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TITLE: Roommates, Part One
AUTHOR: Tesla
RATING: PG
SPOILERS:Angel season one
CHARACTERS: Angel/Cordelia, Cordelia/Wesley friendship
DISCLAIMERS: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
SUMMARY: The events that summer after the office blew up
NOTES: For Tracy, who bought me; Starlet, who is my hero; and Snow and Jennifer, who read everything I write.
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1.
Angel's car smelled of smoke, because he had what was left of his
possessions in the trunk. He'd gone back inside, somehow, and
got some weapons and his other pair of boots. The salvaged stuff from their
office was in her dining room in a couple of file boxes.
Cordelia couldn't really care, because despite the loss of her
Prada flats---okay, that did sting---Wesley and Angel weren't
blown up or burned in the explosion, and nothing could have replaced
them. Angel could, of course, replace the shoes, and she fully
planned on having him do so.
But the car still smelled rank.
Cordelia and Wesley were discharged from the hospital on the same evening,
which made it easier for Angel to take them both home. "How long did
the doctor say for you to rest, Cordelia?" Wesley asked, turning stiffly
in the front seat.
"At least a week. They pumped a lot of drugs in me, and I bet he still
thinks I was having a bad acid trip."
"Psychotic episode, actually," said Wesley, smiling.
"I told them we thought someone had spiked your coffee," Angel said,
his head raised to the rear view mirror. Cordelia could tell that he was
looking at her, but, of course, she couldn't see his eyes.
"That was good thinking, since the coffee pot burned up," she said, impressed.
"Very sneaky. I must be rubbing off on you."
Angel snorted, and pulled up to the curb in front of Wesley's apartment.
Cordelia leaned forward and kissed Wesley on his unburned cheek. "Don't get
on that bike. Take a taxi. If you need anything, call us, since I have a baby-
sitter. Angel, weren't you going to give Wesley some money for taxis?"
Angel was already outside the car and opening the passenger door. "I was going
to be discreet about it," he said, gently taking Wesley's arm and helping him
out. "Cordy---no---wait--"
Cordelia was already scrambling out of the rear seat. She had a sudden head
rush, and leaned against the car. "Whoo. Dizzy."
Angel took her upper arm in an ungentle grasp and steered her into the
seat. "Don't move. I'll be right back."
"Yeah, you're discreet," she said, rubbing her arm. "Call me, Wesley, to see
if we're still alive! Well, if I'm still alive."
Wesley turned and grinned at her behind Angel's back. Which, now that she
thought about it, was pretty nice.
Angel came back in a few minutes, and got in the car without speaking.
"So, did he have any food in there?" she asked, poking him in the arm.
"No, but he ordered Chinese. He'll come over tomorrow." Angel started
the engine and put the car in gear. "I'll go get your dinner after I take you home."
"Blood, too," she said. "If you're going to stay for a week, I don't
want you looking at my neck." At his frown, she said, "I joke, yet you don't
laugh. Well, it'll take time before I'm back at full quip strength."
"I think you're doing just fine," he said. "You know, David Nabbitt offered
to hire a nurse for you, and I started thinking, maybe I should have done
that, rather than impose---"
"Are you crazy? A nurse? With Dennis?" she yelped.
"Oh," Angel said. "Would he be a problem?"
"Well, I'd have to pretend he wasn't there, because a nurse will tell my doctor,
'That girl's still psychotic,' if I don't. Besides, where will you stay? And don't
tell me you'd rather stay with Wesley than me and Dennis!" She summoned
up what she thought of as the killer pout. "Fine. You'd rather be reading moldy old
books and brewing tea with him, and I thought you could help me move my
couch since you have the super-strength, and ---" she ended on a pathetic,
breathless note.
His shoulders were hunched. "Okay, okay, I'll stay. I'll move your couch."
"And cook breakfast?"
"Oh, I knew there was more," he grumbled, but he didn't mean it. Angel
loved cooking. It was odd, since he almost never ate. Once in a while, he would
absent-mindedly crunch a triangle of toast or a strip of bacon. She thought of
how Xander always said, "Mm, bacon," like Homer Simpson.
She hadn't thought of Xander for a long time. How weird was that?
Cordelia wouldn't admit it, but the sedatives and psychotropic meds had made
her feel a little strange.
