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TITLE: Mockingbird, Part 8
AUTHOR: Tesla and dessert_first
RATING:
SPOILERS:
CHARACTERS: Angel/Anya, Xander/Cordelia, Fred/Gunn/Wesley, Spike/Buffy, Tara/Willow, Gwen/Lilah, Lindsey/Darla
DISCLAIMERS:
SUMMARY:
NOTES: Set in Anya!World.Very AU. In this universe, Darla wasn't re-vamped, Anya got the visions in our previous episodes.
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"So, anyone up for a guy's night out? Darla and the kid are gonna be bonding tonight at her place, but we could shoot some pool. Head over to my apartment and have some beers. Watch some of those movies you like."
Xander's eyes gleamed. "Okay, since Cordy kinda wants to talk to Batman. Hey, finish the Red Dwarf marathon?"
Lindsey rolled his eyes. "Sure. Finish the Red Dwarf marathon. Looks like your girl's gonna be playing comfort-the-vampire tonight, anyway."
"Somebody say 'Red Dwarf'?" Gunn asked.
Lindsey grinned. "You're in, man. But don't come near the X-Box unless you're looking for a beating."
"In your dreams, cowboy!" Gunn snorted.
"Wes? Pathetic men's night in?" Xander offered.
"Oh, I don't know... I should probably..." Wesley made a vague gesture in Angel's direction.
"Well, the dead guy ain't coming over to my place." Lindsey declared. "Even lawyers gotta draw the line somewhere." He looked over at Angel, slumped in an overstuffed chair, staring morosely into his mug of blood. "Poor bastard."
They all nodded somberly.
"So, sevenish?"
"Great!" Xander said. "Um, are you sure Darla's gonna be safe all alone with the super-strong Would-Be Avenger?"
Lindsey shrugged on his jacket. "It's cool. I gave her the tranquilizer darts."
::
Cordelia came up to the roof, wrapping her pashmina around her. "Thought I'd find you up here, Tall, Dark and Broody," she said. "Gosh, it's like the old head-splitting vision days, huh? You up on the roof thinking gloomy dark thoughts, me, looking fabulous on amazingly little money. Not that I need to watch my spending anymore, thank heavens! It was all like some kind of nightmare."
Angel half-turned from the parapet, and smiled at her. She held out her hand to him, and he helped her step over the broken brick of the hotel roof.
"You and stilettos," he said. "You could take out demons with that heel, if you aimed at the right spot."
"Yeah," she said, nudging against his side until he put an arm around his shoulders, "And who's fault is it that I know the right spots?"
"Mine," Angel chuckled. "So, what can I do for you, Miss Chase?"
"You know what I want, big guy. You need to make up with Anya. It's upsetting the family. They don't know what to do, with Mom and Dad fighting. They're afraid that there's going to be a divorce." He didn't respond. "Angel, you're not laughing. Is there going to be a divorce?"
"I don't know," Angel said, his voice lower than usual. "She won't talk to me. She won't tell us where she is. I've been over the city with a fine-tooth comb, but I still can't find out. She's called Wesley with three visions."
"Oh, hon," Cordelia said, and shook him a bit. "Anya loves you."
"Are you really certain about that?" Angel asked, not smiling.
"Well, she tried to step out of the way so you could go back to Buffy. I have to say, I wouldn't have done that for Xander. Someone else gets her mitts on my boyfriend over my dead or undead body."
"That wasn't going to happen," Angel said. "Me and Buffy. I told Anya that."
"Yeah, and you told her that was because of Spike, you big idiot. So of course, Anya think's she's second-best, runner-up. And frankly, if you don't think she is the best, much less convince her of that, then you deserve to lose her."
Angel squeezed Cordelia and kissed the top of her head. "I miss you," he said. "Not that I want you to have the visions, again, but I miss--this. You telling me stuff I don't wanna hear."
Cordelia hugged him back. "Yeah? Well, better me than Xander."
Angel released her. "What, Xander wanted to tell me off?"
"No, Xander wants to stake you if break Anya's heart."
Angel nodded. Then, his eyes narrowed. "You don't think she's in Sunnydale, do you?"
Cordelia shuddered. "God, no. She hates that place even more than I do. Besides, Dawn would have ratted her out, already." She punched his bicep. "Hey, come on. Let's go and let you kill something---that always made you feel better!"
Angel opened the stairwell door. "Fine, but what about Xander?"
"Oh, he and the guys are getting together for some kind of uber-manly bonding action." :
"Hey! Great timing." Lindsey waved the guys in, one hand on the phone. "What do you want on the pizza?"
