Bored Warlocks

By Sweetprincipale

A moment in an AU Season Two. Darla isn't in the picture, Wes and Gunn are off on a mission. Cordelia and Angel have a perspective altering conversation. One short, simple, sweet moment, where the communication may not be the best, but the message comes across loud and clear.

Author's Note: Purely a diversion, no depth, no angst, hopefully just a smile. Warlocks aren't the only ones who get bored.

Nothing of Buffy or Angel belongs to me, except my sincere admiration. However, this story is all mine.

Bored Warlocks

"Angel Investigations. We help the hopeless."

"I hate the cell phone that you gave me. Any luck?"

"We're stymied on the demon guy, but we did find four similar killings in the last eleven months. All guys, all burned from the inside out. Did you find it?"

"Yeah. It's not an 'it', it's a 'she.'"

"A chick that burns? Are you okay?" Crackling. "Did sh- care- "

"Did she care about me?"

"Did she 'Carrie' you! Carrie, the movie, you know?"

"I can't hear you. Hello? Cord- "

"You must be going through a canyon."

"Cordelia, can you hear me?"

"I can hear you now. Are you back?"

"Yeah, I can hear you. You know, these things were definitely cooked up by a bored warlock."

From "She", Angel, First Season

"Take your phone with you." Cordelia reminded Angel as he began to leave their shared office.

"Why? They're not helpful."

"Angel." Cordelia's voice was warning.

"You can't use them in sewers. You can't use them in canyons, valleys, or caves. You can't use them in clubs or bars-"

"Yes, you can! We might have signal issues underground, where normal humans aren't typically going to hang out and get chatty, but on the surface-"

"I don't mean signal issues, I mean you can't hear anything over everyone else talking and that- that beat bass thumping - thing." Angel sputtered as he searched his desk. "And they're small. They're small, and they're black and you can never find them when you -"

"Coat pocket." Cordelia supplied, typing at her own desk, not looking up.

"Well- see?" Angel said as if that proved his point. He shrugged into his coat, grabbing it from the back of his chair. He shoved his hand in his pocket, didn't feel anything, and gave another aggravated grunt.

"Left pocket. You keep your keys on the right."

Sheepishly Angel felt in the other pocket, pulled out a few stakes, a blood covered bullet, and finally a phone. "Oh."

"It's probably only got a little bit of battery left, so don't stay out too long."

"I'm taking out a nest, not going off to party." He mumbled.

"Good- since you said you can't hear anything in a bar anyway." Cordelia stood, slammed a desk drawer and glared. "You act like you're still in seventeen-something, but it's three centuries later! Move with the times!"

"Maybe I'll just move." Angel glowered and headed to the lobby.

"Yeah- well... You're being even more antisocial and cranky than usual, Pal!" Cordelia shouted after him. Her only response was a slammed door. "What's biting him?" Cordelia muttered, and returned to her desk with a sad frown, now that he wasn't there to see it.

She's so pushy sometimes. Angel careened around corners and ran a red light. Why does she have to be able to get ahold of me every second? Isn't it bad enough she practically lives in the same hotel, works in the same office, has a desk- so close to mine- where I can see her smile when she shops online and thinks no one is watching, or the way she chews the top of her pen when she's trying to figure out how to pay the bills for another month?

He almost drove past his turn, lost in a happy reverie, made up of real memories, all the little moments he appreciated, but that he didn't want to show. Afraid of where too much "appreciation" could lead.

She's my friend. She likes being my friend. That's enough for me.

That's enough sitting here, being alone in the big... spooky... forty empty rooms and the site of enormous evil- hotel. Cordelia got up, and put her purse on over her shoulder, then paused. Wesley and Gunn were out of town, looking at someone's haunted beach house, and her apartment, while smaller, was just as lonely. Not to mention that place had also seen some pretty bad stuff. She stalled. She puttered.

"Should've gone with Angel." She looked at the clock. Almost two hours had passed. He could take out a nest in half an hour.

But he's not back yet.

He did have to drive there. Drive back. Slay the nasties. Avoid death. "I'll give him five more minutes..."

Five minutes later...

"Ah!" Angel slapped at his pockets as a shrill electronic buzzing sounded. "At least I didn't lose in the building." Still driving, he held up the phone, and pulled on the antenna, then peered at it. "Hello?"

Nothing.

"Wait, do I open the flap- no, I gotta press the button shaped like a phone."

Juggling the phone and steering with his elbow, he made the screen light up. "Hello?"

"He just hung up on me!" Cordelia shouted indignantly. "No one hangs up on me!" She furiously hit redial.

