, where she can't fail to miss
it.
It's sitting by itself, a neat pile subdivided according to the bills'
denominations. There's no accompanying note or card -- nothing to indicate it's
intended for her -- but Cordelia
knows what it is, knows what it's for.
Just a transaction, she reminds herself harshly. Stupid to imagine it could have
been anything else. Anything more.
She doesn't want his fucking money.
She's out of the hotel and half way down the street when her inner pragmatist
cuts in. As her steps slow, then stop, Cordelia remembers a saying she heard
first from one of her mother's maids -- one of the ones who didn't stay long,
one of the ones whose name Cordelia never bothered to learn. Beggars can't be
choosers.
Beggars can't be choosers, Cordelia tells herself as she retraces her steps to
the hotel. The money is still sitting on the reception desk; she lifts it and
counts it into her purse, her eyes blurring. One hundred dollars is food until
the end of the month; being able to take cabs home for a week instead of walking
alone; her portion of this week's rent. It means a lot. It makes last night mean
nothing.
Beggars can't be choosers, Cordelia thinks, and walks out of the Hyperion. She
doesn't expect she'll ever be back.
*** II
Angel is following Cordelia.
She hasn't seen him. In fact, she hasn't seen anything, unless you count a shape
perched on the roof of the building opposite, or a shadow that's a fraction too
dark -- but she knows it's him. Who else would it be?
She thinks it started a couple of weeks after the night she spent with him at
his hotel, although it's possible he was following her before that, and she just
didn't notice.
She knew for certain when she left the purse containing her night's earnings --
five hundred dollars in cash -- on the bus. She opened her bag as she walked up
the street to the apartment building, and felt a yawning, gaping panic begin as
she remembered setting the purse on the seat beside her as she rode home. She
was ready to run all the way to the bus depot, if she had to; anything to avoid
Frankie's fury. Then she heard a light thud and the chink of loose change behind
her, and when she turned around her purse was lying in the middle of the
sidewalk. There was no one in sight.
Her takings slumped: she couldn't perform, knowing that he might be somewhere
close, watching her kneel with her face in a gasping stranger's open flies.
Somehow, she managed to pull herself together in time to bring business back to
normal levels before she incurred Frankie's wrath. She was lucky -- lately Val
has been his victim of choice, and he's been noticeably easier on the other
girls. Cordelia is ashamed of herself for the relief she feels that the bruises
are on Val and not herself, but it doesn't stop her wanting it to continue.
Then Frankie -- in one of his frequent and inexplicable policy decisions --
shuffled the girls' patches and Cordelia found herself working Sunset again for
the first time since the night Sugar Ray tried to kill her. She walked past the
entrance to the alley where she'd fallen as she fled from him, and she thought
-- although she wasn't sure -- she felt a cool hand brush against hers as she
passed. After that, slowly, she started to find the constant shadowy presence
trailing her a kind of comfort. She began to associate Angel's presence with
safety, a feeling she hasn't enjoyed in too long.
After a month, Cordelia has settled into an odd but increasingly not unwelcome
routine. She works the streets and buys her groceries at the All-Nite and walks
back to the apartment where she lives with Frankie's other girls just before
dawn every day in the knowledge that he is there. Sometimes she even calls,
"See you tomorrow, Angel," as she goes inside, half-wondering if he'll
respond. Cordelia thinks this strange equilibrium benefits her more than him,
although she's a little disappointed that Angel -- Buffy's noble, heroic,
vampire-with-a-soul -- is just another voyeur, getting his kicks by watching
Cordelia turn tricks for cash. But then, no one is the way you like to think.
Angel watches Cordelia, which she doesn't like, but he keeps her safe, which she
does. It doesn't seem an unfair exchange, although Cordelia doesn't think she
would always have felt this way. It's a strange equilibrium but, while it
benefits her, this is one boat she doesn't intend to rock.
It's Angel who does that.
***
Cordelia recognizes the car before its driver: one of the few things she ever
shared with her father was an appreciation of classic automobiles. Her
overriding emotional response as the Plymouth rolls up to her is surprise
mingled with amusement -- how can Angel have the nerve? A month and a half of
lurking in alcoves and doorways, and now he thinks he can just drive right up to
her?
Apparently, that's exactly what he thinks.
The Plymouth pulls in off the street and stops right next to where Cordelia's
touting for business. "Hi," Angel greets her awkwardly.
"What do you want?"
Cordelia starts walking along the sidewalk, away from the car. After a moment,
Angel gently eases the convertible forward, crawling along beside her. At the
other end of the street, Cordelia sees Val look around, then nod and go back to
working her own patch, satisfied that Cordelia's not in trouble, just
negotiating with a potential client. And, from a distance, that's exactly what
it must look like. For an instant, Cordelia wonders if Angel's worried about his
reputation, then thinks -- What reputation? He's a *vampire.* Reputations don't
get worse than that.
"Are you busy?" Angel asks.
"As it happens -- yes. I'm not out here taking the night air for my
health."
"I know," Angel says.
"Then why'd you ask?" Cordelia says harshly. She doesn't mean to snap,
but it comes out sounding raw and ugly.
Angel is silent for an unnaturally long time. He never was particularly good at
conversation, Cordelia remembers, and now it seems he's lost the knack
completely.
"What do you want?" she asks again. "Because time is money, and
you're wasting mine."
"I want -- I'd like to talk. To you."
"Come back tomorrow," Cordelia says. "During the day."
He looks stung by that, and for a second she thinks -- she hopes -- he's going
to drive away. But he doesn't. Instead he takes one hand off the wheel for long
enough to dig out a battered-looking wallet. "I'll pay for your time now.
How much does it take?"
Cordelia almost says, You should know, but something makes her bite the words
back. Partly it's the genuinely hopeful look on Angel's face. Mostly, it's
simply that Cordelia's worn out and, right now, a break sounds too good to pass
up on. Especially a paid break.
Cordelia sighs.
"Fifty bucks gets you a hand job or a coffee at McDonald's," she tells
him as she gets into the car. "Your choice."
***
It's not good coffee, but it's not bad coffee either. It's hot, and that's
almost enough to make up for the flavor and aroma deficit. Cordelia sits at the
plastic table with her hands wrapped around the cardboard beaker, allowing the
heat to suffuse through her fingers. "So, do you keep up with any of the
Scoobies?"
"The what?"
Angel's looking at her blankly; Cordelia can't believe he never heard any of
them use the term bestowed on Buffy's immediate circle by Xander. Then again,
maybe he never did -- like Cordelia, Angel was always on the fringes of the
group, one Slayer ex-girlfriend notwithstanding. It may be a tenuous link, but
it's the only thing she has in common with him, and they have to talk about
something: the silence is getting awkward and Angel, despite his stated
intentions, doesn't look likely to break it anytime soon.
"You know." Cordelia makes a vague gesture with one hand. "The
Sunnydale people."
"Oh. No. Not really." Angel looks down into his own coffee, which he
hasn't touched. The liquid's cloudy gray surface is perfectly still, and
Cordelia can't help but notice that he doesn't even reflect there.
Exasperated, she says, "C'mon Angel. If you wanna talk to me, talk to me.
But make it fast, because I need to be back out there in -- " Cordelia
looks at her watch -- "Twenty minutes."
Angel nods, then takes a small (and unneeded) breath, like a diver preparing for
a long submersion. "I was thinking -- about how we ran into each other. It
was about two years ago. Just after I came back to L.A."
It's the longest speech Cordelia's heard Angel make since the night he killed
Sugar Ray. She notes, too, that he said, 'back to L.A.', meaning he's lived here
before, another new Angel factoid.
"You don't remember it," Angel says.
Cordelia hasn't forgotten. She remembers that party too well -- it was the night
she met Angel but, more importantly, the night she met Cameron. Cameron, who was
briefly her agent, and even more briefly her lover, and without whose influence
Cordelia is pretty sure she wouldn't have begun the long slide down to where she
is now. Hell, yes, Cordelia remembers that party.
She shrugs, feigning indifference. "I went to a lot of parties."
There's another long silence.
Finally, Angel decides to try again. "So, how are you -- how are you doing,
these days?"
It's an innocent inquiry, but it pushes Cordelia right over the edge. Gripping
her beaker of coffee so tightly the scalding liquid sloshes dangerously close to
the rim, she snaps at him, "How am I doing? Well, gee, Angel, I'm doing
great. I'm just peachy. I live with eight other girls in an apartment with space
for four, for the past six weeks I've been stalked by a vampire and, oh, did I
mention that I'm a WHORE?"
Angel actually winces on the last word. "I'm
sorry."
"It's not your fault," Cordelia says. The moment of anger has passed;
now she's just tired. "It just is. Look, I gotta go. If I'm away from my
patch much longer, Frankie will notice."
"Who's Frankie?" Angel asks.
"My fencing instructor. Who do you think?" Cordelia gets up, pushing
her half-drunk coffee away from herself. She starts to walk away; half-way to
the door, she stops and looks back. Angel is sitting at the plastic-topped
table, shoulders hunched, eyes almost closed. A grinning poster of Ronald
McDonald hangs right above his head. "Angel."
Angel half-turns on the plastic seat. "Yes?"
"Stop following me. I've got my own problems without being your obsession
of choice. And why'd you have to pick me, anyhow? Did you get tired of fixating
on Buffy twenty-four seven? Or is that on-off thing you two have finally just
off?"
Cordelia may not know Angel well, but she knows him well enough, and Buffy's
name produces the effect she wants -- his head dips again, and he swallows in
something which is almost physical pain. Cordelia feels a moment of pleasure --
she's hurt him the way he hurt her with the cash on the reception desk -- but
the sweet feeling sours when Angel says, "Buffy's dead."
"I'm sorry," Cordelia says automatically. She guesses she is, a
little. Cordelia never especially liked Buffy and her own special brand of
I'm-the-Chosen-One angst, but now she looks back, she's starting to realize
Buffy only played the hand she was dealt the only way she knew how. Just like
Cordelia's doing. "How'd she die?"
"Saving the world," Angel says, as if it couldn't have been any other
way. Which is probably right, Cordelia thinks. Irrationally, she feels a stab of
jealousy that Buffy got to die a hero as well as live as one. Buffy died saving
the world, and Cordelia can't even save herself.
"I'm sorry you had to see that."
Angel's reply, when it finally comes, is low and hollow, like wind in a
graveyard.
"I wasn't there."
Cordelia doesn't know what to say -- Buffy and Angel might have split up, but
she'd always assumed -- had never doubted -- that somehow her life and his
unlife were intimately entwined, yin and yang forever swirling together, no
beginnings or endings. It seems incomprehensible that Buffy faced whatever it
was that finally beat her without Angel at her side, fighting with fangs and
fury to save her until she fell. The only thing stranger than Buffy being dead
is that Buffy is dead and Angel is sitting in front of Cordelia in a McDonald's
just off Sunset Boulevard.
"I'm sorry," Cordelia says again, and this time she knows she means
it.
Angel nods.
"Look, I -- I really gotta go now."
Cordelia is almost at the door when his voice, heavy and slow, calls her back.
"I'll stay away from now on. I promise. But if you ever need help -- if
this man Frankie ever does anything -- you know where to find me."
Cordelia nods. Then she leaves Angel, sitting alone in the almost- empty
McDonald's, and goes back to work.
