Seven People In Search Of Dreamland by Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: Four bedtime stories set at the end of a very long night for Angel Investigations and their assorted friends, lovers, and hangers-on.
Spoilers: Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Season Four.
Notes: Thanks to Kate, Scy, and Zara for the beta and the C/C people for their begging.
I.
Angel
The night has been
too long.
They barely got home
in time to escape sunrise in the first place, and then they
found Lorne tied up to a chair with a hole in his head and lots of blame
for Wes for all of it.
(Angel still can't
find it in him to explain to Fred and Gunn that Wesley is
fucking Lilah, and even if Wesley's not personally responsible for this--and
Angel doesn't believe that he is--he's in more trouble than they can
imagine.)
Hell, he can barely
believe Wesley's fucking Lilah, even though it seems to him
that they mustn't *do* anything else except fuck. Every time Angel runs into
Wesley, he has to look and make sure Lilah isn't waiting ten feet behind
and vice versa.
But it's so late
that it's early, going on seven in the morning, and Fred and
Gunn are practically asleep on their feet, swaying and mumbling and Angel's
just--
Angel can't sleep.
Not after this. He doesn't know when he's gonna sleep next,
because it's all gone to hell, h-e-double-hockey-sticks, and he can't find
the place where it gets better again.
"Thanks, you
guys," he says wanly after they finish patching Lorne up and Fred's
leaning against Gunn like he's the only way she's going to keep standing.
"Lorne, you gonna be okay?"
"I need
alcohol," the green demon says wearily. "Alcohol and maybe an entire
bottle of tranquilizers."
"Just don't
drown in the toilet," Angel says without thinking. "That would be
very Lupe Velez of you."
"Thanks for
putting that image in my head, Angelcakes," Lorne says sourly. "I'm
going to bed. The next time you see me sober is up for debate."
He staggers away and
Angel is suddenly alone, resoundingly alone in the lobby
with the sunlight starting to pour through the windows. Angel decides it's
time to go upstairs to Cordelia's room and do some quality brooding.
If the shoe fits,
wear it. It's not like he feels like sleeping and all of his
friends, employees, enemies, and family are probably passed out in various
locations around LA. He's on his own and when alone, do what you do best.
Wonderful. Great.
Right.
Angel makes sure all
the blinds are closed and starts going through Cordelia's
stuff. Which he's decided is fair game since the new Cordelia not
only doesn't want to live at the hotel, she prefers to live in a goddamn
warehouse in the ghetto with a murderous little bastard. His murderous
little bastard, who he threw out of the house instead of keeping him
on a leash. Stupid. Of course, the quality of mercy means very little to
this family.
Speaking of mercy
and family, Wesley, whom he forgave, whom he tried to get to
drop the act, apparently prefers banging evil lawyer to coming back to them.
In the truly petty parts of Angel's soul, he hopes that when it's over,
Lilah charges Wesley by the hour for the affair and then takes him for
everything he's worth.
It could happen.
Wesley had clearly been entertaining the lovely Miss Morgan
when he discovered the insider information about Cordelia, Connor, and
the extraction. In fact, Lilah played them all like a symphony string section,
and Angel hopes that after she finishes ruining Wesley's life, Wesley
kills her and comes back with an apology for Angel this time.
This is also a small
and petty thought, and Angel acknowledges that. But there
seems to be a larger, less petty theme, which is that Wesley, Cordelia,
and Connor should come home already.
Angel doesn't want
to tell Fred and Gunn, but they're just not the same. They're
good. Better than good. They're loyal. They're his friends and they're
trying their damnedest. But it's not quite the same.
Every morning--or
late afternoon--or early evening--when Angel comes downstairs,
he keeps expecting to hear a clipped British accent informing Cordelia
that they're quite out of money and he is not a thundering twit and
might she kindly keep her mouth closed on the topic, thank you very much.
"Shh before
Broody McBroodcakes hears you," he can almost hear her snap back.
"He might break your scrawny arms if he heard you call me a twit."
"I didn't call
you--!"