She nearly went to sleep over the soup and sandwich Angel had brought her,
and didn't realize it until he was pulling her out of the kitchen chair and propelling
her to her bedroom. "I'll clean up," he said firmly, and she had gone to sleep
listening to him washing her dishes. The ones that had been in the sink when
she left for work, that last day in the office, she remembered with horror, with
the burned spaghetti sauce all crusted in the pan.
Oh, well. Vampire. Not going to go to sleep, soon, anyway.
The visions were flickering in and out of her dreams, almost enough to wake her
up. Then, the dreams changed, and she was back in Sunnydale. Only, this time,
Xander was impaled on the rebar, and she couldn't get to him. He lay with his
hand curved around the bar, bleeding, and he looked up at her and kept
apologizing. "I'm so sorry, Cordy," he said, his eyes wide. "I'm so sorry."
Then he exploded into ash.
"Xander!" She said, sitting up in bed.
It wasn't a vision. Her head didn't hurt.
"Cordy?" Angel's voice was very soft, outside her closed bedroom door. If
she wanted to, she could pretend she was still asleep. She started to tell
him she was fine, it was just a dream, but when she opened her mouth, a sob
came out instead of words.
The door opened, "Cordy?" He came into the room, the soft light from the
living room lamp falling across the foot of her bed. "Did you have a vision about
Xander?"
She wiped her eyes with the corner of the sheet. "No, a dream about old stuff."
Angel sat down beside her, and smoothed her hair from her forehead. "Old stuff?"
"Yeah, I dreamed he got impaled instead of me. Then he got dusted." She hitched
up a pillow and leaned back. "I really loved him, you know. And then when I found
him with Willow---it broke my heart." Her voice broke
"I remember. You almost got killed." He put his hand, palm up, on her knee, and
she put her hand in his. He squeezed it.
"It hurt so badly that I wished I had died," she said. "I wished Buffy had never come
to Sunnydale." His grip tightened.
"Well, I would never have come to Sunnydale, and we wouldn't have met, so
maybe that wasn't such a bad thing to wish," he said, his thumb rubbing over the
back of her hand, over the bruise from the I.V. needle.
"Well, my Daddy would still not have paid his taxes, and I'd still be here, only I'd be
in that roach motel of an apartment instead of here with Dennis---and you."
Angel half-smiled. "Not sorry, then? Even after last week?"
"Hey, buster, not every girl has two dead roommates! And the visions---sure, they're
no picnic, but the Powers let me have them for a reason. Even if I could get rid of
them, I wouldn't---you're not getting rid of me that easily."
"I don't want to get rid of you," he said, putting her hand back on the covers. He
bent, and, after a fractional hesitation, kissed her forehead. "Go back to sleep, Cordy."
She slid down under the coverlet, smiling.
2.
The next evening was nice and mild, so Cordelia talked the guys into going to
the beach. "If I don't get out of the apartment, I'm going to scream," she said. "And
you know I can scream."
So here she was on a blanket, on the sand, watching Wesley drink tea from a Thermos,
and Angel watch the crowd on the tiny boardwalk.
"I'm going to get an ice cream cone," she announced, and got her feet under her.
Predictably, the big brooder looked up. "I'll get it. What flavor?"
She narrowed her eyes. "I wanted to see the flavors. Surprise me." She handed him a
couple of dollars, and she and Wesley watched him walk off. No doubt, she was with two
guys who had no clue as to what "casual wear" meant.
"I bet he gets me vanilla," she said, sitting back down on the edge of the blanket.
"I'm still researching, " Wesley said in his quiet voice, "but, you know, in a strange way,
I'm not as concerned about him as I was before---" he coughed.
"Wolfram and Hart attacked us? I was thinking the same thing. Who knew that he didn't
need a puppy, when he had us?"
"I think we were wrong. Angel was connected to the world all along, we just didn't realize
it," Wesley said. "I must say, when I woke up and saw Gunn looming over me, I didn't
know what was happening. Gunn said that Angel was extremely worried."
"I would have thought pissed off," Cordelia said. She smiled. "He did cut off that lawyer's hand
to get the scroll." She batted her eyes. "Kind of super-hero movie-ish."
"Yes, Angel's very territorial. I didn't realize that I was part of the territory," Wesley said.
Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. We're his family. You and I." She wriggled her
toes in the sand. "Which is kind of sad, actually."
"What's sad?" Angel said, behind her.
She twisted her head to look up at him. "You are," she said. He was
smirking, and she took the ice cream suspiciously. In the half-light from the boardwalk,
she couldn't see the color plainly. She took a cautious lick. "Peach," she said, surprised.