"Man, as long as it's cooked, I don't give a damn." Xander grinned and headed into the kitchen with their beers.
"Artichokes for me!" Gunn said. "And if they have jarred black olives, I'll take those too. If they're from a can, forget it."
They all looked at him.
"What? I live with a stuffy Englishman."
Wesley crossed his arms. "I assure you he came that way."
Gunn sighed. "I was cool before I met y'all."
::
"No, the Health and Fitness section is my baby, and I'm telling you that pilates is so last year!" Cordelia snapped into her cell phone. She pointed her single-action cross-bow at a running vamp, who sheered off, straight back into Angel's stake. "Listen, that low-carb crap is out, too. Don't make me have to put on my shoes and come down there." She closed the cell phone. "Well, Anya's been driving them nuts at the magazine, so she's fine," Cordelia said. "Can't say the same for the features editor."
Angel shook dust from his jacket. "Do they know where she's staying?"
"That's the weird part, she's still getting her mail at the Hyperion," Cordelia said. "You have a schmutz on your nose."
"Anya always tells me that," Angel said gloomily.
The phone rang again. "Really," Cordelia said crossly, "how hard is it to write a fitness article? Get a buffed guy, take off his shirt, and take some pictures." She flipped the cell phone open. "I don't want to hear a damned thing about carbs!"
:
"See, if you do fewer, slower reps, you get better definition," Shirtless, Lindsey pointed at his torso. The others looked on, interested, somehow also having lost their shirts in order to prove their points.
"I don't know, man. I mean, it looks great, but if I don't get in enough cardio, I'm all over the place." Xander gazed thoughtfully at his own bared abs.
"Well, you got more of a swimmer's thing going, anyway, with those broad shoulders," Gunn observed. He flexed experimentally. "Me, I gotta put in the time with the weights so I don't get some demon kicking my ass too badly. It don't help to be living with the two gaping chasms, either. They got those crazy metabolisms going on."
They all looked at Wesley, mid-bite of his fourth slice of pizza. "Well," he said. "I, ah, do try to eat enough complex carbohydrates, you know. And, uh, I tend to work on... that is to say, I often..."
"My boy gets most of his workouts on the job," Gunn said, clapping a hand on Wesley's bare shoulder.
"And in the bedroom," Wesley added helpfully. "And, oh! I very often work on honing my hand to eye coordination."
Xander and Lindsey frowned.
"Darts," Gunn elaborated.
:
"I should be happy," Angel said, putting down his cup. "I mean, she's too literal, you can't risk using a metaphor around her. She keeps changing everything around me, my clothes, my car, my---my happiness clause!---and she never asks me, first!"
"And it would make you happier to be moldering away in that basement with all the bricks and the sewers, and me with the crippling visions?" Cordelia asked sharply. "Because as for me, I'm glad she took on you and the visions." She bit into a cookie. "You'd run off anyone else, you know."
"That stuff I said about missing you?" Angel asked. "I don't, any more. And what is this, I'm drinking? It's not coffee."
Cordelia smiled. "Soy decaf latte," she said. "You should pay more attention to what's under your nose." ::
"Oh, sure, she's got a lot of great qualities. I mean, a lot" Xander waved his arm expansively, gasping as a few cold drops landed on his stomach. So far, he'd managed to keep the most of the beer inside the bottle rather than on Lindsey's expensive carpeting. "But man, she is sooooo hot! I gotta be the luckiest man on Earth. On any Earth. Shrimp, prawns, lobsters, mongoose, I don't care."
"I think the plural would be 'mongeese'," Lindsey commented, taking a swig of his own beer.
"And still with the not caring," Xander said. "'Cause I'm all about the love."
"Yeah, well tonight you're all about the beer, bro," Gunn said, wandering through as he inspected Lindsey's CD collection. "I thought you said you were gonna get that Nava CD?"
Lindsey shrugged. "It's on order. Put on somethin' else."
"You leave it up to me, you know I'm gonna go with my girl."
"Bring her on, man." Lindsey saluted him with his beer bottle. "Maybe I'll teach you how to dance to it."
"Oh, I don't think so, Oklahoma Kid. Next time we hear Garth Brooks playing, you go shake your groove thing. With Celia Cruz, I lead."
The stereo started pumping out the vibrant strains of salsa, prodding Lindsey to his feet. "Oh, yeah," he said. "You tell 'em, Celia. Your stuff never gets old." He looked at Gunn, standing bare-chested by the stereo, already swaying to the music. "All right, you can lead. But just for the first dance."
Part 9
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