***
"What's the matter, honey?" Val asks Cordelia.
They're walking along the street where Frankie's girls' apartment is, heading
out to work for the night. Cordelia's wearing a spandex miniskirt, the bright
pink top with the velcro fastenings that comes off in less than a second, too
much make-up and heels so high the arches of her feet are cramping already. She
feels, like she always does, as if she's an actress wearing a costume. Then she
remembers, like she always does, that this isn't an act. This is who she is.
"Cordy, sweetheart? You okay?" Val asks again.
The door of the apartment building is only half a block away but Cordelia
realizes with some embarrassment that she's already glanced over her shoulder a
dozen times or more.
"I'm fine. It's just -- you remember that guy I told you about? The one I
thought was following me?"
Val's eyes narrow. "Is he still doin' that? You should tell Frankie. He'd
get some of his guys to fix that real quick."
"No -- he's stopped. I haven't seen or heard anything in a couple of
weeks."
"Well, that's good, right?"
"Yeah, it's good," Cordelia agrees. Angel's kept his promise and his
distance, and Cordelia knows she should be relieved she's got one less problem
to deal with. But when she looks back over her shoulder, these nights, she
almost hopes to see his familiar shadow lurking close by, and she's a little
disappointed when he's not there. How screwed up must she be, she wonders, that
she misses being stalked by a schizo vampire? "I guess he got bored and
moved on to something else."
They've arrived at the bus stop; while they wait for the MTA number 302, Val
pulls a compact out of her bag and touches up her make-up in the streetlights'
neon glare. She's dabbing extra foundation around her eyes, Cordelia notices,
trying to cover up the blossom of blue- black left over from Frankie's last fit
of temper. Cordelia knows this is a bad sign -- Frankie's left his mark on all
the girls, at one time or another, but he's always been careful not to bruise
faces or breasts or places that might lose clients.
"Val, about Frankie --" Cordelia begins.
Val snaps her compact shut and smiles an old-timer's smile. "He'll get
bored and move on to something new, too, honey. They always do."
***
The first thing Cordelia notices is that the apartment is too quiet. With nine
girls sharing, there are always at least a couple of people about. Cordelia
doesn't think she's ever been alone while she's been living here.
Opportunism rapidly overtakes her surprise. For the next ten minutes, or half an
hour, Cordelia can walk from room to room, indulge a fantasy in which this is
her space and no one else's, where she has somehow regained the independence she
never knew was so precious until she lost it.
Cordelia stands in the middle of the living area, next to the battered couch,
halted by indecision. What should she do first? She could make herself a
sandwich, watch TV, read a magazine, take a shower --
A shower. She wants to take a shower, and then sit in the lounge with her hair
wrapped up in a towel and drink coffee made with milk and sugar, the way she
used to do on Sunday mornings when she was at high school.
Cordelia is humming to herself as she walks into the bathroom.
Val is there.
She's lying in the bath, legs and arms floating, buoyed by the water. Cordelia
almost apologizes for walking in on her.
Then she sees that the bath water is red, that Val's eyes are open and glassy,
and that the handle of the best kitchen knife -- the one Cordelia used to slice
the meatloaf she ate for dinner last night -- is jutting out of Val's chest,
just beneath her right breast.
Val stares up at Cordelia, her empty gaze asking for something that no one can
give her now. Somewhere on the floor below, a door slams, and the bath water
laps around Val's body, making her limbs sway in an obscene parody of life.
Val's body slips in the bathtub, and her head falls to one side. There's a dent
in the side of her skull, and her hair is a sticky mess of dark blood and
fragments of bone.
Cordelia turns around and walks out of the bathroom. She throws up, and then she
screams, and then she leaves.
***
Cordelia is banging on the door of the Hyperion so hard the glass is rattling in
the pane, and her hands are starting to bruise. It's the middle of the day, she
thinks desperately: he's a vampire. How the hell can he be out?
Changing tactics, she presses her face to the window, squinting as she tries to
see past the glare and the dirt-encrusted glass into the lobby. There's an
old-fashioned coat-rack beside the reception desk; the only item on it is a
black leather coat. He isn't out.
Cordelia starts banging the door again, until finally a blurred figure descends
the stairs. Angel is pulling a bathrobe around himself as he cautiously opens
the door, making sure he stands well back, out of the sunlight. He winces,
partly at the unaccustomed brightness and partly, no doubt, at the
unexpectedness of having a visitor. "Cordelia?"
"He killed her," Cordelia blurts. All the way here, that one phrase
has been playing over and over in her head, like a meditation mantra in reverse.
"He killed her. He killed her, and I can't do it anymore. I can't. He'll
kill me next."
"He --?" Angel steps
back, and Cordelia stumbles over the threshold and into the lobby's cool and
welcoming gloom. "What's happened?"
Cordelia dumps her worldly possessions -- the backpack that holds them is
pitifully small -- by the reception desk and sits down on a sofa which is
well-camouflaged beneath a grimy dust-sheet. "Frankie killed her, Angel. He
killed her. Who's he gonna kill next? He can replace any of us. We're
worthless."
She's crying as she says it, because she knows it's true. If she were the one
floating in that bathtub, would anyone care? Would anyone miss her?
Angel stands against the reception desk, his arms folded across his chest, and
listens in silence as Cordelia spills her story out in fits and starts. When she
begins to sob, he doesn't move to comfort her, or sit down beside her, or put
his arms around her. Instead he vanishes for a moment into the office behind the
desk, and when he returns he's carrying two glasses and a half-full bottle of
whiskey.
"Did you call the police?" he asks as he fills the first of the
glasses and hands it to Cordelia.
Cordelia wipes her eyes, blows her nose, and accepts the whiskey. It scours her
tongue and throat on the way down, but after a few seconds she feels a faint
warm glow begin to grow in the pit of her stomach. "Of course I
didn't."
Angel pours a drink for himself, his face thoughtful. "Is it possible
anyone saw you leaving? Could anyone have followed you?"
Cordelia thought until now that no one saw her entering or leaving the apartment
building -- but when she arrived, she wasn't on guard for trouble, and when she
left she was panicking and desperate. Suddenly she's not so sure. "I don't
-- I don't think so."
Angel doesn't appear to register the uncertainty in her tone or, if he does, he
dismisses it. "Then no one knows you're here. That's good."
Cordelia finishes her drink in two gulps. Angel drains the last drops of his,
puts down the empty glass, then vanishes into the office behind the reception
desk again. This time, when he returns he's carrying a blanket. He places it
around Cordelia's shoulders, barely touching her -- as if he thinks she's made
of spun glass, she thinks, as if he's afraid his touch might shatter her.
"You're safe here," he says as she curls up on the sofa, and the crazy
thing is, she believes him. Maybe it's just neat whiskey on an empty stomach, or
maybe it's the knowledge that for the first time since she came to this city,
someone else actually gives a damn about Cordelia's problems, but whatever the
reason, in less than a minute she is sleeping soundly.
***
But Frankie is everywhere, even in Cordelia's dreams; she twists and puts her
hands over her ears, but can't muffle his hoarse, high- pitched whine. "Go
away," she tells him sleepily. "Angel's gonna take care of you."
"You get religion, Cordy? That why you run away on me?"
Frankie sounds amused, patronizing, and close. Very close.
This is no dream. He's found her; he's here.
Cordelia jerks upright on the sofa, presses herself against the upholstered
backrest, as if retreat can help now. Frankie is leaning against the pillar by
the door, his squat, thick body relaxed. He has his hands in his pockets; the
sleeves of his white linen jacket are marginally too short, and the tattoos that
cover his arms down to his wrists peek out from under them. Frankie has cash,
but he's never had class, Cordelia thinks. He was never more than one step up
from trash.
Frankie pulls his hands from his pockets and saunters across the reception,
taking in his surroundings with curiosity. "Wow. Look at this place. Musta
been empty for years. How'd you know about it?"
Cordelia feels cold as she realizes how stupid and naïve she was to think she
could just walk away, unnoticed and unmissed. "You saw me leave. You
followed me."
Frankie shrugs. "Actually, one of my boys saw you. But I woulda found you
sooner or later, you know that."
The street outside is dark, and Cordelia realize she's been asleep for several
hours, at least. Over Frankie's shoulder, she can see that Angel's jacket is
gone from the coat-stand beside the door. Angel's jacket is gone, therefore
Angel is gone. She's alone with Frankie.
"You've come to kill me," she says. Her voice rings hollowly in the
suddenly cavernous lobby.
Frankie looks genuinely amused. "Jesus, baby, no. Why would I do
that?"
"You killed Val."
"Val had an accident," Frankie says. "We're all real sad about
it. I'm upset, the girls are upset -- you're upset too. That's why you went off
by yourself. But all you gotta do is come back now, with me, and we'll forget it
ever happened. How does that sound?"
"You couldn't risk it," Cordelia says. "That I'd go to cops, tell
them everything --"
Frankie smiles. "You could tell 'em anything you liked, baby. But the other
girls will all swear they didn't see nothin'. I already got an alibi that's
tighter than a five year old's pussy. And by morning there won't be a body,
either. Give it up, Cor. Come home."
Cordelia swallows, half chokes. Incapable of speaking, she shakes her head,
Frankie spreads his hands in a placatory gesture. "What? Are you scared?
I'd never hurt you, Cor. You're one of my best girls. You've got class. There's
at least twenty guys won't even look at any of my other girls."
At that, Cordelia does start to cry, finally feeling the one emotion she's
fought against so hard and for so long: despair. Because, for a few brief
seconds, she thought she could be a threat to Frankie. But she can't threaten
him and he has no need to threaten her. You don't threaten a chair, she thinks,
you just sit on it. He'll sit on her like he sat on Val, and if, one day, she
breaks, he'll shrug and get himself a new chair. And there's no escape; no way
out. There never was.
"Come with me, baby," Frankie says, and holds out his hand.
Cordelia takes a step toward him.
Then, from behind her, Angel's voice. "Do you want to go with him?"
When Cordelia looks around, Angel is standing in an open door at the back of the
lobby. She hadn't noticed it -- or him -- until now. The steps behind him seem
to lead up from the basement.
Frankie's equable manner shifts suddenly to irritation. "The fuck are
you?"
Angel ignores him. Looking at Cordelia, he repeats, "Do you want to go with
him?"
Cordelia looks back at Angel. Then at Frankie. "No."
Angel doesn't break away from her gaze as he says, "While you're here, you
don't have to do anything you don't want to."
"I don't know who you think you are, but this is none of your fucking
business, man."
Angel finally looks at Frankie. "You're wrong about that in two important
respects. Firstly, this is my business and, secondly -- I'm not a man."
Angel vamps out and makes a sound that's more like the guttural snarl of a wild
animal than anything that should come from a human throat. Frankie doesn't have
time to do more than stare before Angel takes hold of him by the lapels of his
nasty white jacket. Angel lifts Frankie's two-hundred-and-fifty-pounds-or-more
mass and hooks the jacket's collar over a brass light fixture set into the wall.
Frankie hangs suspended by his shirt collar, legs kicking helplessly against the
air. His hands scrabble at his throat as he tries to undo the top button, but
the collar is cutting so deeply into the excess flesh under his chin that he
doesn't have a hope in hell. His face is slowly turning puce, and the look on it
is one Cordelia's never seen there before. Frankie's terrified.