"I hate modern technology." Scrutinizing the phone again, Angel swerved from his lane. Horns erupted. "Same to you, buddy!" Angel shouted. "Hit the button with the phone on it- oh wait, red phone is hang up, green phone is answer. Why would they do that? Why not 'Answer' and 'Hang up'?"

"You hit the wrong button, huh?" Cordelia's voice asked.

"Wha?" He was completely startled by her voice. "Wait- when did you-"

"Tiny buttons. Big hands. I bet you hit the 'green phone' this time."

"Why aren't they labeled with words?" Angel ducked a passing angry gesture and turned down a side street.

"Again- tiny buttons." Cordelia sighed. "Why didn't you call me?"

"Why are you calling me? Is something wrong?" Angel countered.

"That's a two hour job for you, tops. What's the deal? I thought maybe you'd been pureed or something."

"You're clocking me now? This isn't an exact science, it's not a conveyer belt system. I'm killing demons, not working for Henry Ford!"

"Oh dear God. Henry Ford? Angel, pleeeeease read a copy of Popular Mechanics or something someday."

"Look, if you want me to be quicker on the job, it helps if you send me to the right address."

"What? I did! 1144 Carmen Ave. You get the numbers smacked into your brain real good with a psychic sledge hammer, you remember." She rubbed her pained temple, still aching after a vision.

"Then you just don't write well. After I spent twenty minutes looking for Cannon Ave., I spent another ten figuring out that there is no 1199 Carmen. This has happened before."

"You didn't hire me because of my handwriting!"

"No, or you wouldn't have gotten the job!" Angel informed her tersely.

Nothing was said in reply. Angel soothed himself with a long, cleansing "pseudo-breath". "Cordelia?... Cordy?..." He sighed. "Look, I was out of line. I would have hired you, even with the handwriting. But you seriously can't expect me to be on a minute by minute schedule when-"

Cordelia's voice suddenly blared back to life, loud and in mid-rant. "-Powers That Be, and God knows I could have always done adult diaper commercials if I was really desperate. It may have ruined my career, but this hasn't been so great for it either. At least the adult diapers wouldn't have come with the brain splitting headaches!"

"But- but-" Angel began to protest.

"Oh, now you wanna say something, Mr. Handwriting Expert?"

"I just apologized! I said I was out of line. And everything!" Angel said in confused injury, looking at the phone in bewilderment. "Argh! I just missed another turn."

"You apologized?" The anger had left her voice.

"Yes!"

"I didn't get to hear it." Cordelia said sorrowfully.

"I don't know what happened. I'm not in a sewer or a canyon." How did that happen? Oh, she laughs, but it could be warlocks. Our conversations were in two different dimensions.

"Are you near the tunnel complex?"

"Just passed it."

"Tunnels throw it off."

"I wasn't in them."

"I didn't say you were, but for some unknown reason, whenever we're near the tunnels, we-"

"I told you, cell phones were cooked up by bored warlocks." Angel snapped.

"You always have to blame magic, don't you? It couldn't be that you won't read the manual, or listen to me or Wesley when we try to explain how it works, for like the billionth time?"

He said nothing. Cordelia counted to five. "Did you lose signal, or are you not speaking to me?" If he wasn't speaking to me- how would he tell me that he wasn't speaking to me? "Angel?... Angel, I know it's hard to live in a world so different from the one you were raised in." Cordelia's voice softened. "You know we're only trying to help you. I think you're doing really well, most of the time. If you'd just learn about inflation, we could-"

"-and that's how computer chips were invented! I bet you didn't know that, did you?"

"Wait- what?" Cordelia's head jerked away from the phone in surprise.

"Science and magic go hand in hand."

"Holy dropped signals." Cordelia sighed. "I have no idea what you just said. And I'm guessing you couldn't hear me. Which is okay, 'cause I wasn't very nice."

"You? Not nice?" Angel's laughter died off with a crackle.

Now fairly sure he wasn't able to hear her, Cordelia reminded him of a few character flaws of his own. "So sometimes I'm not nice. At least when I'm 'evil' all I do is snap and eat all the doughnuts. You kill people."

"Can you hear me? Cordy!" Angel's voice bellowed in her ear.

"Ow! Yes, you're back, loud and loud. Look, I know you're safe, that's all I was freaking about. We can stop playing cell phone roulette. I'm gonna go home."

"It's two in the morning." Angel reminded her with a surge of unease in his gut. He had just seen a half dozen bodies- three of them girls about Cordy's age. It was a powerful reminder what could happen in this city after dark. "You have a room at the hotel. Why don't you just-"

"Angel? Did you hear me? I said I'm going home!"