They laugh together
before disappearing into dust motes, always just out of Angel's
reach.
In your heart, you
always know who your family is, and Angel's family has left
him behind to sift through the debris. In this bedroom, with the fresh smell
of all three of them in his nostrils, he cannot help but hear them as he
looks through box after box of them.
"I love
you," he can hear Cordy say and when he looks over his shoulder, he can
almost see her there with a smile on her face. "I always will."
But she's gone when
he tries to get a closer look, leaving behind only her laugh
to torment him.
"It's going to
be all right," Wes says from the doorway, distracting Angel from
the situation at hand. "We've gotten through worse, haven't we?"
The door is closed,
but Angel can see the way Wesley would lean against the frame,
long and lean and feral. The ghosts in his life are all wild, unwilling
to play any game except their own.
"Dad,"
Connor says, and that voice is by his side, so close that Angel can't
beat to look and see that he's not there. "Dad, show me how to do that.
I want you to teach me."
Angel gives in. He
relaxes into the fantasy, his head resting on the end of Cordelia's
putative bed, though Cordelia's never slept there. He doesn't even
realize his eyes are closed, because he can see everything so clearly--the
kind of love that burns when it goes wrong, the sort of family bonds
that don't ever stop being there.
Angel can see it all
and it's so perfect that he can't even begin to explain.
If there are even words to explain, which he doubts.
"He'll show you
later," Cordelia laughs. "Won't he, Wes?"
There are two pairs
of hands on him now, and Angel doesn't even pause to consider
the implications of that. Because it's right. It's what he wants.
"Yes, he
certainly will," Wesley says, wise and merry and warm against Angel's
left shoulder. "But for now--"
"We love you.
Now buzz off, junior," Cordelia chimes in. "The grown-ups are having
grown-up time."
Angel can feel
Connor go, but it's not the usual way where it's malice and resentment.
He thinks they're all nuts, but in a good way. And now there are
the three of them looking at each other and the air has gotten warm and strange
and charged.
This is the answer.
Always was supposed to be the three of them, wasn't it? It's
all in the word trinity. Yes.
"When will you
learn, Angel?" Wesley asks. "This is how it's supposed to go.
We've tried to explain, but you've got a stubborn streak."
"It's so
true," Cordy says, settling in Angel's lap and kissing him soundly.
"Wes, come on, don't kiss him first and then pretend you're not part
of this, Mr. How It's Supposed to Go."
But Angel can feel
him being pulled away, the new-old fault lines resurfacing
and it's just a dream after all, but Wesley's ghost regrets it, Wesley's
ghost is whispering to Cordelia that they have to go but they may come
back soon.
"Don't--"
Angel calls after them.
But they're already
gone and after a moment, Angel wakes up with a start, surrounded
by boxes and the feel of lips against his skin. He very quietly crawls
into Cordy's bed, unwilling to fight the ghosts for now, unable to pretend
he doesn't want what he wants.
Come home, he prays
as the world grows lighter around him and he sinks into oblivion.
Come home to me. I
need you both.
II.
Connor and Cordelia
"You don't look
at all like your father," is the last thing Cordelia tells him
before drifting off into a dreamworld where he cannot follow. Connor wishes
he could get out of the room, go somewhere, but it's sunrise now and he
can't leave her alone. Though he wishes he could.
Every time Connor
looks at Cordelia, his eyes stray to her breasts rising and
falling in a slightly irregular rhythm, and all he can hear is the blood
rushing in his ears. He'd known before that she was lovely, but now he
wishes he had his father's Bible nearby, because the only verses he can remember
aren't helping his incontinence.
*Thou hast ravished
my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart
with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.*
He hadn't meant to
touch her breast like that, and now his hand burns with the
sense-memory of it. It had been soft, but not a bad soft, the kind of soft
that seemed to be made to feel and the way her breath caught when she realized!
It was a revelation to Connor, the way women make tiny noises that
in men would be unexceptional, but that in women are heart-wrenching things.