Angel stands back and watches Frankie's futile efforts dispassionately. His
voice, when he speaks, is calm. More than calm, it's toneless, almost entirely
empty of emotion. "Do you know what I am?"
Frankie can barely draw enough breath to speak. "Shit, oh, shit. Jesus and
Mary -- You're a -- fucking --
MONSTER --"
"That's right. And you know what monsters do to people, don't you?"
"Oh, God. Oh, God," Frankie whispers. As Cordelia watches, a dark
patch appears on his pants around his crotch. Liquid trickles off the bottom of
his shoe and on to the carpet.
"Cordelia," Angel says quietly, without turning around. "What do
you want me to do with him?"
Cordelia can't speak. She can't breathe. Her heart's thudding so hard inside her
ribcage she can't even think. She knows what Angel's offering her; knows how
easy it would be to accept.
"You don't have to stay to watch," Angel says. "Not unless you
want to."
Cordelia thinks of Val or, more accurately, of Val's body, naked and limp. The
worst thing about her death -- in a strange way, almost worse than the fact that
Frankie murdered her -- was that it was squalid and cheap, and utterly without
dignity. She looks at Frankie.
"Angel," she says softly, "Just -- let him go. Okay?"
Angel hesitates. Then he reaches up and with one hand -- Cordelia knew he was
strong, but she never realized how strong -- lifts Frankie down. As soon as
Angel removes his support, Frankie collapses on to the floor, a blubbering,
wheezing mess. For the first time since she became one of his girls, Cordelia
realizes she isn't frightened of him.
"Get up," Angel says. When Frankie doesn't move, he reaches down,
grabs his shoulders and hauls him to his feet. "I said, GET UP." Angel
pulls Frankie toward himself, so they're nose to nose. Cordelia can't see
Angel's face, but she can see the effect it's having on Frankie. His voice quiet
again, Angel says, "You're gonna get up now and walk out of here. If you
come back, I'll kill you. If I see you again, I'll kill you. If Cordelia even
thinks she sees you again, I'll find you and kill you."
Frankie's openly weeping now. "You won't -- you won't see me again."
"Go."
Frankie doesn't need to be told again. He gets up and half-falls, half-runs
toward the door. He's fumbling, trying to get it open, when Angel calls out to
him, "Hey, Frankie."
Frankie looks around slowly. Cordelia wonders if he's ever been frightened
before. Really frightened.
"You're lucky she's better than either of us," Angel says quietly.
"Goodbye, Frankie," Cordelia says.
Then she watches her pimp stumble out of the hotel, and out of her life.
Angel doesn't move for a long time. When he does turn around, his face is human
again, although Cordelia thinks she can still detect traces of yellow in his
eyes. "If you change your mind, I can go after him," he says,
matter-of-factly.
Cordelia takes a breath and says, "What -- what am I gonna do now?"
She doesn't know why she's asking Angel -- if she doesn't know, there's no good
reason why he should -- but he's the only person here she can ask.
"Whatever you want," Angel says.
She can do what she wants. It's been so long since Cordelia had choices or
options that the concept is almost too immense, too wonderful to grasp. Ever
since she came to L.A., her life's path has narrowed, branch routes becoming
less frequent and desirable, until finally she found herself on a narrow dirt
track, stumbling toward a dead end. And now, suddenly, amazingly, she's back on
the highway, limited by nothing except the distant horizons.
"Cordelia?" For the first time, there's something other than dull
anger or raw fury in Angel's tone. He sounds concerned. "Are you
okay?"
Cordelia wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand. "I'm okay." She
looks at Angel and smiles at him; to her immense surprise, he smiles back.
"It's just -- he owned the place I was living -- I can't go back and I
don't know -- "
"Stay here," Angel says. "For tonight, anyway."
It's a bad idea, Cordelia's sure, to jump straight from being controlled by one
man to depending on the protection of another. And the switch from pimp to
vampire isn't exactly a step up. But she's tired, more exhausted than she's ever
been in her life; she has no money and no place to go, and the only real
alternatives she has to staying at the hotel are a homeless shelter or a
doorway.
She wants a bed, with sheets and a pillow and a mattress under her. It doesn't
seem like too much to ask.
"Okay," she says.
***
Angel leads her to the same room she slept in that night almost two months ago.
But it's changed since then -- there are clean sheets on the bed, and the boxes
of junk that cluttered the floorspace are gone. Cordelia wonders if Angel has
been expecting her return, or hoping for it.
She lies in the bed she wanted so much, and stares up at the ceiling, watching
the lights of cars passing on the street below bend the shadows into strange
shapes. She can hear Angel moving about, in the lobby, on the landing outside
her room, doing whatever it is that vampires who live alone do all night.
Two o'clock. Three o'clock.
She should feel safer, she thinks, knowing he's there, but somehow she doesn't.
Every time his footsteps approach her room, she tenses, expecting the door to
open.
Four o'clock.
Angel said she could stay; he said she'd be safe here, with him. A part of
Cordelia -- the old part, left over from the girl she was when she came to L.A.
-- wants to believe it could be that simple. But that's the attitude that got
her where she is now, and she's not going to accept anyone's charity again, now
that she knows charity has a price.
Angel saved her tonight -- again -- which means she owes him, again. That's how
it works. If she stays here, Angel will protect her, sure, but he'll want
something in return.
And maybe, Cordelia reasons as she lies alone and cold in the bed, that's a fair
exchange. Back in Sunnydale, Cordelia thought -- when she thought about it at
all -- that sex was enough to trigger the escape clause of Angel's curse. Now,
she recognizes that belief for what it was: naïve and adolescent. Sex isn't
rainbows and violins and a single, searing moment of bliss. It's insert tab A
into slot B, grab and grunt then do it all again for the next guy. If all Angel
wants from Cordelia, in exchange for his protection, is a little physical
relief, well, she can live with that.
By five o'clock, Cordelia has made up her mind.
Angel looks up, surprised, as she walks unannounced into his room. He's sitting
up in the bed, an open book propped against his knees, modesty preserved by a
sheet pulled up to his waist, and nothing more. "Hi."
Cordelia sits down on the end of the bed. "I wanted to say thanks for what
you did for me tonight."
Angel doesn't move; the book he's reading remains open in front of him.
"That's okay."
"I'm very grateful."
"That's okay," Angel says again. He looks uncomfortable. "Cordelia
--"
"Do you remember the first night I was here?" Cordelia asks.
Angel hesitates. "Yes. I remember it."
Quickly, Cordelia leans forward, so her body is on top of his. She pushes the
book down and kisses him, cutting off whatever he was going to say. Angel
doesn't respond, but he doesn't push her away either.
Cordelia pulls back. She wets her finger, and draws it slowly down Angel's
chest. "Do you think about it a lot?"
Angel closes his eyes, tips his head back, exposing his throat. Cordelia leans
in and brushes her lips, then her tongue, over his Adam's Apple, working down
into the hollow just above his breast bone. The noise he makes in response is
something like a low growl, and Cordelia thinks she should have guessed this
before. Of course vampires have a thing about necks.
"All the time," Angel whispers. "I think about it all the
time."
Slowly, Cordelia works one hand under the sheets, using the other to balance
herself while she continues to kiss and lick Angel's neck. She hears a thump as
the book he was reading falls off the edge of the bed and on to the floor,
forgotten.
Her fingers stroke his stomach, then the tops of his thighs. At the same time as
her hands find his cock, her mouth reaches the side of his neck, where the pulse
would be in a human. Cordelia makes an informed guess, and gently nips his skin
with her teeth at the same time as she starts to work him underneath the sheets.
The result is immediate: Angel gives a small wordless cry and pulls her closer
to him, so that their bodies are locked together.
Cordelia raises her head long enough to whisper in his ear. "Look after
me," she says, "and I'll look after you. Deal?"
She goes back to kissing his neck, but Angel's eyes snap open as he sits up and
pushes her off him. He pushes her so hard that Cordelia almost falls over the
side of the bed. "Hey!"
"Do you want to do this?" Angel asks.
Cordelia's used to telling her clients what they want to hear. "I wouldn't
have come in here if I didn't."
"You didn't want to go with Frankie tonight," Angel says, "but
you would have gone."
"I didn't have a choice."
"You do now," Angel says. "You don't have to do anything you
don't want to."
Cordelia used to want a lot of things. A cute and devoted boyfriend, a great
career, a black American Express card and those new Gucci loafers and Hermes
bag. Now all she wants is to be safe, and she's stopped caring what she has to
do to feel that way.
"Oh, God," she says. "Oh, God. I'm a prostitute."
Angel shakes his head, and looks confused. "I know. But you don't have to
be, now. Frankie's gone."
"I don't need Frankie. I'm my own pimp." The look of bewilderment on
Angel's face deepens, and she can see he doesn't understand. Haltingly, she
tries to explain. "You saved me and you made me feel safe, and I want to
stay safe and the only thing I've got to give in return is sex. It's supposed to
mean something and I can't tell anymore if it does or not." She swallows
back her tears. "I always told myself -- even if I worked as a hooker, that
wasn't me. It wasn't who I was, underneath. I'm scared -- I'm scared I'm
different, now. I'm a whore. I'll always be a whore."
"Cordelia, I think -- I think you should go now. Please."
Cordelia swings her legs off the bed and stands up. The bitter taste in her
mouth as she makes her way to the door isn't just tears. "Right. Because if
I stay any longer, I might try to jump your bones again. And we couldn't risk
that happening."
She's in the hallway outside his room, about to pull the door shut, when he
says, "You're not a whore. I've known whores, and you're not one."
Cordelia doesn't reply. She closes the door behind her, and goes back to her
room, and her empty bed.
***
III
"Cordelia."
Cordelia's hand is on the hotel's front door, about to push it open, when
Angel's voice makes her stop. It isn't ten a.m., yet, and she hoped that by
leaving this early, she wouldn't have to see him again.
She counts to ten silently, then turns around and tries to act natural.
"Hey, good morning. Thanks for everything, but I gotta run. Busy, busy, you
know?"
She gives him her perkiest, most upbeat smile, as if her diary is full of
exciting appointments and lists of things to do and she has to hurry if she's
going to squeeze everything in. She isn't fooling anyone. Angel's frowning as he
says, "Do you have somewhere to go?"
Cordelia figures Angel knows enough about her life by now to make lying a
pointless exercise. "No. But I'll work something out. It's not your
problem."
Slowly, Angel says, "When I said you could stay here, I meant, for as long
as you needed to."
"I don't have any money. I can't pay rent. So, thanks for the offer, but I
can't do that."
It has nothing to do with cash, but there's no doubt in Cordelia's mind that
Angel knows just what she's talking about. The discomfited look he's wearing,
the awkward way he's standing too far away from her -- these details tell
Cordelia more than enough.
"You need to earn your way," Angel says suddenly. "I understand
that. Maybe -- maybe there's another solution. You could work for me."
Cordelia stares at him, and he pulls a small white card from his pocket and
hands it to her. He seems almost embarrassed as he tells her, "I have a
kind of business."
"Angel Investigations," Cordelia reads out loud. She looks up at Angel
in disbelief. "You're a P.I.?"
Angel shuffles on the spot. "Yes. In a way. I mean -- that's the
idea."