"That's right," he said, sitting down between them, and stretching out on his
back. He looked up at her, innocently. "You thought I'd bring you vanilla?"
She held the cone over his shirt. "This whole super-hearing and super-smelling thing----
so unfair."
"Hey, don't drip---"
"Oops. Too late."
Angel sat up, frantically dabbing at his shirt front.
"Psych," Cordelia said, and slurped a bite of ice cream.
Wesley started laughing, and had to hold one hand on his ribs.
"Yes, I so got you," she crowed. "I rule, and you da fool!"
Angel very deliberately tilted the ice cream towards him and took a long lick.
Cordy had to swallow hard. Down, girl. It was just Angel. Vampire, dead, your boss?
"Oh, great, now it's got vampire cooties. Wesley, don't vampires have
cooties?"
"I may have to research it," Wesley said, straight-faced. "It's possible."
"Look, you got something on my cone!" she said, examining it. "Great."
"I did not---" Angel began. He took it from her hand and started to look at it.
Just as she snaked her hand out to shove it in his face, he pushed the ice cream
in her face.
The entire scoop fell into her cleavage.
Wesley stopped laughing.
Cordelia looked up, with an awful expression, but at the sight of the guys' horrified
faces, she burst out laughing. With two fingers, she flicked the lump of melting
ice cream out onto the sand. "You two are pathetic. And, might I remind you, Mr. Destiny and
Restitution, that payback's a bitch and so am I?" She licked her fingers, smiling
inwardly.
Oh, yeah, she still had it.
3.
Even in the horrorific visions and the mind-bending pain, Cordelia had known that Angel
was with her. She just couldn't see him, push past the sights, the smells, the agonies of
the lost and the endangered, to get to him.
She could hold his hand, though, and she knew that an infinitely long amount of time
passed in the terror between the time he first held her hand, and when he returned.
The second time, though, the visions faded, and she was able to see his strained,
pale face above her. Then she felt a second, warmer hand, and Wesley, burned and
bandaged in a wheel chair, sat holding her right hand.
The nurses said that her boss had barely left her side, except to go check on Wesley.
He had said he was family. She had teased Wesley out of his sentimentality, but she
kind of got a lump in her throat, too. Angel was family, and the prophecy said he was
going to die.
If someone had appeared to her during Angelus' reign in Sunnydale, and told Cordelia
that she'd be sniffling at the idea of him dying, she'd have asked them if she could have
some of their drugs.
Now, she sat up in bed, and reached for the clock.
One in the morning. Well, she knew someone else who would be awake.
She pulled on a long sweatshirt over her pajamas, and went out into the living room.
Angel was sprawled on the couch, head propped on his fist, watching an old movie.
He had part of the newspaper under his elbow. In the flickering blue light of the
television, he looked like an ordinary guy, sitting at his girlfriend's apartment.
Whoa. Where did that come from?
"Bad dreams again?" he asked, raising his head.
"Sorta," she said.
Angel scooped the newspaper up and made room for her to sit down. He looked
at her, and swiped his thumb along her temple. "You've been crying again," he said.
"Wanna tell me about them? Dennis, can you get---thanks." A box of tissue floated to his
hand. She closed her eyes and let him wipe her face.
"Were you dreaming about Xander?" he asked.
"No," she said, opening her eyes in surprise. "I think I forgave him a long time ago...
when he bought me a dress for the prom. He didn't tell anybody that I was working,
that my family had lost their money. That's when I knew I couldn't hate him any more."
She crossed her legs under her on the cushion. "Xander was sorry. He begged
me to forgive him a hundred times, but I couldn't. But I haven't felt angry at him
for a long, long time. I think it has something to do with being a new person, now.
Not the same old one I was before I went to the hospital."
"I think you were changing for a long time before that," Angel said. His arm was
across the back of the couch behind her, and she felt his fingers pet her hair.
"People can't help but change."
"Even you change," she said, smiling. "You're not so much with the broody, now."
"Well, I lost the bat-cave, didn't I? Isn't that what you and---Doyle---called it?"
She tilted the back of head against his stroking hand. "You heard us?"
"I couldn't help but hear the two of you, sometimes," he said. "I still think of him."
"I do too. But Wesley's pretty good to have around." She pulled the cushion out
from under her knees. "I'm not sleepy. You mind if I stay out here for a while?"
"Nope," Angel said.
Cordelia put the cushion on his knees, and lay down on it. She felt Angel's
hand lightly stroking her hair. "That feels good," she said, her eyes closing.
