Author's note: This is just a short Angel songfic that I'd been thinking of for a little while ever since I rediscovered Billy Joel. Dedicating it to Andy Hallett, for all the music and magic that he brought into our lives, for the four years that he spent playing 'The Host/Lorne' on Angel.
Wolfram and Hart got one of our champions too soon.
They all came to Caritas when the battle was over.
It had been a mighty showdown, of course, with the best of both crews pitching in to keep the Elder Hallett demon from rising out of the sewers and feasting on most of Los Angeles. Giles had found the portents of the event, (a variant on the Ascension, though the creature performing the ceremony hadn't been human,) and Willow had used both magic and computers to pinpoint where and when it would be happening - under Los Angeles, at midnight, on the schedule of a full moon and lunar eclipse.
But all of Buffy's friends together hadn't been able to fight the fight by themselves, so Buffy had called Angel, quickly explained the direness, and the staff of Angel Investigations had dropped what they'd been doing to do the cavalry ride thing. But neither what came before the battle nor the struggle itself was what people remembered. It was the victory party.
Lorne had been having a somewhat slow 4:30 in the morning, and the green of his skin was a little pale, but he was just as happy as anyone else to pitch in when one of his particular specialties - that of hospitality - was called for. Soon, Wesley was at one of the tables in the bar with Willow, Tara, and Giles, trying to explain something about the difficulties of consonant pronunciation in interdimensional transit spells, while Cordelia was introducing Fred and Gunn to Xander and Anya in one of the side booths. Or maybe Xander was doing the introducing of Anya, since Cordelia really hadn't known her very well before leaving Sunnydale.
And Buffy was flirting shamelssly with Angel at the very smallest of the circular tables nearest to the stage.
"It's good to see you," she insisted, taking his hand. "Really, it's been a long time, hasn't it?"
"Really less than two weeks," Angel insisted. "Since I heard that you were... were back to life, and we met halfway."
"Oh, right," she said, a little deflated. "THAT."
"Sorry."
"It's okay," she insisted without much feeling, and turned to pick up the nearest thing that she could use as a distraction. "What's on the menu?"
"Bad karaoke music," Angel muttered under his breath.
"No, I mean..." And at that point, Buffy realized that the little folded sheet of paper didn't indeed have anything to do with food or drink available for serving, but was a list of some popular songs that could be played by the music system.
"That one took me by surprise the first time, too," Angel explained, in an effort to make Buffy feel a bit better.
"Okay, then sing something," she said, passing the list to him.
"Oh, no, I... I really couldn't," he said. "Seriously. There's all kinds of bad things about the notion of me singing karaoke that you wouldn't want to..."
"*Sing for me,*" she insisted, giving him one of those Buffy stares that was somehow beyond his power to resist. "Come on, please."
And still he managed to hesitate, until spotting one particular title on the sheet. "Oh, what the hell... excuse me. Probably shouldn't tempt fate. Lorne? Hey, umm..."
"Oooh, good choice," Lorne said, stepping out from behind Angel unexpectedly. "Take the mike. It'll just be a moment to cue up that number on the system."
Angel looked over to Buffy, silently pleading for a reprieve, but she just urged him on without shame. So he stepped up onto the stage, trying to clutch onto the microphone stand and use it to steady himself, but after a few near accidents it was clear that he couldn't actually exert much force on the thing without knocking it over. Soon Lorne had finished his preparation, and canned harmonies and beats filled the club. Giles and Wesley were the first to look up, slightly puzzled.
"Oh, oh-oh-oh," Angel managed to mumbled into the mike without setting off too much feedback. "For the lah-lah-tah... Oh-oh-oh..."
"Oooh, that's not going to work," Lorne said, and the harmony faded away as he cut the karaoke track. "Guess you'll need some special help, huh Angelkins? I got this deluxe backup singer package from a friendly Willam demon, think it might be just the thing to try now. Will ya mind?"
Angel had no idea why Lorne was asking him this, but anything that he thought might help seemed to be worth a try. "Yeah, sure."
"Okay, just a moment." After a few more seconds, the music began again - but something seemed at the same time richer and more exotic about the instruments. When Angel started more confidently to go 'oh-oh-oh', he was nearly startled off his line by the sound of a chorus of alien voices, like animated weasels and demon polar bears and hell-kittens, singing the same line in unearthly but faintly sweet voices. "For the longest time, oh-oh-oh..." Nearly everyone in the club besides Angel and Lorne were laughing at the craziness of those voices, but Buffy had the biggest smile of all on her face.
For his own part, as weird as the backup voices were in detail, Angel actually felt reassured by their presence - like with such a team behind him, he couldn't manage to flub things entirely. He concentrated on trying to put as much of what he was feeling, what he had felt ever since he'd first met Buffy, first seen her, into the words of the song, and not beating himself up over every time he fell out of tune.
"If I said goodbye to you tonight.
There would still be music left to write."
Cordelia and Xander shared a look of old times, neither of them comfortable with where this might be leading, but there was no easy way for them to stop Angel now that he had started.
"What else could I do?
I'm so inspired by you!
That hasn't happened for the longest time."
'Such a long time,' Buffy breathed out, struck by the meaning of it. By Angel's own admissions to her, he had lived for hundreds of years without the best of love, without tenderness in his life - until she came into it. Could a bond like that really be ignored just because of a few obvious differences?
"Once I thought my innocence was gone.
Now I know that happiness goes on.
That's when you found me, when you put your arms around me.
I haven't been there for the longest time."