Cordelia takes in the dust sheets in the hotel's lobby, the non- ringing
telephone on the reception desk, the lack of filing cabinets or employees or,
indeed, any evidence of productive, income- generating activity taking place in
Angel's immediate vicinity.
Clearly, he needs help.
"I could file things," she says.
Angel seizes on the suggestion and runs with it. "Yes. Absolutely. I've
been thinking lately -- I really need someone to file. To file --
things," he clarifies. "So, you'll stay?"
Cordelia doesn't answer immediately. This is Angel, who saved her life at least
a couple of times in Sunnydale, who came between her and Sugar Ray's knife, and
to whom she owes her brand-new, Frankie- free future. But this is also Angel,
who followed her at a distance without showing his face for six weeks, who is
responsible for the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of people Cordelia
never knew and several she did.
There's a lot, she reminds herself, that she doesn't know about him.
But Angel is less of a stranger to her than any of the gray faced people who
walked past her and looked away while she was working the streets. And
sometimes, Cordelia figures, better the devil you know.
"What do you want me to do
first?"
***
Cordelia learns more about Angel than she expects to, and sooner than she
expects to learn it. She's been living at the hotel for less than a week when
she finds out about the visions.
She's on her hands and knees at the bottom of the stairs, polishing the last of
the thirty-six brass rails that hold down the stair carpet. It's taken her all
morning, but the effort has been worth it - - when she started, the rails were
so dull they were barely visible, but now they gleam attractively, the way they
must have done back in the days when the Hyperion had a small army of cleaners
and domestic staff. Cordelia is just one person, but she intends to make her
presence felt.
She straightens up and admires the rails, and the other changes she's been
making since she moved in. The dust-sheets are gone; the lobby furniture has
come out from hiding, a little musty but in surprisingly good condition. Red
velvet upholstery and the newly- polished reception desk (Tuesday's task of the
day) show that the hotel's class never really went away. It was just well
hidden.
Cordelia likes the Hyperion already.
She's trying to decide whether her next priority should be to clean the windows
or beat the dust from the rugs when Angel comes downstairs. He looks grouchy,
she thinks, and wonders if that's because he's changing his routine to
accommodate her -- already she's noticed he's getting up in earlier in the
afternoons.
"Hey, Angel, check out the stair rails. Isn't that a one hundred per cent
improvement?"
Angel grunts a reply that sounds less than enthusiastic, and walks straight past
Cordelia and into the office behind the reception desk. He returns with the
whiskey bottle and a single glass. When he's bolted back his third straight
shot, Cordelia starts to feel a little concerned.
"Uhh, Angel? Technically, it's the afternoon, but since you only just got
up it's really kind of morning for you, and do you think it's a good idea to
start drinking before you have breakfast?" Cordelia thinks that through,
and frowns. "Although for you, breakfast would also involve drinking, so --
"
Before she can finish the sentence, Angel gives a cry of pain, and collapses.
Cordelia's on her feet in an instant, rushing around the side of the desk to
find him writhing -- she's never seen anyone actually writhe before -- on the
floor. His limbs are thrashing uncontrollably; there's no way she can restrain
him, and all she can do is stand back and wait until the fit, or whatever the
hell it is, is over.
It seems to go on forever. When it's finally finished, Angel stays on the floor,
eyes closed. He's lying as limp and still as an overdose victim, and is about
the same color.
Cautiously, she inches toward him, and says his name. When this produces no
immediate response, Cordelia kneels down at his side, puts her hand on his
shoulder, and rolls him over. He tumbles on to his back, face up. His eyes are
open, but blank and distant; Cordelia is reminded of the way he was when she
found him crouching naked in the bathroom on that first night.
Then she remembers what he said. About not being able to tell what was real.
"Angel," Cordelia says firmly. She grips him by his arms and pulls him
into a sitting position. "Angel, listen to me."
He looks at her like he's never seen her before. "Who --?"
"I'm Cordelia, remember? I'm real. This is real. I'm telling you what's
real."
"You're real," Angel says. He repeats it: "You're real. This is
real. Oh, God --" He squeezes his eyes shut again.
"What? What is it?"
"Drink," Angel whispers. "Get me a drink."
Sensing that right now would be a very bad time to say no to him, Cordelia
retrieves the glass from where it rolled to when he dropped it, and fills it to
the brim with cheap whiskey. His hands are shaking so hard she has to hold it to
his mouth while he drinks.
"Is this gonna help?" she asks doubtfully.
"Helped Doyle," he says between gulps.
The whiskey gone, Cordelia sits back on her heels, and appraises him critically.
"Are you on drugs?"
"What? No."
"Then what?" Angel is silent for a long time, but his gaze is growing
more alert, and it seems to Cordelia that the effort he's making to focus on
talking to her is bringing him out of the weird fugue state he seemed to be in.
"Angel, talk to me."
"I -- saw --"
He squeezes his eyes shut. Carefully, Cordelia asks, "What did you
see?"
"A gang of vampires. Near Union Station. Killing a man."
"You mean you had an hallucination?"
"A vision," Angel says. "But more than that. There's noise, and
-- pain --"
Slowly, Cordelia starts to understand. "What you saw was real."
"Not saw," Angel corrects. "Felt. I feel them -- everything --
the pain -- but more than that -- the terror -- I thought I knew, but I didn't
--"
He's becoming less coherent again, and Cordelia tries to think of a way to keep
him lucid. She asks the first direct question she thinks of: "Who's
Doyle?"
"Who told you about Doyle?"
Patiently, Cordelia says, "You said a name. Doyle. Just now."
For a second, Angel's face clouds with a grief so deep Cordelia's afraid she's
only pushed him deeper into himself. But he answers her.
"The visions were his -- gift, curse, I don't know. I thought they were
giving me a mission -- to make things right." Angel shakes his head
bitterly. "The last thing he ever said was that I didn't know what I was
asking for. And I thought I did, but it's too much and I can't tell what's real
anymore --" He breaks off, and when he speaks again, his voice is barely a
whisper. "It was never a mission; they meant to punish me. They wanted me
to know what it feels like to be a victim. Over and over and over --"
Cordelia doesn't understand everything, but she thinks she understands enough.
Suddenly, she remembers how Angel appeared just as Sugar Ray turned on her; how
he'd been so flatly certain about what Ray intended to do to her.
"You saw me, didn't you. You had a vision of Ray attacking me, and you came
to stop it."
Angel nods. He sees the future, Cordelia realizes, and then has to stop it
happening. Cordelia still wakes up sweating at the thought of what Sugar Ray
wanted to do to her; Angel, she realizes, experienced her rape and murder first
hand. The way she would have if he hadn't been there.
That's not punishment, she thinks. It's torture.
"The vampire attack at the station -- has that happened yet?"
Angel shakes his head. "Tonight. After dusk." He smiles without humor.
"They don't send me ones I can't change."
"But you can change them. You can change people's lives. You changed
mine." Cordelia starts to help Angel to stand up. "I think we should
go out tonight. I hear the station's nice after dark."
***
In time, Cordelia learns other things about Angel.
A week after Angel reduces the Union Station vampire gang to a large pile of
dust, another vision leads to a small horde of Velga demons (big claws, bad
breath) living in the subway tunnels and preying on hapless commuters. Angel
suffers a gash on his back that he can't reach, and Cordelia dresses it. Her
gaze lingers on the tattoo on his right shoulder blade, some kind of winged
creature, holding an 'A' in its talons. She's curious, but she doesn't say
anything, just hands him his shirt and watches the intricate pattern of blue and
red disappear underneath a layer of dark cotton.
She discovers Angel gets cranky -- although he won't admit it -- if he doesn't
have at least three glasses of blood and five hours sleep a day, so she makes
sure he gets both. The first morning of her first period since she moved into
the hotel, Cordelia looks at the smudge of blood in her panties and wonders
whether staying in her room until it's over is an option. It isn't, and the next
four days are strained -- Angel stands either much too close to her or
unnaturally far away -- but on the fifth day, he visibly relaxes again. Cordelia
thinks it won't be so tough next time, for either of them, but she takes the
precaution of sealing her used Tampax in plastic bags and walking five blocks to
a dumpster outside an apartment building to dispose of them.
On the day she makes cheese and crackers for lunch, and finds Angel polishing
off the leftovers, she finds out that he can eat as well as drink. He has no
appetite for the way food tastes -- he says it's like forcing yourself to eat
when you're not hungry -- but sometimes he craves textures, wants to bite and
chew. Dry, crunchy things are a particular favorite, and now Cordelia always
adds a packet of crackers or potato chips to her grocery basket. Celery for a
treat.
She learns he will let her tell him what to do, up to a point, and where that
point falls; she learns how to draw him out of himself when he gets moody; she
learns he likes old Charlton Heston and new Jet Li movies, that he's good at
cards but terrible at board games, that he has no idea about money, that he
speaks fluent French but can't ride a bicycle.
She learns that she likes Angel because he is Angel, and that's the most
surprising discovery of all.
***
Sometimes Cordelia thinks she's like a wind-up toy -- those chattering teeth,
maybe, the ones that hop on little feet across a table top. She was wound up
over and over again, springs always coiled tight, never at rest. Now, finally,
she's stopped, and she doesn't know when she'll want to be wound up again, or if
she ever will.
In the first weeks after she moved into the hotel, Cordelia scoured the
neighborhood second-hand and charity shops and bought herself a new wardrobe.
She chose long-sleeved tops, high necks, loose pants and ankle-length skirts,
clothes that cover up as much flesh as her working wardrobe used to expose.
She spends her days weeding and painting and cleaning, face bare of make-up,
fingernails broken, the curves of her hips and breasts hidden beneath sloppy T
shirts and baggy sweat pants. She works hard, until she is physically worn out,
and collapses into bed every night in exhaustion and the knowledge that she has
earned her rest.
She showers two and sometimes three times a day. It's a habit she picked up from
Frankie's other girls, when she was living with them; there was always someone
in the apartment's cramped bathroom, scrubbing off a stranger's odor and stains,
and the creak of the hot water pipes was a constant element of the background
noise. Cordelia washes herself efficiently, scrubbing between her legs without
ever glancing down there. She's turned the mirror in her room at the Hyperion
toward the wall so she can get dried and dressed without having to look at
herself.
She doesn't think about sex and, when she does, she feels sick. She's stopped
reading Cosmo and Marie Claire; she flips to another station if a couple in a TV
show so much as kiss.
Maybe, she thinks, everyone begins their lives with a kind of sex quota, and
she's used up all of hers by twenty one. She imagines herself living the rest of
her life in a bubble, isolated from all invasive physical contact. She finds
this idea comforting rather than upsetting. She can't imagine she'll ever want
to be touched by anyone again.
The only exception she makes is for Angel.
Often, after the visions, he folds his arms around her and then just holds her
for anything from a minute to half an hour. Cordelia thinks that holding on to a
warm, living person, a real person, helps him pull himself back from the cold,
dark places the visions send him to. She tolerates his embrace, but the knots of
tension that form between her shoulder blades don't relax until hours after he's
recovered enough to let go of her. She's glad he seems to sense how she feels,
and that he only reaches out to her after the visions; the rest of the time, he
takes pains to avoid so much as brushing the sleeve of his jacket against her
arm as he walks at her side.