The next thing she knew, it was morning and she was in her bed.
Who knew that Grumpy McGrump, the mayor of Grumpytown, could be so sweet?
4.
After the first few days of Angel's stay in the apartment, Cordelia realized that
he wasn't taking his turn sleeping in her bedroom. She was vastly irritated.
She didn't need to lie in bed any more, and in fact, had most of her energy.
back. It only made sense that he slept while she was
up, because, hello? Vampire? Creature of the night? And besides,
when she had stayed at his place, he'd given up his bedroom to her.
After she'd made him feel boorish if he didn't, of course.
He sat on the couch, at ten A.M., his eyelids closing like he was
some large kid past his bedtime, and only murmured in response
when she said anything.
"So Wesley'll be over Wednesday after he gives birth to the demon
spawn," she said, briskly, sitting down beside him and patting his
knee. "Then we'll drown 'em, okay?"
"Mmph," Angel agreed. After a moment, he said, "Huh?"
"Angel. Stop being a pain. It makes me tired to see you. Go
to bed."
"What about Wesley?" he asked, sitting straighter.
"Wesley will be over on Wednesday morning, because he has to
be get his stitches out today. If I have a vision first, you can call him.
I want to enjoy my time off, and you're making me feel tired.
Go. Lie. Down."
With a weary sigh, Angel stood up and went down the little
hall to her bedroom. She followed, suspicious. She heard the
mattress creak, heard two thumps--the boots--and silence.
After she took a load of laundry downstairs, she opened her bedroom
door a sliver.
He was lying on top of the covers, sound asleep and fully dressed.
She frowned to herself. Weird.
The next morning, she stripped the bed and asked Angel to help
her turn the mattress, which he did easily. She tossed the end
of a fresh sheet to him.
"Here, help me, since you're standing there," she ordered, in
her best bossy voice.
Smiling slightly, he helped her make up the bed, and his
corners were tighter than hers were. She smoothed the comforter
over the sheets. "I love fresh sheets on a bed."
Angel straightened up, and tossed the pillows back against the
headboard. "Cordy, you just got out of the hospital a few days ago. If
you want to---"
"Why don't you go to bed? Is the room not dark enough?" she
demanded. "It's your bedtime, Angel! Don't you like my bed?"
Angel looked like a deer caught in the headlights. "No! I
mean, yes, it's fine." He took a breath. "Why are we having
this conversation?"
"Because you're acting all uncomfortable and weird! I'm not
gonna molest you, if you go to sleep like a normal---person."
He sighed, so put upon. "Okay," he said.
At noon, Dennis helpfully opened her door so she could check.
Angel was a lump under the bedclothes. Snoring. Which was kind
of cute and cuddly for a vampire.
"I guess he has to get broody about something," she told Dennis.
Dennis shook the door a little before closing it, which didn't tell
her anything. "Maybe I should get a Ouija board."
5.
Things were as normal as they could be with Cordelia going on
auditions now and then, and the three of them running Angel
Investigations from her living room.
Then, a couple, no, three weeks later, Angel started the
weirdness again with not wanting to sleep, not wanting to go to
her bedroom.
This time, she felt embarrassed, and then, irritated.
Again. She waited until Wesley went home, and then sat down on the
couch with Angel. He raised his head, his finger on his place
in "The Fountainhead."
"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked bluntly. "That you don't
want to sleep in my sheets when I'm having my period?"
He blinked. "Not that you can do anything about it. It's
just a...vampire thing. Blood. You don't like thinking about
me, and what I...am."
"I can handle what you are," she said coolly. "You can't handle
what I am, which is, female. I'm not all, ew! Can't talk about
menstrual cycles! I did a tampon commercial!"
"I thought you didn't get that---"
"Well, I spent two hours holding a tampon and cooing like it
was made by Versace! I'm not thirteen! All you had to say was,
clean sheets!"
"Look, Cordy, the idea was to keep you from any going to
any trouble. I didn't want to get into it," he sighed, "and
yet, here we are."
They sat in silence, Angel looking back down at his book,
Cordelia looking at him.
"What?" he asked, not lifting his gaze.
"Me. Bleeding. Does it make you want to bite me?"
He closed the book. "No more than when you have a cut."
He looked straight into her eyes. "Makes me want to do other
things." He stood up, tossing the book on the couch where
he'd been sitting. "I'm going out." He snagged his coat
from the hall and was gone.