Lorne smiled a small smile to himself as he sat behind the karaoke board and listened, his empathic senses nearly overwhelmed by the emotional content that they were receiving. Angel hadn't asked for a reading, and hopefully Lorne wouldn't have to actually tell him what he was sensing.
"Oh, oh oh oh. For the longest time. Oh oh oh, for the longest time."
Giles, too, was staring up at the stage, disquieted by the song, but also conflicted. Was it just his own sentimental memories that were starting to make him feel as if it wouldn't be the worst thing for... no, come on. That was simply outrageous...
"I'm the voice you're hearing in the hall,
And the greatest miracle of all.
Is how you need me
And how I needed you too,
That hasn't happened in the longest time."
Angel was a little surprised that he could continue singing the words. The subjective effect of the music was hitting him at least as hard as anybody else, plunging him into a lake of memories of Buffy, of how he'd felt in every little moment that he'd spent with her, the leaving and the loving, and... and that moment of perfect happiness. Oh, no. Was he going to relive that so strongly that he would turn back into Angelus, right here among all of his closest friends and their loved ones?
"Maybe this won't last very long..."
The line of the verse changed at this point, and Angel muffed the melody very badly, so much that it seemed that his invisible demon backup singers were glaring at him crossly. He hardly noticed...
"But you feel so right, and I could be wrong.
Maybe I've been hoping too hard..."
It seemed, actually, that perfect happiness was not one of the things to be worried about, possibly because the moment had to be one of PURE and perfect happiness to de-activate the curse. Now, there was happiness, but there was also regret and a handful of other emotions mixed into what Angel was singing, and thus, what he was feeling.
"...But I've gone this far, and it's more than I hoped for.
Who knows how much further we'll go on?
Maybe I'll be sorry that you're gone.
I'll take my chances. I forgot how nice romance is... umm..."
Angel literally stumbled in the cheesy lyrics there -- okay, maybe not LITERALLY literally, but they made him stumble to a halt until Buffy cauight his eyes and silently urged him on.
"I haven't been there for the longest time.
Oh, oh oh oh. For the longest time. Oh-oh-oh, for the longest time."
It was all that Lorne could do to restrain himself from waving his arms like a conductor at this point.
"I had second thoughts at the start.
I said to myself, hold onto your heart."
Xander put his arm around Anya's shoulders and pulled her tight. Fred smiled awkwardly at Gunn, and then turned around to try and get a look at Wesley.
"Now I know the woman that you are.
You're wonderful so far,
And it's more than I hoped for."
Willow hadn't seen Xander and Anya from where she was sitting, but she put her hand on Tara's too, moved by the same impulse. Tara smiled, turned her palm up and gave Willow a little squeeze back.
"I don't care what consequence it brings.
I have been a fool for lesser things."
Somehow, Angel could tell that there were a lot of people in the group who were getting ready to sing out the final line in chorus with him. Perhaps irrationally, he felt frustrated at that. This was his song, to the very last, his thing that he was sharing with Buffy, and nobody else was entitled to join in. But then, how could he stop his friends, or Buffy's friends?
"I want you so bad; I think you ought to know that
I INTEND TO HOLD YOU FOR THE LONGEST TIME!"
Certainly, everbody who was in a relationship did sing out, and a few who didn't, though nobody was completely sure of the final tally. Angel oh-oh-ohhed through the final measures, finding them anticlimactic, and stared at Buffy. Then something drew his attention.
Lorne was quickly backing away towards the kitchen corridor.
As he stepped off in pursuit, Angel saw Buffy looking confused and making a 'no, come here' gesture. Maybe she even intended to kiss him when he got to the table. But - but as much as he wanted to, Angel couldn't. Not until he heard what a certain green-skinned demon had to say about his future.
"Just, just go back out there, Angel," Lorne tried gamely as he heard Angel step into the corridor behind him. "You can figure this out for yourself."
"No, I need you to tell me what you heard," Angel insisted.
"Well, I heard that you can't manage a true g-flat to save your life, and that you love her very much. Does that help?"
"You know what I mean..."
"THEN LISTEN TO THIS," Lorne said, whirling around and confronting Angel with a passion that wasn't quite answer. "There are times, Angel muffins, and I can't believe that you can't recognize such a rare and precious moment when it happens to you. There are moments when Music will speak the truth to ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN. I... I might have a more finely trained ear than most, but that doesn't mean that you need me to interpret a moment so obvious to you."
"I... then maybe I need you to tell me that I'm not just hearing what I want to hear," Angel whispered quietly, and it was the nervousness in that whisper that finally broke Lorne's resolve of silence.
"It's right, Angel buddy. You and Buffy. I'm not sure of all the details, but you'll make it work. It won't be perfect, it can never be perfect~~ in this sorry, imperfect world, but it'll be alright. You've been alone too long, and now you both need - nope, sorry, my mistake, those are the wrong lyrics, but you can guess the sentiment."
Angel just stared at Lorne for a long moment, and then it looked like he was working up the resolve to give the green demon a big bear hug. "No, actually, that's fine. Five large and I'll be fine." He extended a hand for Angel to slap.
Instead, Angel grabbed Lorne's hand and shook it firmly, then rushed off back to the main room of the club. "Actually, maybe you should bring Buffy somewhere private like my office to tell her - all of the friends and teammates out there might make things..." He trailed off, realizing that all of Angel's vampire hearing wouldn't help if he wasn't listening to what Lorne was saying.
"Good thing that using my gifts can be its own reward," he muttered under his breath. "Because otherwise sometimes I get no R-E-S-P-E-C-T."
And humming to himself, Lorne headed off to check on the expensive appetizers that Willow and Tara had ordered.
THE END.