They haven't spoken again about what happened the night Frankie came looking for
Cordelia, and Cordelia thinks it's better that way. She knows where the
boundaries between her and Angel lie, and she's beginning to trust that he won't
cross them any more than she will.
The tacit mutual understanding she and Angel have reached is working, so far,
and Cordelia can live with that.
***
It's a sunny afternoon, and Cordelia is surprised to return from a trip to the
grocery store to find Angel in the Hyperion's courtyard, sheltering from the
daylight underneath the awning. "I didn't think you went in for
tanning," she says, setting down her bags.
"I got locked out."
Cordelia looks pointedly at the open door right behind him. Angel shrugs, and
puts out a hand -- at the threshold, he is blocked by an invisible, and
apparently solid, barrier.
"If anybody asks, you can tell them you started thinking of this place as
home at twenty past two on a Thursday afternoon in September." Angel looks
around. "The courtyard looks great, by the way. Have you been weeding out
here?"
"Some," Cordelia acknowledges. "So, you're gonna need --"
Angel nods. "An invitation, yes."
Cordelia picks up her bags again and walks past him, into the hotel. "Come
in," she says, and thinks how strange it is to have to invite Angel into
his own home. But it is her home, too, even if the weird paranormal forces that
keep the universe ticking along realized it before Cordelia did. Looking around
the lobby, Cordelia sees evidence of her presence, and her hard work,
everywhere. She's in the gleaming brass rails on the stairs, the shining
banisters, the newly painted walls and the rugs placed strategically to hide the
patches where the carpet is worn. She thinks of the whole hotel as her home, not
just her room on the second floor. Or, at least, she has since twenty past two
this afternoon.
"Sorry about that," she says to Angel. "Is there etiquette for
this kind of thing? There oughtta be."
"Not that I ever heard about." Angel is rummaging through her
groceries. "Did you get any celery?"
***
A week later, Cordelia shares Angel's bed for the first time since the night
Sugar Ray attacked her.
A little before eleven, she says goodnight to Angel and goes upstairs. She falls
asleep almost straight away. Just after five, she wakes up with a start. A low,
keening wail is echoing through the hotel's empty hallways. It sounds as eerie
as it did the first night Cordelia was ever in the Hyperion. The difference is,
now she knows what it is.
Vision.
She gets up and pulls on her robe over the loose T-shirt and drawstring pants
she sleeps in, and pads barefoot down the hallway to Angel's room. She stands
shivering in the drafty hallway for several minutes before deciding what to do
next. Cordelia hasn't been in Angel's bedroom since the night Frankie came
looking for her, the night she offered herself to him and he asked her to leave.
She knocks on the door. "Angel? Angel, it's me. You okay?"
There's no answer, except the desolate lament of a soul in pain. Cordelia ties
her robe tighter around herself, opens the door and goes in.
Angel's crouching in the far corner of the bedroom, rocking forward and backward
on his heels, clad in boxers and a T shirt (that first night, he was sleeping
naked. Has he changed that on Cordelia's account, too?) His face is twisted in
confusion and distress, and he doesn't seem to recognize Cordelia immediately.
The first time she saw him this way she was freaked; now, she knows exactly what
to do.
Cordelia lifts a notepad and pencil from where they sit on the table by the
door, and crouches down beside him. "Angel," she says clearly.
"It's me, Cordelia. You were asleep; you had a vision. You're awake
now."
"Chinatown," Angel says. His voice is shaking; she can tell it's an
effort for him to force the words out. "North Broadway. Claws and scales
and fire -- a dragon -- someone -- conjuring -- oh, God, a restaurant, they
can't get out -- they're all burning --"
"Angel, this is important. Has it happened yet? When is it gonna
happen?"
Angel squeezes his eyes shut. "Full moon. Full moon."
Cordelia relaxes -- that gives them a couple of days, at least. She scrawls the
salient points down on the notepad and sets it to one side.
"Are you real?" Angel asks. "Is this real?"
"I'm real," she tells him. "You're back, now. This is real."
Angel reaches for her; Cordelia tenses as he puts his arms around her, but she
doesn't push him away. She can feel him trembling against her. She hasn't seen
him this deeply shaken since the night she spent at the hotel after Sugar Ray
attacked her -- he must have had a vision that night while he slept, too.
Cordelia makes hushing noises and pats him on the back. "I guess it's even
worse getting one of those things mainlined into your head when you're asleep,
huh? Vision plus dreams plus memories equals mucho confusion. Must be pretty
bad."
"Pretty bad," Angel echoes.
Cordelia stands up, pulling him with her, and leads him back to his rumpled bed.
When she tries to make him lie down, he won't let go of her. "Don't go.
Please."
He looks exactly the way he did the first time he said those words to her,
fragile and desperate. Cordelia remembers that first night, and thinks how far
they've come since then. How much better she knows Angel now; how much better he
knows her.
"I'm not going anywhere," she tells him, and climbs into the bed
beside him.
He makes a small, relieved sound and turns on his side, his arm over her body, a
strange mixture of restraint and protection. She'll stay until he falls asleep
again, Cordelia decides, and then she'll go back to her own room.
But by the time Angel is still and relaxed beside her, Cordelia is warm and
comfortable and half-asleep herself. Angel is lying against her; she can feel
his weight on her back, her hips, her thighs. She'd know if he were hard for
her, and he isn't. This sensation -- touching for comfort, not desire -- is
entirely new, and Cordelia decides she likes it. Except for one thing.
"Angel."
"Hmmm?"
"You're crushing me, move your arm."
"Mmmm."
The last knots of tension in the muscles of her neck dissolve, and Cordelia
drifts into sleep.
***
Cordelia still has several showers a day, but she's started taking baths as well
-- two or three times a week, she fills the tub to the brim with water as hot as
she can stand and soaks until her fingers and toes wrinkle. She likes to take
this time to think -- about what she's going to do tomorrow (finish weeding the
courtyard, start clearing out the junk in the basement), about what she might do
next year, about Angel. Lately, she thinks more and more about Angel.
She thinks about the way his back feels under her fingers when she bandages him
after he's fought vampires or demons. She thinks about the tattoo on his
shoulder blade. She thinks about the way his body feels next to her as he
sleeps, solid, like a wall protecting her. She thinks about the way he holds on
to her after the visions, like he's afraid he won't be able to find her again if
he lets go.
One night, in the tub, these kinds of thoughts about Angel make Cordelia slip
her hand between her legs, under the water's surface. Gently, she touches
herself, there and there, and there. She closes her eyes and imagines he is
caressing her. She comes with a tiny gasp and a spasm of pleasure that makes the
water ripple around her.
She thinks, maybe, she's ready to be touched again.
***
"His name was Cameron," Cordelia says.
She's lying on her side in Angel's bed; he's behind her, not- breathing against
her neck. Tonight's vision was particularly vivid, and Angel is holding on to
Cordelia more tightly than usual. He wants to talk -- or, more accurately, to be
talked to.
Cordelia has told him how she thinks they ought to tackle the damp problem in
the basement, has reminisced about Sunnydale without mentioning Buffy's name and
now, running out of things to say, she finds herself saying things she didn't
mean to share. But Angel's listening and, now she's begun, she finds she can't
stop.
"I met him at that party. The same one I met you at. You remember?"
His voice is muffled. "I remember."
"He was an agent. He was smart and funny and sophisticated, and he acted
like I'd be doing him a favor if I let him represent me. He told me I was
special. And I wanted so much to be special."
She blinks hard, remembering how she hadn't doubted for a moment what Cameron
told her. Of course she was special. She was Cordelia Chase.
"Anyway. I made a tape for him, and he said I was the next Julia Roberts.
He took me to dinner, and he was so good to me --" Cordelia exhales.
"I moved in with him. I had auditions, and he bought me things, and it was
great, for a while. But he had this friend, this TV producer. Cameron said his
friend needed a date to take to some industry party. He said it'd be good for
me, I'd make contacts. So I did it. And then, a month later, there was another
friend who needed a date. Then another. The fourth time, the guy didn't just
want someone on his arm."
Angel doesn't say anything, but he holds Cordelia more tightly.
"I didn't like it. But I figured, everybody does this. If you want to get
on, you gotta play the game, right? I thought I could play it better than anyone
else, but I couldn't. Cameron set me up with another of his friends for the
Emmys. This friend got drunk and when he took me back to the hotel room --"
Angel's bed, which was cold when Cordelia slid between the blankets beside him,
is slowly warming. Cordelia concentrates on how cozy she feels her, how safe. It
makes it easier to tell the story. "It wouldn't stand up in court, I guess.
I mean, he didn't make me go back to his room, and I didn't say no until it was
too late… But I did say no. I said no and I meant it. You believe that,
right?"
She feels Angel's nod; his nose rubs behind her ear.
"I told Cameron. I figured he'd be furious, and he was. He was furious with
me, for making trouble. So I left."
"You did the right thing."
In the dark, Cordelia smiles sourly. "That's what I told myself while I was
waiting tables all day and spending all night in the one-room hole I had to rent
after I moved out of his place. I used to look forward to Val coming in to the
diner so much. I mean, I could tell from her clothes what she was, but she
always smiled when she saw me. She was nice, she wasn't a bad person, and she
talked to me. I missed talking to people. I never knew being lonely could
actually hurt, like something sticking into your chest, all the time."
Very quietly, Angel says, "I know."
"Even then, I was so sure I could make it on my own, but to get in the door
you need to live the life -- the parties and the clothes and the jewelry -- and
you can't do that when you're earning ten bucks an hour." Cordelia shakes
her head. "I never had to worry about bills, before. And then, suddenly, I
didn't know how I was gonna pay the rent, or eat, and I was so scared of ending
up on the street -- so when Val said I could stay with her -- it was only gonna
be for a little while, until I was back on my feet, and I promised myself I'd
only do it as long as I absolutely had to, and -- "
Cordelia's voice is starting to shake. She knows how this sounds. "You know
what it was like? It was like, the day I arrived in L.A, someone started cutting
slices off me. Just little slices, really thin, like parma ham. So with every
slice, there was a little less of me, but I thought it was okay, because I was
still mostly there. By the time I finally realized what was happening, it was
too late. I was sliced so thin the light shone right through me." Cordelia
makes a sound half-way between a sob and a bitter chuckle. "I was so
stupid, Angel. I thought I was so smart, but I wasn't. I was dumb."
Anyone else, Cordelia thinks, would say something banal right now like, 'It's
okay' or 'It wasn't your fault'. Angel doesn't, and Cordelia is grateful.
Instead, he says, "You want to hear about the most stupid thing I ever
did?"
Cordelia swallows, and concentrates on keeping her voice steady. "Hit
me."
"I met a girl in a tavern. She took me out into the alley and said she
could take me places and show me things I couldn't imagine. And I asked her to
show me her world."
Cordelia tries to imagine Angel, with old-fashioned clothes and old- fashioned
hair, gasping his last living breaths in a dark alleyway that was probably
knocked down and built over generations ago. It's not fair, she thinks. It's not
fair that so much -- the course of lives -- depends on such tiny decisions. Like
who to talk to at a party. Which pretty girl to buy a drink for.
"Angel? Can I ask you something?"
"Mmmm."
"Do you believe in fate? I mean, do you think the choices we make send us
spinning off in new directions all the time? Or do we wind up in the same place,
no matter what we do?" He's been around a lot longer than she has, Cordelia
figures: maybe he knows more about this kind of thing.