He doesn't have many
memories of women. Sunny, when he remembers her, is a dream
as tangy as orange juice and bittersweet like the food that's slightly
gone in the dumpsters. Fred was brittle and kind, not sure if she was
supposed to be mother, sister, or friend. He can't help but wonder if she
hates him now, and that stings a bit. But Cordelia makes him prickle like
he prickles at the sight of the beast in the warehouse, or the feeling of
a battle victory, but not exactly. The blood feels the same, rushing through
him like a river, or a particularly good kill. Still. It's different.
Connor doesn't have
the words, just the hazy memories of Canticles, and his father
hadn't completely approved of the Songs of Songs.
"Those are
words for a proper season," had been Captain Holtz's edict on the
matter, choosing instead to dwell upon Isaiah and Jeremiah. Connor knows
his father was right; his father was almost always right, but now seems
to be a proper season and he can't think of anything except how perfect
Cordelia is, laying in his bed with her breasts rising up and down.
Well. Perhaps not.
Connor grits his teeth. He has dealt with morning inconvenience
before, and fortunately for him, his father had been relatively
unopposed to onanism in the case of morning necessity (better a brief
sin than to be unable to function on Quortoth for an hour or two), but
this is different. Firstly, it would be impolite to find release with Cordelia
in the room. There's the mess and the possibility she'd wake up and
it's completely out of the question.
Secondly, Connor is
quite certain that the cause of his difficulty is his inability
to look away from her form. His father had not believed in committing
lustful acts, and to touch himself over Cordelia's breasts would be
a filthy sin.
There's no way
around it. He is as tired as anyone else after the night he's
had and he doesn't have anywhere else to sleep. Gingerly, very gingerly,
Connor lies beside her, praying she doesn't move and discover that
he's an uncouth sinner. Because she's perfect and beautiful and shouldn't
be subjected to his carnal weakness.
*Thou art all fair,
my love; there is no spot in thee.*
No spot at all now.
Cordelia's reaction to Angelus just proved what Connor still
knows to be true: there's no lasting good in the man who fathered him.
He can play at champion all he wants and save a thousand families on the
roadside, but at the critical moment, true good recognizes Angelus as true
evil.
The devil can be as
an angel of light, Connor thinks sleepily, sinking into half-dreams
that he can never differentiate from waking reality. Sometimes his
father--his real father, not Angelus--talks to him in these dreams. Sometimes
he's seen a beautiful blonde woman, tarted up in whore's garb and unable
to speak because Angelus has cut out her tongue. Sometimes there is a
man, a sad dark man with glasses, and Justine cuts his throat.
Connor rarely
remembers these dreams, so he hasn't bothered to ask who the sad
man and the blonde woman are. He wouldn't think to ask even if he remembered.
He can smell
Cordelia as he drifts out of wakefulness and into the haunted landscapes
where he usually hunts and expunges most of his psychosis. Tonight,
there are no wild beasts, no lakes of acid, no bleeding ghosts who Connor
has rendered voiceless.
Cordelia sits in the
garden at Angelus' hotel. She smiles at him, the same smile
from when she admitted her gratitude at Connor's honesty, except now Cordelia
isn't wearing a shirt at all.
"Be straight
with me," she says, and her teeth are so white and perfect that
Connor admires them for a second before his eyes stop on her breasts. "Do
you like them?"
"I like them. I
like them very much," Connor says, unable to move. "But I don't
know what to do. It wasn't time to learn when my father was with me, and
all the rules are different now that he's gone. I don't know what you want
me to do."
She stands up and
walks toward him and Connor's heart is beating as fast as the
little reptile-beasts he would catch and feed to the flying dragons. He can't
do anything. If she looks, she'll know he's lusting after his father's
woman.
A little voice
whispers: but she's not his woman. She never was, and this Cordelia
doesn't even remember wanting to be. The little voice, if Connor only
knew it, is very much like the blonde whore's voice. But he doesn't know
and Cordelia is standing there, naked to the waist, with lips as soft and
wet as cherry popsicles.