"I know! I said don't!" He called back.

"You did? Why, what's wrong?"

"It's late and not safe. Wait 'til I get there, I'll make sure you get home without anyone bothering you."

"That's so sweet. And last century."

"Cordelia?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"Cordy?"

"I'm here! I said 'that was sweet'! You're sweet!"

Angel recoiled from the sudden burst of static. "What's wrong with your feet? Are you hurt?"

"You are sweet!"

"Oh. Um. Thank you. You're sweet. Too." He coughed awkwardly. "Why am I sweet?"

She suppressed a groan. "For caring about me, making sure I get home."

"You could just spend the night there."

"Hey, would you mind if I spent the night here?"

Angel groaned. She obviously couldn't hear him. Again. Cell phones. Witch craft. Witches were as bad as warlocks half the time. "I should have eaten that entire coven in London..."

"Excuse you?"

"Oh, great, that you heard, but not when I ask you to spend the night."

"You ... asked me to spend the night?" Cordelia felt a curiously pleased sensation run through her stomach. She knew he meant that phrase completely innocently, but it was just- just nice the way he offered. Sweet and considerate. He showed all that in his hero stuff, but in day to day life- rare as a falling star or finding a cheap Gucci bag that wasn't a knock off.

"Right. As in, you - you have a room there. Sort of."

"Right. Totally."

"So... should I take you home?"

"I can stay here."

"Cordy?"

"I'll stay. Angel? I can hear you, can you hear me?"

"Damn phone. Damn technology." He muttered, and sighed. "Cord?" Another deep frustrated sigh. "She should stay. She's the heart and soul of everything. Not to mention the eyes... CORDELIA?"

In the office, Cordy, beamed. Should I tell him I heard? He'd go on a mission to Tibet or something, out of sheer embarrassment. "ANGEL?" She hollered back, as if she'd been unable to hear him.

"Finally! Stupid phones. Look, it's late, why not stay over tonight?"

"Good idea."

"I'll be there in about ten minutes. Why don't you go to bed? Now that you know I haven't been 'pureed'."

"Nah, I'll wait up. What's ten minutes between friends?"

That made him grin. But speaking of friends. "Uh-huh. Did Wes call to check -" Angel's voice died to a muffle.

"I'm so calling our service provider tomorrow." Cordelia pressed one hand over her ear and the other pushed the phone more firmly against her cheek.

"It's not the signal! It's the phone!" Which makes no sense. But going over a pothole, Angel had lost his grip on the small black object, and it had slid onto the floorboard of the passenger side. While he sounded muffled and grainy to Cordelia, with his sensitive hearing, she was coming through clearly.

"Is this another thing where you can't hear me, or you can hear me, but I can't hear you?"

"The second one- but how would you know?"

"But how would you let me know, right?" Cordelia said to herself, unable to hear his reply. She laughed, mocking her own question before trying once more. "Angel?

"I'm right h- whoa!" Angel had forgotten they were doing construction on this route to the hotel, and he suddenly was confronted with three lanes becoming one.

The backdrop of traffic muffled Angel further. Assuming they were again cutoff, Cordelia considered just hanging up. For some reason, she didn't.

"You know... it's kinda nice to have a friend to talk to on the phone. I used to spend like two hours a night on the phone in high school. When I wasn't shopping or at the Bronze. I didn't realize it until just now, but I missed it."

Angel, now at a standstill in a small traffic jam, managed to reach over the seat and retrieve his phone. He hesitated before speaking, hearing her soft laugh. He loved that laugh, the natural, happy one.

"Not like you'd ever talk to me like they did. Just gab about little stuff. We don't have any 'little stuff' anymore. Big stuff only. You probably can't hear this, so I might as well tell you that Gunn is thinking about waxing his head and Wesley lost another pair of glasses- three since he started working for you." A pause. Long enough to make him consider speaking, short enough that he didn't get the chance. " I could tell you that I hate going home and wondering if you're lonely up there all night, like some cross between - between the Phantom of the Opera and Bela Lugosi."

He stifled an exclamation, biting his lip, wondering how long he could string this out, and if he should.

"I know you get lonely, too. You just pretend you don't. You can't even date. I can date. But I pretend I can't."

"Why?" He asked silently, mouth forming the word he wasn't speaking, eyes suddenly blinking rapidly.

"It helps when the only guy you'd seriously consider asking out is in the same boat... Angel?"