Slowly, Angel says, "The visions show things that should happen. But if we
step in, change things, I guess that means everything is mutable. Paths aren't
set."
That's not what Cordelia wanted to hear. "It could have been different. If
I'd been luckier, or smarter --"
Angel moves the hand he's resting on her hip up to her mouth. Gently, he lays a
finger across her lips. "Before you came, I was -- losing myself. It was
getting to where I couldn't tell the difference between the visions and reality.
Now, when I see you, I know what's real. I'm sorry for the path you had to take
to get here, Cordelia. But I can't be sorry you're here."
For a few seconds after Angel falls silent, Cordelia lies perfectly still beside
him. She isn't even breathing. Then she makes her decision.
She rolls over, so she's lying nose to nose with Angel. In the dimness, she sees
him blink in surprise -- this is something new. Cordelia places her mouth on his
and kisses him.
For a second, he doesn't respond. Then he begins to kiss her back, mouth
pressing hungrily against hers. Cordelia extends her tongue into his mouth,
experiencing his taste, exploring his lips and the jagged line of his teeth. She
feels a surge of raw joy as she realizes that no matter how long they kiss, how
deeply, it won't be enough; she wants Angel; she wants to touch him and let him
touch her. Cordelia didn't think she could ever want that again; she feels as if
something glacial is thawing inside her, melt-water filling dry stream beds and
running down into parched valleys.
Then Angel pushes himself away from her and gets out of the bed. He tries to
stand up, but he's still a little disoriented from the vision and he ends up
sitting down again on the edge of the mattress, facing away from her.
Cordelia pushes herself up -- the mattress's old springs creak under her -- and
walks around the end of the bed. She sits down beside Angel. "The night
Frankie was here, you said I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to. I
didn't know what I wanted then, but I do now. I want you."
"I want you." Angel repeats the words, but with the tiniest of
alterations in inflection that make the declaration his own.
"You're not making me do anything I don't want to," Cordelia tells
him. "This isn't payment, or a deal, or anything like that."
"I know."
Cordelia puts her hand on his knee. "So why not?"
"It's because it's not just a deal, not just payment. It's okay if it's
just a transaction." He shakes his head. "That's how the curse works.
That's why it's a curse. Cordelia, the night I asked you to leave, it wasn't
because of you. It was because of me."
Years ago, in another life, Cordelia briefly took ballet lessons. She gave it up
quickly -- the really popular girls were cheerleaders, not dancers -- but not
before she learnt that professional ballerinas soak their feet in alcohol,
numbing their toes to the pain of performing. For a long time, Cordelia thinks,
she did the same, soaking her heart in alcohol, letting it get small and
wrinkled and tough, so that she could believe that what people did to each
other's bodies didn't matter. It had worked, too. But now she's sitting beside
Angel, unliving proof of how flawed that reasoning is.
He only let her touch him was that first night, when they were strangers to each
other. And even then he made sure he paid her.
"The night Sugar Ray attacked me and I came back here -- that's why you
left the cash on the reception desk the next morning, wasn't it? So there wasn't
any doubt. For either of us."
Angel nods. "That, and I figured you probably needed it."
Cordelia scowls. "I was so mad at you."
Now Angel looks at Cordelia, for the first time since she sat down next to him.
"Why?"
Cordelia blinks. She's never really thought about that. "Because I wanted
it to be different. I wanted it to mean something. I guess I wasn't as pickled
in alcohol as I thought I was."
"You had a drink problem?" Angel asks, confused.
"I'm talking about ballerinas."
"Oh," Angel says. "Okay."
They sit in silence for some time, side by side on the edge of the bed, getting
used to this new clarity, this openness between them. Cordelia finally breaks
the silence. "It's not fair," she says, and waves a hand up and down
herself. "I mean, there must be a thousand guys out there who've had their
fifteen minutes of fun with this body. And now there's one I actually WANT to
enjoy it, and I can't give it to you."
Angel pushes himself off the bed, turning around at the same time, so that he's
kneeling on the carpet, in front of Cordelia. He lifts his hands and places his
cool palm against Cordelia's cheek. "You don't have to give me anything.
I'm the one who owes you. I owe you so much."
Suddenly, something changes in his face. Cordelia's used, by now, to seeing
Angel become less human. What she didn't know was that he could become more
human, too. There's a gentleness in his eyes, a playfulness in the way he's
smiling, as if he's just had an idea that's too good not to share. "All
those men -- did any of them ever make you feel good?"
"No," Cordelia says quietly.
Angel puts his left hand on her other cheek and draws her face down to his. She
feels his lips brush her forehead and his fingers run through her hair as he
murmurs, "Then let me give you something."
His fingers work their way over her scalp, toward the back of her head. She
feels a cool pressure in the hollow at the nape of her neck, and she shivers as
he touches her just beneath her hairline. A warm glow radiates outwards, down
her back and arms, and she arches her back involuntarily. She's pushing her
chest forward, and Angel's ready, his free hand making contact with her breasts,
massaging each in turn through the fabric of her T-shirt.
Then he kisses her, and it's almost too much -- her tongue, her breasts, the
back of her neck; she doesn't have time to get used to one sensation before the
next threatens to overwhelm her.
Angel leans back long enough to whisper hoarsely, "Lift your arms."
For a second, Cordelia is torn -- he's going to undress her, and that means he's
going to have to stop touching her like this for longer than she thinks she can
bear. But once she's naked, she'll be able to feel his skin next to hers, with
no barriers between them.
She raises her arms. "Quickly."
Cotton brushes her face; a second later, she feels him nuzzle the hollow between
her breasts. Lazily, his tongue traces a spiral around each breast in turn,
finishing at the hard, sensitive nubs of her nipples.
Angel's fingertips caress her sides, starting underneath her breasts and
tracking down to her hips. His thumbs hook into the waistband of the loose pants
she's wearing. She knows what he means to do, and so she puts her hands on his
shoulders and raises herself up, just far enough to let him slip them under her,
down to her ankles and off over her bare feet. Her panties come off, too, and
now she's naked in front of him, her arms around his shoulders, kissing the back
of his head and neck.
"Tell me what you want," Angel says. "Tell me what feels
good."
Cordelia thinks of cold alleyways, of motel rooms and the back seats of cars, of
all the men who knew what they wanted and didn't give a damn whether she liked
it or not, as long as she let them do it to her. "It all feels good,"
she says. "Don't stop. Don't stop."
Angel has no intention of stopping. His kisses sink lower and lower; when they
pass her belly button, Cordelia spreads her legs and, letting go of his
shoulders, leans back on the bed, putting her arms out behind her to support her
weight. At the same time she lifts her legs and rests them on Angel's broad
shoulders.
His head dips between her legs. The anticipation is making her crazy; she knows
any second now she'll be able to feel him --
Then his lips are on her, his tongue gently massaging her. She cries out, and
her fingers dig into the mattress; he responds by going deeper, building a slow
rhythm that makes her gasp as she pushes against him. Part of her is desperate
to come; part of her never wants to stop feeling the way she does right now.
And then she can't hold it back any longer, and ecstasy explodes through her,
white-hot, all-consuming. She gives a shout of pleasure and gratitude and
triumph and collapses back on to the bedclothes, taking deep and shaky breaths.
She's still lying in that position as Angel stands and pulls the sheets over
her. Cordelia closes her eyes and waits for the dip and creak of the mattress's
springs when he joins her. But when she opens them again, she's alone in the
bed. Angel is sitting in the armchair by the door, watching her. The armchair is
low and comfortable; he should be relaxed, but his body is hard, tense.
"Come back to bed."
He shakes his head. "I can't."
Cordelia sits up. "We can't sleep together, I get that. But we can SLEEP
together, right? We've been doing that for weeks."
"We still can," Angel says. "Just not tonight. Or any night we do
this. I couldn't lie beside you right now feeling -- this way -- and not act on
it."
"Oh." Cordelia thinks about that, about what it means for them.
"Some stuff's gonna have to change, isn't it?"
"Yes." There's a note of worry in Angel's voice as he asks, "Are
you sorry?"
"Yeah, I'm sorry," she tells him. "I'm sorry I can't make you
feel the way you make me feel. But I'm not sorry that when you touch me, it
means something. It's real." She lies back on the bed, and pulls the
blankets up around her. "Is there anything else I can do for you? I mean,
anything ELSE."
Angel sits back in the armchair, and his posture relaxes a fraction. "I'd
like -- just to watch you sleep. That'd be nice."
Cordelia stifles a yawn; that request isn't going to be difficult to fulfill.
Her eyelids are drooping already; she's comfortable and warm and, just like in
the songs, there's an Angel watching over her. She snuggles deeper into the
bedclothes, and lets her body and mind relax into the beginnings of a contented
fuzziness.
When she hears Angel speak again, the words are barely a murmur, whispered so
quietly he must think she's already asleep. But Cordelia's just the right side
of conscious, and her hearing has always been sharper than most people's. She
doesn't open her eyes, so she doesn't know if he's surprised or not when she
answers him.
"I love you, too," she says, and falls asleep.
***
IV
The sun feels good on her back and her legs. Cordelia shifts her position on the
towel she's lying on, and props herself up on her elbows. Around her, the
Hyperion's courtyard blooms with the flowers she's planted, and the sound of
city traffic is distant and muted.
She turns the page of the community college prospectus she's reading. "Ooooh.
They do fashion design, too."
"A couple of minutes ago you wanted to take web programming."
Angel is sitting in the shadows under the awning, right back by the wall. He's
wearing sunglasses against the glare and -- at Cordelia's insistence -- the
strongest sunblock the drugstore sells. She doesn't want him to get accidentally
frazzled.
"Well, I'll do both, and start an internet fashion label. How does that
sound?"
Angel smiles. "Like you could do it and make a million dollars."
Cordelia smiles back and rolls over on to her back, so her bare midriff is
exposed to the afternoon sun's warmth. Her new bikini cost twenty bucks from
Wal-Mart, and she couldn't love it more if it were a Prada original. Only one
thing is spoiling the afternoon. "I wish you could enjoy this with
me."
"I like the view from here just fine."
A compliment like that, Cordelia decides, deserves a reward. She moves back into
the shadows, and hands Angel her bottle of tanning lotion. "My back's
starting to burn. You mind?"
He puts down the book he's reading, and a moment later she hears the soft squirt
of lotion coming out of the bottle, and feels his hands begin to work it into
her back and shoulders. His touch, as always, is cool, and her skin rises in
gooseflesh under his fingers.
"Sorry."
"I'm used to it," she says, which is true. "I like it," she
adds, which is also true.
Angel inclines his head, and she feels his face close to the back of her neck.
He inhales her scent. "Tell me what I smell like to you," Cordelia
says.
"Sunlight," he says straight away. "Summer flowers. Apples and
peaches. Uh, also tanning lotion."
She giggles. "Well, duh. Yeah."
Without warning, Angel's hands tense against her back. "Cordy, I think you
should get yourself tested."
She turns around to look at him. Angel's come a long way from the guy whose idea
of a relationship was stalking her, but he still has no idea how to change
conversational tack with subtlety. "Say what?"
"I've been thinking," Angel says. "There are clinics. Free ones,
I mean. Places that don't charge or ask for names. You could go to one of them,
get tested. Then you wouldn't have to worry about it anymore."