"Oh, that went well," she told Dennis.
He ruffled the pages of the book in reply.
"The Fountainhead? He reads the weirdest stuff."
6.
The next day, she had a vision as she was coming into
the living room. She had a brief instant of seeing
that Angel was back on her couch, before the seizure.
harbor/monster/beach/under the pier/sea monster/two horns/kids/three/tonight
She came back to reality, as she had so often, cradled in Angel's arms. She was weeping.
"I've got you," he said, smoothing the hair from her face. "Take a deep breath. Dennis, water?"
"Tonight, a monster is going to come out of the water, just under the pier. It has two horns,
and three teenagers are up for his next meal." She took a breath. "Right where we went
for ice cream when we got out of the hospital."
"Okay, Wes and I will get it tonight. Take these," he handed her two painkillers, and then held
the bottle of water to her lips. He smoothed her forehead with his palm, and pressed his lips
to the space between her eyebrows. "I hate how you suffer," he said.
She sighed, and nestled her head on his shoulder. He picked her up and carried her into
her bedroom. Dennis had already pulled the blinds and curtains shut, and he turned on the
bedside lamp.
When Angel bent to lay her down, she clung to him. "Stay," she said. "Just until I go to
sleep. You've been up all night."
"Wesley--"
"Dennis will let him in," she said. "Please, Angel. It bothers me."
"Okay," he said, and she let go of his shirt. He bent and untied his boots, and then lay
down beside her.
She put her head on his shoulder, pulling up the comforter over them
both.
"Just so you don't worry." His voice was already sinking.
"I know," she sighed, feeling his skin warm under the cloth of his shirt. She put her hand on his
chest, and his arm came around her.
"Because I don't enjoy snuggling up with you one bit," he said into her hair. He yawned.
"And you're not sleepy at all," she said, her eyes closed. She heard the bedroom door
click shut.
"Nmh-uh," he murmured.
They slept.
7.
Later that night, the sea monster was messily dead, and Angel was off with the car at
the all-night car wash. Wesley was cleaning his axe in the kitchen sink.
"That demon goo isn't corrosive, is it? I mean, yeah, ghost, but still---rental." Cordelia
still had a faint ache across her eyebrows. She drew her fingertips across her forehead,
remembering how she had awakened alone in bed, feeling unaccountably lonely.
Like she needed to be all pathetic crush-girl on her boss. Vampire, curse, undead.
Ignoring her question, Wesley sat down with his ax and paper towels. "Something
on your mind, Cordelia?"
"Yeah, actually, there is. Do you think it's possible for Angel to ever be perfectly happy
again?"
To his credit, Wesley didn't stop polishing the ax blade. "No, I don't. I think it's the
very nature of perfection to be ephemeral. Angel was in a completely different
set of circumstances in Sunnydale. Then, he had no friends, and he was completely
invested in his romantic relationship with Buffy. Now, there's...more. The possibility
of Shanshu, the work here, you, me, Gunn, Kate. Lindsey McDonald and the rest
at Wolfram and Hart; we all connect him to the world and he's concerned about it.
He thinks about people as individuals to help, instead of abstract humanity to save."
Cordelia didn't change her expression. Looking at him through her fingers,
she said, "Basically, I meant, would he go evil if---"
"Yes, yes, I understood. I don't think so." He looked up. "I wondered---he was so
distraught---hm."
She traced an invisible figure on the table top with her finger. "Funny that you and
I would be having this conversation, huh? After everything in Sunnydale?"
Wesley smiled, and covered her hand with his. "Believe me, as much as I admired
you then, it's nothing to how much I admire you now."
Cordelia thought she was going to cry. Again.
Dennis rattled the silverware in the dish rack.
"I think Dennis agrees," Wesley said, letting go of her hand and inspecting
the ax blade.
Cordelia sniffed. She leaned back and addressed the air. "What d'you think, Dennis?
Think Mr. Don't-put-that-in-the-dryer likes me? I mean, likes me as a girl and not a war buddy?"
The silverware rattled emphatically.
"Well, now it's conclusive,' Wesley said dryly. He raised one eyebrow at her. "War buddy?"
"We've been through the wars, haven't we? All the way from Sunnydale."
They heard Dennis open the front door.
"Hiya, Dennis," came Angel's voice. "Hey, guys? I got ice cream!"
"What could be more wholesome?" Wesley asked her.
"Oh, yeah," she said. "Just an all-American dead boy."
TBC
Roommates Part 2
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