Too stunned to speak, he popped his mouth open and closed twice, no sound emerging.

She hung up.

"What?" He finally managed to croak. "Cordy?" He flipped the phone around to look at the illuminated screen. Call Ended.

I'm the only one she... Dating? His heart lifted. We could never.

We shouldn't ever.

He didn't know why he did it. He slowly maneuvered off the road, onto a narrow strip for parking. Then he sat, painstakingly dialing, using the itty bitty keys, until he heard her voice, breathless and surprised. "Angel?"

"Yeah, I'm stuck in a stupid traffic jam." He prevaricated.

Ohhh, yeah, I know the place- about three blocks up where they have lanes blocked? Don't worry, it clears in ten minutes."

"I don't know... I think I might be here for awhile. No one's moving. But- I can hear you."

"Finally!"

"I know. Um. You wanna talk? Kill the time?"

She was honestly amazed. "Don't you have some brooding you could catch up on?"

"Nah. I brooded a lot today. I don't want to pull something." He was rewarded by the laugh he loved. "C'mon. Tell me what you did today."

"You were with me the entire time."

"Oh. Right." He ran his hand over the back of his neck. "Tell me what you're going to do tomorrow?"

"Why are you suddenly all chatty?" Cordelia asked suspiciously.

"I- I don't know. I just thought, we don't just- chat much. We talk about cases and weapons and visions. I thought you might-"

"You little undead bastard. You heard every word I said, didn't you?" Cordelia accused loudly.

"No! No, of course I didn't."

"Angel!"

"Bela Lugosi, Cordelia? Really?"

"You did listen! I'm going to kill you. You know that, right? You better pray for a long detour home, buster, because I'm going to be loading a fire extinguisher with holy water, and I'm aiming it right at you."

"Why are you mad at me? I tried telling you that I was there. At first." He looked guiltily at his lap. "You just kept talking."

She'd done the same thing, listening to words meant for his ears only, pretending she hadn't heard. But Angel hadn't been nearly as candid as she'd been, and now he knew. Those thoughts she wistfully considered, but would never share. She spluttered, "You could have hung up!"

"I know. I thought about it...But I love to listen to you talk. When you laugh- it's the closest thing I get to a sunny day."

Silence. "That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me." Cordelia whispered.

"I read a lot of poetry." Angel explained. "It works with the solitary lifestyle."

"I meant that you love to listen to me talk. The sunny day thing was nice, too." She added as an afterthought. "I don't think anyone's ever liked to listen to me talk before."

"Maybe you don't talk to anyone else, like you talk to me?" He hazarded. Sensing that Cordelia was deciding between being offended and flattered, he tipped the scales. Haltingly. "I say that because I don't- I don't talk to anyone like I talk to you."

A pause that lasted just long enough to make him start to worry that he'd pushed the scales flat over, and Cordelia was seething for some reason. Then her voice, her private, talking to him without any actress or bitchy BS voice, crackled across the line. "I said I missed having a friend to talk to on the phone. I actually miss having someone to talk about normal stuff. Period. In person, on the phone- heck, even an email."

"And I don't have any normal to talk about."

"But it's okay. Because you listen to my normal. A-and I like your version of normal."

"Really?"

"Of course, Doofus!" They shared an uncertain laugh, which mellowed to something comfortable as it ended. "We could try other stuff too. Normal stuff. We could watch late night movies. Eat popcorn."

"Not big on popcorn."

"You can fake it. I'll listen to you talk about poems if you eat a bowl of popcorn. Okay? Is that a deal?"

He let out a little sighing laugh. "Only you, Cordy."

"Only for you, Angel."

Maybe that's what makes it possible. The couldn'ts and shouldn'ts.

"This is nice. I wish you weren't stuck in out on the road, though. We could try this wacky conversation thing face to face."

"I think it's clearing up." Angel put the car in drive and turned his eyes back to the merging traffic.

"I'll go make some popcorn."

"I'll be home in five." Home. Never sounded so good.

She smiled widely. "See you at home."

This time the hang up was mutual. At the Hyperion, Cordelia beamed ear to ear and put a bag of microwave popcorn in the small microwave by the office coffee maker.

Angel navigated through merging lanes, and soon saw the welcoming lights of the hotel. A single light burning in his room, a glow in the lobby. Cordelia was still there, waiting for him, either in the doorway with waiting arms, or in his room, with a waiting remote. Either way- he suddenly couldn't wait to get home.

Hm. He flipped the cell phone neatly in his palm, then holstered it in his pocket as he put the car in park. Maybe bored warlocks are good for something after all.