Or Angel wouldn't have to worry, Cordelia thinks. It's sweet of him, but
Cordelia's made up her mind on this point. She knows the life she used to lead
puts her in a higher risk category than most other people; few of her clients
were willing to wear condoms, and as for the rest -- well, splits and tears were
common enough. She shakes her head. "There's no point. I don't have health
insurance; I couldn't get it now it even if I had the money. Besides, I feel
fine."
"Cordelia --" Angel begins.
"No," Cordelia tells him. She gets up and walks back out into the
sunlight, where he can't follow her. "There's no point, Angel. Now leave
it, okay?"
***
But Angel, being Angel, won't leave it, and Cordelia learns something she really
should have figured out by now: Never start a war of attrition with someone
who's going to live forever.
They argue; or rather, Cordelia argues, while Angel stands with his arms folded
across his chest and says, "Yes, but --" a lot. Eventually, he doesn't
even say that much, just stands and listens patiently and looks at her while she
tells him exactly what she told him in the courtyard that day, again.
It's starting to seem likely that things will go on this way until Angel dies of
old age or Cordelia runs out of breath (both, she admits to herself, only slim
possibilities), when a gang of vampires decide they've had enough of being
hunted by one of their own. There's no vision to warn of the ambush, and when
Cordelia answers the phone and hears Angel's faint and fading voice, she is
gripped by a terror she hasn't felt since the morning she walked into the
bathroom and saw Val's corpse bobbing obscenely in the tub. "I need you
--" Angel whispers before the line goes dead, and Cordelia clings to the
memory of those words as she searches the sewer tunnels for the rest of that
night and the following day, because a part of her is afraid this is the last
thing she will ever hear him say.
When she finds him, he's unconscious. One hand is clasped, vise-like, around the
cell-phone she made him buy; the other is resting on the stake that protrudes
from his chest, an inch or less from his dead heart.
Cordelia takes him back to the Hyperion before she does anything else; once
Angel is lying safe in his own bed, she gathers her strength and her nerves and
pulls the stake out of his ribs. She half- expects him to disintegrate then and
there -- she can picture the bedclothes collapsing inwards on the sudden space.
She wouldn't even have a body to mourn, she realizes. Strange that she always
knew this, and never really understood until now what it meant.
Cordelia holds the stake, and her breath, and waits. Angel makes a low sound of
pain, but he doesn't crumble away to dusty nothingness. Not this time.
Three days later, he's sitting up in bed, chest bandaged, gulping down the blood
he needs in larger quantities than usual in order to heal. "You're an
idiot," Cordelia tells him as she refills his mug.
"Hey," Angel says mildly, "They jumped me, not the other way
round. Besides, I won. Don't I get points for that?"
But Cordelia's in no mood for joking. Tightly, she says, "I thought I was
gonna lose you. Do you have any idea how scary that was?"
Angel takes the full cup from her, but doesn't drink from it right away. Instead
he looks up at her and says, "Yes. That's what I've been trying to make you
understand for the last month."
Cordelia gets the name and address of a charity-run clinic from a flier she
picks up in the local hospital. She sits in the waiting room with gaunt-faced
addicts and girls whose cheap clothes and dull stares are unpleasantly familiar.
More than anything, it's the deadened quality in their eyes that shocks her --
was she ever that numbed, that defeated? Then she remembers walking out of the
McDonald's off Sunset Boulevard, telling Angel he couldn't save her. She'd
thought no one could save her.
When she's finally called, it's over in less than a minute -- the prick of a
needle on the inside of her elbow, a syringe-full of blood that would barely
whet Angel's appetite. The nurse seals and labels the sample, then swabs and
dresses Cordelia's arm and gives her a slip of paper which is blank except for a
six digit number and a check letter. The nurse explains that Cordelia can
collect the results in five weeks; her last instruction is a reminder not to
lose the piece of paper with the code on it. The clinic provides an anonymous
service, which means that Cordelia doesn't have to give her name or address --
but it also means her results will be given to whoever presents her number.
Cordelia shows Angel the slip of paper, holding it up with a flourish before
putting it back in her purse. "Happy now?"
"As close as I can get to it," Angel says, deadpan.
"Thanks."
***
As close as Angel can get is pretty close. And pretty close is pretty good,
Cordelia tells herself. But, increasingly, it's not enough.
Angel has learned how to touch her so that the merest brush of his fingertips
can make her beg him not to stop. He can kiss her so deeply that the memory of
his mouth stays with her for days. But the nights when they are together always
end the same way, with Cordelia alone in bed and Angel sitting in the chair by
the door, watching over her as she falls asleep. Often, lately, he won't even
let her see him naked. A lot's changed since that first night, when they were
strangers and her touch was just a way of discharging a debt.
If Cordelia ever wondered the best way to guard against perfect contentment, now
she has an answer. It turns out frustration is a really effective method.
Angel hasn't said anything, but he hasn't needed to. Cordelia can hear him
pounding the punch-bag in the basement training room every afternoon; she's felt
the way he tenses when she touches his arm or lightly kisses him goodnight
before she goes to bed. She loves that he loves her, and at the same time misses
the casual intimacy they used to have more than she thought possible. She dreads
the day she knows is coming soon, when he has a vision and won't let himself
reach out to her.
More and more, when she looks at Angel, Cordelia thinks of a boulder poised on
the crest of a hill, ready to plunge at the gentlest push in any one of a
thousand directions. But she doesn't know where the push will come from, or
when. All she can do is wait.
In the meantime, at least, there's plenty to keep her occupied.
The visions often lead to long hours of researching the weaknesses of what
Cordelia has come to think of as the demon-of-the-week. At first, Cordelia found
this merely a boring necessity -- research was one of the few things about her
old life in Sunnydale she was glad to leave behind when she left. She
re-acquires the skill almost in spite of herself, and is surprised -- and a
little smug -- when she can remember references faster than Angel, knows just
where in his expanding collection of books on magic and prophecy to find the
relevant information. It feels good to be good at something again and, more than
that, Cordelia discovers there's a satisfaction in working at a puzzle until she
arrives at a solution she knows is the right one. She's been talking about
taking classes at the community college for months, but now feels like the right
time to do something about it.
"Did you sign up for art and design, or web programming?" Angel asks
when she tells him about her application.
"Both," Cordelia says. "Also European history."
"History?"
Cordelia shrugs. "Well, yeah. I figured, I live with a guy who remembers
when the Battle of Waterloo was CNN headline news -- how can I not ace that
class?" She unpacks her new textbooks on to the table. "Besides, I
like the idea of knowing more about where you came from."
Angel doesn't reply, but he smiles that little smile of his, the one that takes
forever to emerge on his features but which, once in place, remains for hours.
Cordelia loves that smile.
It's at times like this Cordelia dares to believe they can do it. Somehow, they
can preserve this delicate equilibrium indefinitely, make these moments stretch
and stretch until time stops entirely, leaving them safe in a perpetual present,
with no past to define them and no future to change what they have right now.
But Cordelia has always been a realist at heart, and she knows that fantasy is
just a fantasy.
Cordelia goes to classes at the community college, nurses Angel through vision
hangovers, researches demons and assorted nasties, and tries to make her
memories of the increasingly rare occasions when Angel allows himself to touch
her carry her through the times between. And she waits for the delicate balance
of their lives to shatter again.
***
Cordelia knows as soon as she walks into the Hyperion's lobby that something
terrible has happened.
Everything breakable is broken; everything that can be shattered or smashed or
torn has been attacked with vicious fury. For several seconds, it's all Cordelia
can do to stare, numbed, at months of hard work reduced to wreckage. The
reception desk that took days to polish has a deep gouge running along its
length; the vases of flowers she arranged and displayed proudly on the tables
and shelves have been toppled, the blooms squashed. And every last one of the
stair rails Cordelia spent so long cleaning in her first week at the hotel has
been pulled up.
Her hands slacken around the straps of the bag and the file she's carrying, and
both fall to the floor at her feet. The file bursts open as it hits the tiles,
scattering her notes from today's class around her, adding to the chaos and
devastation. Cordelia hardly notices; she steps on the pages as she walks
through the lobby, leaving shoe prints all over her neatly handwritten notes on
the development of modern art.
Angel's habit of killing evil things has made him a lot of enemies in L.A.
Vampires, of course, couldn't get into the hotel without an invitation. But,
Cordelia thinks suddenly, not all Angel's enemies are vampires.
"Angel? Angel, are you here? Angel!"
Increasingly frantic, Cordelia checks the office behind reception, the staff
cloakrooms, the industrial-sized long-unused kitchens, Angel's training room in
the basement. They are all equally devastated. They are all equally empty. Now
she's searched everywhere.
Not quite everywhere.
Angel's room.
Cordelia runs up the stairs, two, three at a time, becoming dizzy as she follows
the rising spiral. She throws open the door of Angel's room without knocking. If
he's here, everything will be all right; if he isn't --
He isn't. There's no one here, either.
Several seconds pass before Cordelia notices anything more than that. Then, it
hits her --- there are no signs of the battle downstairs up here. Angel's room
is perfectly neat, perfectly tidy. The bed is made, the books are shelved by
order of height, a pair of shoes sits under the chair by the window. Everything
is just the way Angel likes it. Except for one thing.
A typed letter is lying in the middle of the bed, a ripped-open envelope next to
it. Cordelia can't read the writing from where she stands, but she can see that
most of the first page is taken up with a kind of table. Two columns, writing in
the left hand column, nothing in the boxes on the right of the page. No, wait,
that's not strictly correct -- one of the boxes is checked with an X.
She lifts the letter.
"Don't."
She'd thought Angel couldn't sneak up on her anymore, make her jump like that.
Back in Sunnydale, and in the first weeks at the Hyperion, she'd believed his
stealth was supernatural -- but months of closeness have attuned her to his
noises, the swish of his coat, the way his feet fall in a very slightly
irregular rhythm on the floorboards. She'd thought he couldn't surprise her
anymore; but when she turns around, he's standing inside the doorway, and
Cordelia has no idea how long he's been there.
Angel can't get breathless, but there's a weariness in his stance that tells
Cordelia if he were alive, he'd be winded, exhausted. His shoulders are hunched,
and there are scratches on his face, bruises on his fists. A splinter of wood
protrudes from a cut on the back of one hand.
The look on his face: she hasn't seen that look -- half-desperate, half-blank --
for almost a year. Not since the first night she met him, when he killed a man
for her and asked her not to run away.
"What happened downstairs?"
"Don't read it," Angel says. He isn't looking at Cordelia, but at the
paper in her hand. "Don't read it, please."
It takes a second to fit the pieces together. The wrecked lobby. The look in
Angel's eyes. The letter.
She lifts the paper to the light, lowers her eyes, almost expects Angel to
snatch it from her with that impossible speed of his before she can read a word.
But he doesn't.
She skims the introductory paragraph, skips straight to the important part.
Eight lines of black text, matched against eight black boxes. The first seven
boxes are clear, empty, void, safe. A cross, stark black ink on a white
background, fills the last box.
Funny, Cordelia thinks. She always thought only vampires could be harmed by
crosses.
There are more words, after that. A reminder that the tests give the wrong
results in two to three per cent of cases. A date and a time when she can go and
give another sample. An offer of free counseling, advice about what her options
are.