Connor spent a week
in July addicted to popsicles, thanks to Fred and Gunn. When
he realized that the grape ones turned his tongue purple, he'd stopped cold,
though not without a few pangs of longing. Now he thinks that kissing Cordelia
will be better than cherry popsicles, better than honeycomb, and he
hasn't even gotten to the part where his hand might end up on her naked figure.
When he looks up,
Cordelia is looking at his erection with a lifted eyebrow and
a near smile.
"I'm
sorry," he gasps. "You're so pretty. I can't help it."
"It's
okay," she replies. "I can make it go away."
Her lips touch his
and they are as sweet as popsicles, as warm as cider, and
as soft as her breasts and Connor's brain is suddenly full of thoughts that
he didn't realize he could think. He wants her to touch him, to make the
ache of his shame go away, to hear her make noises while he touches those
naked breasts again and again and again.
He kisses her,
trying to remember all the ways he's seen Fred and Gunn do their
kisses, with tongues, with teeth, with fancy moves. But her lips don't
part when he tries to open them with his tongue, and he realizes belatedly
that his hands are frozen to his sides.
Her lips touch his
again, and it burns, burns like the fire of God is supposed
to burn, and Connor might as well be a statue for all that he can move.
He knows now that he's trapped.
"What are you
doing to me?" Connor asks. She's not glowing; no, she's not glowing.
But she's still got a power over him that might as well be divine. "Cordelia,
what--"
"I'm making it
stop," she says and the smile on her face is beatific, pure, and
Connor realizes he's had it all wrong. She isn't going to sin with him, because
she's a goddess, she's a saint, and what she's not is a fallen woman
in this city where everyone's fallen.
She's going to make
him pure, and it hurts. He can't move, he can't even squeak,
and it feels like his body is on fire. Sweat is starting to drip into
Connor's eyes but he can't take them off her.
"Cordelia,"
he whimpers through a locked jaw.
"Shh," she
says, and the third kiss will kill him, turn him to stone and then
to ash and brimstone, but her lips are against his and he screams because
it feels like fire and it feels like heaven and oh, God. She's drawing
it out of him, bit by agonizing bit and he doesn't ever want her to stop.
"See?"
And he does. She's
purified him, drawn the carnality out of his soul so that
he doesn't stain her with his lusts.
"You're
amazing," he says, and this time she does start to glow...
Somewhere outside of
his visions, Connor turns over, away from Cordelia, and
sinks into dreamless sleep. And what Cordelia dreams of, neither of them
knows or knows to care about.
III.
Fred and Gunn
"We need to get
unionized or something," Charles complains, only half-joking
as he shucks off his clothes. "I know we got the night shift and
all, but that was, bar none, the longest day of my life."
"And you're not
even Jack Bauer," Fred jokes, hunkered down in bed in her favorite
sleepwear--the tank-top/short combo--without even the energy to yawn.
"But just as badass."
He's such a
sweetheart at the core of him, she thinks, drifting in and out of
consciousness. It's not that he's a little boy pretending to be a man, because
he's a man and not a little boy, but it's something else. Like he's good
down to the center and doesn't know how to handle the strange and terrible
world that belongs to Angel and his people.
She's stopped
thinking of them as theirs. Because Angel and Cordelia and Wesley
and Connor aren't their people, not the way that they are to each other.
And that aches a little, the way it always aches to think you're not as
close as you thought you were, but it's the truth.
Fred is actually
rather glad of that, come down to it. Not glad, that's inaccurate,
but it's not as bad as it should be. People like Angel can get you
killed if you're not careful, and they go away on journeys and to the bottom
of the ocean and leave you with all the work and none of the glory.
"Man, I don't
know what Angel's deal is about Wes, but if I were him," and there
he goes again. Charles has gone a little nutty on the topic of Wesley,
and it's getting very, very old.
"Charles,"
she says to stop the flow of anger that pours from her lover every
time that particular shadow appears on the horizon. It works again, and
Fred's glad of that. "Sweetie, it's late."
He smiles at her,
the most beautiful smile in the world. Fred hasn't ever seen
a better one. Charles Gunn has the kind of smile that makes yearbook pages,
that works better than any pick-up line in the world. When he smiles,
it's like she can see right into his soul and it's a safe and kind place
to be.
"Girl, you
aren't joking about that," he says, crawling into bed next to her.
She sneaks into his arms, snuggling up close and marveling at how pretty
they look together. Though she'd never tell him she thinks they're pretty.
It would wound his manly pride. "I'm about to pass out in mid-sentence."
"Me too,"
she says, tickling his upper arm and feeling her eyelids fluttering
closed. "But I want g'night kisses."
"Mmm," he
grumbles, but he's only playing. "How many?"
"A
hundred," she says, blinking rapidly to keep herself awake. "Ten for
my fingers,
ten for my toes, twenty for my shoulders, and the other fifty for
surprises."
He kisses her on the
top of her head. "You and surprises," he teases, rolling
them over carefully.
"I like
surprises," she says, grinning through eyes full of eyelash. She's so
sleepy, but there must be good night kisses. His lips need to press against
her skin and make everything all better. It centers her on days when
she's out of balance. "Kisses!"
"You are
*greedy,* girl," he disclaims before kissing her forehead, the tip of
her nose, and a long, warm smack on her lips before littering three or four
on her cheeks.
"Mm-hm,"
she says, giggling a little because his nose is tickling her collarbone
and he's giving her fish-mouth kisses on the outside curve of her
right breast. Pop, pop, pop, and that's ten.
She keeps careful
count of these things, because if she forgets, it would be
a disaster. They'd have to start all over again or the shadows would creep
into their thoughts, into the dreams, and make things unpleasant.
Of course she
doesn't tell Charles this. He would worry and they have so much
to worry about.
He has kissed his
way across her fingers, onetwothreefourfivesixseven eightnineten
and that's twenty kisses, twenty of one hundred, and she wonders
if Catullus kept count of his kisses, the ones he gave his girl, his
Lesbia.
"Give me a
thousand kisses, then a hundred, then a thousand more," Fred remembers
as Charles kisses a cross on her skin, shoulder to shoulder and from
the hollow of her neck to her belly button. Twenty more kisses, and they
can fall asleep without worry.
"Baby?" he
asks, looking up at her.
"S'okay,"
she says, blowing him another kiss, one that she hopes doesn't mess
with her totals. "It's a poem I used to know in Latin. Vivamus, mea Lesbia,
atque amemus. And more stuff I don't remember."
The point was
Catullus wanted so many kisses that they couldn't be counted, she
remembers as Charles carefully places butterfly kisses on the tops of her
thighs, ticklish little things that make her giggle. She can understand why,
but it's imperative that she have precisely counted kisses. A hundred kisses
goodnight and she sleeps like a baby, no matter how much Mr. Sun says
it's waking time, not sleeping time.
"Latin,"
he says with a grin. "I ever tell you how sexy it is to have a girlfriend
who knows Latin?"
"No, but you
can tell me whenever you want," Fred teases. "I won't mind."
Only eleven kisses
left, but he doesn't really have to kiss her toes. That's
a joke between them. Usually what happens is that he presses his fingertip
to his mouth and puts each proxy kiss on her elbows or eyelids or something.
This time, he's sort of on pause, looking at her with big, tired eyes.
It slowly occurs to her that he's sad and that he needs the rest of those
kisses more than she does.
Fred reaches up to
him, cupping his face with her hand and easing him down into
the mattress.
"I love
you," she says. "Let me--"
She clambers on top
of him, her hair falling into her face, over his chest and
torso.
One kiss for his
forehead, to smooth away any worry lines. Two for his eyes,
and one nibbly kiss for his left earlobe, her favorite kissable spot. Yes,
one for his earlobe.
Three for his
jawline, rough and scratchy with the stubble he usually kept smooth.
That makes seven, she thinks, remembering to keep the last for his lips.
One for the spot
where his shoulder knots up, the place that isn't quite neck
or shoulder. One over his heart, with a pause long enough to hear it beat,
thump thump thump. Then one for the palm of his hand, a big sloppy wet-mouthed
kiss.