Options, Cordelia thinks. That's a joke. That's funny. Options and choices are
for other people, now. Her path just narrowed down to that one dirt track to
nowhere, again. The one she'd thought she'd escaped for good. The broad highway,
the limitless horizons -- they were never more than shimmering illusions.
Everything's been a lie; nothing has been real. The whole time she's been with
Angel, remembering who she is, who she wanted to be -- the small dreams she's
been quietly nurturing, along with the flowers in the courtyard -- all empty,
all hollow. The small cross in black ink she's looking at is the proof of her
immutable, unchangeable destiny.
"You were wrong," she says.
Angel's mouth opens a little, then closes again. He had a reply prepared for
whatever he thought she was going to say, but she surprised him and now he's at
a loss.
"You said that paths aren't fixed," she explains. "That
everything can be changed. But that's not how it is, is it? Fate fucks us and
leaves us."
He blinks at that -- Cordelia never swears, didn't even pick up the habit after
a year of living with Val's fruity language and Frankie's constant stream of
foul-mouthed invective.
"I told you," she says. She's blinking, now, as well, but for a
different reason. She holds up the letter, waves it at him like one of the
weapons in the cabinet downstairs. "I told you I didn't want to know."
"I'm sorry," Angel says. His voice is quiet, loaded with regret.
"I'm sorry. The slip fell out of your purse. I just picked it up -- the
date was weeks ago, I knew you'd forgotten. And I thought -- I thought it would
be good news. I didn't think it could be anything except good news."
Angel takes another step into the room, but stops at the foot of the bed,
hanging back. "I'm sorry," he says at last. "I'm sorry -- about
the lobby."
The wrecked lobby; the tears in Angel's clothes, the cuts on his face, the
splinters in his skin. Cordelia tries to imagine the force necessary to bring
about that level of destruction. He must have hit and clawed and kicked and
punched for a solid hour or more, a more prolonged and violent rage than a human
could ever sustain.
Dully, she says, "Did it make you feel any better?"
"No," Angel says. "Everywhere I looked, I saw you. I couldn't
stand the idea of a day when everything you'd done was still there, but you
weren't --"
He can't finish the sentence, so Cordelia nods, to show she understands anyway.
And she does. Words have never been Angel's forte; he's so much more comfortable
with actions. He can't articulate how he imagines life without her, and so he
showed her instead. Wreckage and splinters; the lobby's not just the way it was
before she came, when the furniture was whole but hidden under dust sheets. It's
shattered and broken, irreparable.
"I'm sorry," Angel repeats. "I'll fix it, I'll fix
everything."
He won't. He can't.
Cordelia looks at the letter again; she can't stop staring at that little black
cross. Black on white. Things aren't black and white, she thinks, except
sometimes when they are. No gray areas, no half way houses or reprieves. You're
either clean or you're infected, you're damned or you're saved, you're an angel
or a whore.
She thinks about the endless stream of clients, so many strangers on so many
nights. They rarely gave names; she didn't try to remember their faces and she
certainly never kept count. One of those strangers is walking around in the
city, and she'll never know who he is, or if he knows what he's carrying and
that he passed it on to her.
Whoever he was, she took his money when she let him kill her.
Cordelia lifts her head from the letter, and meets Angel's gaze. "Tell me
it's not real. Please."
Angel doesn't say anything.
"It can't be real," Cordelia says. "It can't be. This whole world
is so stupid and messed up it's got to be somebody's bad dream. Cameron still
lives in his mansion in Bel Air, and you can bet he's still preying on stupid
little girls who should know better. And when Buffy died to save the world, she
died to save him, too. How crazy and screwed up is that?"
"Cordelia," Angel says softly. But Cordelia isn't done yet. Hell,
she's barely started.
"And you love me but you can't even let yourself touch me. And I love you
and I'm going to get sick and die, maybe not right away, but it's gonna happen,
right? Tell me it's not real. Angel, please, tell me it's not real, it's not
real --"
And now Cordelia's crying, because she knows he can't.
And then Angel is holding her.
One second she's alone; the next, his arms envelope her. He has one hand on the
back of her head, the other on the small of her back. Cordelia closes her eyes,
buries her face in his chest and breathes him in, lets that now-familiar scent
-- earth and metal -- fill her up and surround her.
"The best thing you ever did for me," he says, "was show me the
goodness in what's real. All I could see, in my head, was the very worst of
reality. And it's all out there, but it's not all there is. This is real,
too."
He starts to kiss her, and she lets him. Lightly, his lips brush her forehead,
her cheeks, her eyelids. The first time his lips meet hers, it's so brief it
might be accidental. Then it happens again, and by the third time, Cordelia is
certain of his intentions. The next time she feels his mouth against hers, she
catches his lower lip lightly between her teeth, stops him moving away.
He doesn't pull away. Instead, he presses his mouth on to hers, runs his tongue
over her top lip, then her lower one, leaves her tingling.
She's so hungry for him she aches with it.
He moves his hands around her body and cups her breasts. There are layers of
fabric between them; his touch should be muted, barely perceptible, but the
light pressure of his fingertips only reminds her what it feels like when his
skin is directly against hers.
She pushes him away. "No. Angel, no."
He leans in to kiss her again. "It's okay. It's okay, I promise. I love you
and it's okay."
"That's why it's not okay. Hasn't today been bad enough already without
letting Angelus out?"
Angel says, "Look at me."
Cordelia does; his dark eyes meet hers in love, and tenderness, and desire. And
something else. There's a new quality in his gaze, and when Cordelia names it,
she understands what is different now. There's grief in Angel's eyes. Grief for
her.
No danger of perfect happiness for Angel, she realizes. Not anymore.
Angel smiles at her, and it's the saddest smile Cordelia's ever seen. "You
did it. You broke the curse."
Then, before she can speak or react, he lifts her and carries her to the bed,
lays her down on it with such gentleness, such reverence, that Cordelia feels
like a princess in a fairy tale. Not tainted or diseased. Pure.
Angel joins her on the bed, begins to undo the buttons of her blouse at the same
time as she pops open the ones down the front of his shirt. He shrugs off the
shirt, then leans down; Cordelia raises her body, just enough to let him slide
his hands underneath her and unhook her bra. Now she's bare from the waist up;
Angel takes a moment to look at her, just look, and Cordelia feels a wild
pleasure and pride that she can provoke this intensity of love and wonder and
desire.
"Hurry," she says. It's the only thought she has that can be expressed
in words. In the past months, the physical contact they have allowed themselves
has been so rare and restrained that Cordelia has learnt to savor moments of
intimacy, to wring every nuance from the experience. Now, she only wants to
plunge ahead, because however good this feels, now she knows there's better to
come.
Angel lowers his head and kisses her, once, on the mouth. While her lips and
tongue are occupied with kissing Angel, Cordelia's hands feel for his belt. She
loosens the buckle, unzips his pants and makes a low sound of eagerness when she
feels him, already hard. She runs her hand quickly up and down the shaft of his
cock, and Angel gasps in need and delight.
Cordelia is wearing one of the first pieces of clothing she bought after she
moved into the hotel with Angel, a jade green wraparound skirt with ties at the
waist. She isn't certain, but Cordelia thinks she feels Angel's hands shaking a
little as he pulls out the tied bow that secures the skirt. They've come this
far many times before; this time, they're not stopping.
Cordelia takes her hand off Angel long enough to wriggle out of her panties. It
feels intoxicating, to be this close to him and naked -- her skin feels a
hundred, a thousand times more sensitive than normal, the lightest caress is
enough to make her convulse with pleasure and she needs -- she NEEDS -- to feel
him on her, around her, in her. Now.
"Hurry," she says again, this time with an edge of desperation. Hurry,
she wants to say. Hurry because time is running out. Hurry because nothing lasts
forever.
When she looks up, into Angel's eyes, she sees reflected in them her own fervor,
along with something she is startled to identify as hunger, the ravenous
appetite of death for life. That's the bargain between them, Cordelia realizes:
by this act she will prove she is alive, and bring Angel as close to it as he
can get. And her life is precious because of the certain knowledge that it will
end. The time left is finite.
His arms are on either side of her shoulders, his body is over hers. They are
chest to chest, belly to belly, and she has never felt this safe, this
connected.
"Hurry," she says, and welcomes him inside her.
Cordelia lifts her legs and twines them around Angel's hips; at the same time
she hooks her arms around his shoulders. He rests his forehead against hers as
he pushes deeper inside her, grunts with the satisfaction of resistance. He
pushes hard, then harder, consumed by overriding urgency.
Hurry, she can only think. Hurry, hurry, hurryhurryhurry --
Angel gives one last thrust and, with a cry of release, comes; Cordelia can feel
his cool essence entering her. But he isn't finished yet, and as he pushes
again, and again, she feels a slow explosion go off inside her, a chain reaction
that starts somewhere below her pelvis and sends shock waves of euphoria
rippling throughout her body, down to the soles of her feet and out to her
fingertips, overtaking her consciousness and carrying it along for the ride. She
shouts and then laughs and then cries with relief, and says his name over and
over, as if it is the only word she will ever need again.
Angel relaxes, and gives her a lingering, languid kiss before gently withdrawing
from her. For the first time since Cordelia has known him, he is entirely
relaxed as he lies against her. At rest.
"Angel," Cordelia says again.
His hand runs through her hair. "Right here."
Softly, Cordelia says, "I'm going to die."
Beside her, she feels every muscle in Angel's body tighten, like he's just
turned from flesh to granite. "You won't," he says. "Because I
won't let it happen."
Cordelia loves him for this sincere belief that he can take on fate and win, and
hates that he can almost make her believe it, too.
"No," she says, and rolls over so that she's facing him. "People
who live, die. Sometimes they get sick, and sometimes they walk on a Don't Walk
sign when a bus is coming, and sometimes, if they're lucky, they just fall
asleep and don't wake up again. But they all die. I'm going to die, Angel. Not
tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, but one day. That's what you
sign up for when you love a human being."
Angel doesn't say anything, but he kisses her. His cheek brushes against hers;
she feels the cool wetness of his tears, and she understands that he knows this.
Maybe he's always known it. Finally, he asks, "And until then?"
"I'm going to live," Cordelia says, her voice solid with
determination. "I'm going to live until I die. Every single day. And, you
know what? All those bad and unlucky choices I made -- I'm not sorry about any
of them. Because the path I took brought me to you, and I can't be sorry I'm
here." She smiles. "And my wish came true."
"Your wish?"
Softly, Cordelia says, "The night I met you -- the night you saw Sugar Ray
attacking me in your vision -- I made a wish. I wished I could close my eyes and
wake up in another life. And here I am."
Angel doesn't say anything for a long time. Then he pulls Cordelia closer to
himself, clings on to her so hard it's an effort to breathe. When he speaks, his
voice is barely above murmur, but she can still hear every word he says.
"That night," Angel says, "I made the same wish."
She returns Angel's embrace, so that their bodies are entwined so closely she
can't tell where she stops and he starts. She warms his cold flesh; he protects
her fragile life. It's strange, she thinks: all this time, and she never
realized she needed to be held by him just as much as he needed to hold her.
And maybe, if there's another place where souls go afterward, this is what it's
like -- an endlessness of waking up feeling warm and loved. An eternity of being
held.
Cordelia decides she can live with that.
End.
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