"Ninety-nine,"
he says, and she realizes with a jolt that he's been keeping count
with her. Oh! How long has he counted their kisses, and how many kisses
have they counted since she started keeping track? (Two thousand, two
hundred, and eighty-nine, not counting the last kiss she hasn't given yet.)
Fred leans in close,
her entire heart in her eyes.
"One--"
and her upper lip crosses his lower lip for a millisecond-- "Hun--" and
both of her lips touch his, molding to the contours of his mouth. "Dred."
She whispers the
last into his mouth before they share the end of the last kiss,
the kiss that will last them through sleeping and into waking again. It
takes a while; these things often do.
"Bedtime
now," she murmurs blissfully, rolling to her left and checking the advance
of morning out of the corner of her eye.
"Bedtime
now," he agrees, closing his eyes. Fred is about to join him in the
land of Nod, but she chances to see something lovely and amazing in her sidewise
glance of dawn.
"Ooh," she
whispers.
"What?"
asks Charles, firmly in favor of sleep.
"The morning
star," Fred says, looking at it wobbling in the early-early-morning
sky. It's alone; the last guest at the celestial party who
isn't taking the hint that it's time to find a cab home and let the sun get
on with the sober work of every day. She knows how it feels.
"Mm,"
Charles says. "Good for it." But Fred is so happy to see it there, even
if it's just a planet and not a star or a mystical totem, that she can't
help but watch it.
"I've got to
wish on it," she insists. "It's necessary."
And it is necessary,
she thinks as focuses on it, it's necessary that she stop
the despair and tragedy and pain that comes with being a hero, a champion,
or a sidekick of the forces of good. She has to make inroads against
everyone being eaten up by the sadness, or she'll just go.
Go something. Maybe
not crazy. Maybe just a flavor thereof.
"What do you
wish?" Charles asks in a voice that's begging her to come to dreamland
with him, and Fred is ready to go, she's about to go with him, but
she has to make a wish before the morning star goes out...
"I wish that
all our friends can go to sleep happy tonight," she murmurs, sinking
deep into the pillows and blankets of their shared bed.
Even friends who we
can't trust now, she adds silently before falling into REM
cycles and unconsciousness. Even the friends who we know aren't sleeping
in their own beds tonight.
IV.
Wesley and Lilah
He wonders if he'd
forgive her at all if she weren't beautiful.
If she didn't have
eyes that lit up like a six-year-old's on Christmas morning
while hiding a thousand secrets and lies. If she didn't have this smile
for him and only him that was half grin, half leer, and a dash of shy smile.
If she didn't wear Coco Chanel instead of Number Five behind her ears
because she knows that's where he likes to nuzzle and kiss.
If none of these
things were true, would he be stretched out on her bed watching
High Fidelity, resolutely not talking about the part where she played
him and he bitched her out like this was a normal urban romance and not
two people blindly fumbling with razor blades?
The question answers
itself, really.
It's how his hand
looks against the curve of her neck where it meets her shoulder.
It's the way she can
practically sing his name in the throes of a third orgasm.
It's the feel of her
silk blouses, how they slide underneath his hand before
he undoes the buttons and kisses skin that's almost as soft. She always
tastes sweet, even after a long day among the evil and poisonous. It's
not a flavor he can place--he's not naive enough to say she tastes like
vanilla or green tea or flowers--but he likes her skin well enough to survey
every square inch of it with his tongue.
And Lilah is
ignoring him in favor of the movie.
"How many times
have you seen this?" he asks her petulantly. She's placidly munching
popcorn--Wesley and Lilah do domestic, with the folded laundry, microwave
popcorn, and four remotes to prove it--and she holds up six fingers
silently in response. Lilah doesn't like to talk during movies and this
might be her favorite. He doesn't know. "Isn't that a *bit*
obsessive?"
"Shut up,"
she says amiably. "It could be Bridget Jones' Diary. I'm in that sort
of mood."
Wesley idly notices
that her nails are starting to fray around the edges. Without
even bothering to speak to her, he takes her left hand and scrutinizes
the manicure's decay.
Interesting. Very
unlike Lilah. Two hangnails on this hand alone. The thumbnail
is ragged, as if it's been bitten or broken off, and remains defiantly
unfiled, as if she doesn't care or hasn't had time to notice. It's
a message, it's a warning, and it's driving Wesley mad.
Something's getting
to her. He wants it to be him.
"Stop it,
Wes," she says, slightly annoyed. "You're getting in the way of movie
time."
"Which precedes
apocalypse time and follows betrayal time, I suppose," he replies
glibly, not letting go. "I still don't know why I'm here."
"Liar,"
she says, wavering between affectionate and annoyed. "You're here because
you don't know how you feel about anything, least of all me."
Lilah has a point.
It's become habit over the past four or five months to end
up in bed with her at the end of every day. When he doesn't know what else
to do, he goes to her for the kind of kisses that melt polar ice caps and
corrupt innocents--to say nothing of the sex.
His zero point is
her body and that's too disturbing to think of.
"What if I'm
here because you're beautiful?" he asks, kissing a knuckle gently.
That little comment
earns him a brief smile and a little shiver, though John
Cusack gets more of a response screaming to Catherine Zeta-Jones on the
television.
"Charlie, you
fucking bitch! Let's work it out!" he screams in the pouring rain.
Wesley's been that guy, has a feeling he's going to be that guy again,
and is grateful it never rains in Los Angeles. Also, no one would blame
Wesley if he called Lilah a fucking bitch, not even Lilah herself. She
prides herself on it, after all.
"It's better
than you being here because you love me," she says, apparently resigned
to her late-night/early-morning movie being marred by the chattering
moron. Wesley appreciates that.
"What if,"
he murmurs, leaning in to smell her skin and Chanel and hair. "What
if I come back because I don't want you to look at anyone else the way
you look at me?"
Lilah arches against
him, a bitter little smile on her face that he can't quite
see but imagines is firmly in place. And then she yawns.
"Then you're
just fooling yourself with insane man logic," she murmurs sleepily.
"But that's okay. Wouldn't be the first time."
And is that part of
her beauty? that she can make him furious and ashamed and
desperate with sleepy wit? That after being on her feet in high heels for
eighteen hours, she can aim and hit the target dead center? Or is it part
of something in him, the angry dark thing in him that can't just accept
Angel's half-assed apology and go home, that feeds on the anger she breeds
in him?
How can she do what
she does to him, the anger and the tenderness and it must
be the beauty, because there's nothing else, no great hidden depths to uncover
in this? How?
"Look at
me," he whispers. "Lilah?"
She's asleep. He
didn't even get in a retort to the insane man logic comment
and now he's stuck watching John Cusack mope in the Americanized version
of a Hornby novel. Wesley supposes it could be worse, in an objective
sense. Plenty of men would be delighted to be watching the telly at
dawn with a beautiful woman asleep in their arms and on that level, Wesley
is perfectly content.
If it were only that
level he had to worry about, though at six-thirty in the
bloody morning, he's about to give up worry and follow his lover's practical
example and fall asleep. But it gnaws at him, the stupid questions,
the doubt, and especially the creeping knowledge this is going to
kill them both.
What's her angle?
Did she mean it about not playing him if he trusted her? Does
he even want to trust her? Hell, why *is* he here? Angel's on dry land,
Cordelia's in the proper dimension again, everything's good, and he should
get the hell out of--
"Go to
sleep," Lilah moan-growls-orders out of a half-opened eye. "Six forty-five
in the goddamn morning, Wes."
He looks down and
the simple part of it takes over. Beautiful woman in arms,
big comfortable bed in a posh LA loft, and complete exhaustion. This is
as good as it gets for the Wesley of today. He can always sleep now and think
later.
It's not as if the
end will happen between now and when they wake up.
End.
Contact
Jennifer-Oksana
http://www.imjustsayin.net/jennyo