Angel awoke abruptly and opened his eyes, the
searing pain in his head causing him to close them again immediately. It felt
like the hangover from hell. He tried to remember what had happened the night
before. Rebecca had come over and brought a bottle of champagne. But even an entire
bottle couldn't have affected him this way.
Then he remembered.
The drug. Rebecca. Sunnydale.
Xander.
Slowly, he opened his eyes again. His hand
tentatively reached up to touch the warm arm that lay across his chest. Angel
turned his head to stare at Xander, lying next to him, sleeping so trustingly
in his arms.
No, he corrected himself, not his arms. Angelus'.
Angel pushed the bitter thought aside and
silently extricated himself from Xander's embrace. He slid out of bed and pulled
on a pair of pants. He located his jacket under a chair and pulled out his cell
phone.
As he punched in the familiar phone number,
his gaze returned to the sleeping figure on the bed. He was not looking forward
to Xander's reaction when he awoke.
"Angel Investigations. We –"
"Wesley, it's me."
"Angel! Dear god! Where are you? What happened?"
"I'm not sure. Rebecca—"
"She drugged you. Scheming little bitch."
Angel sighed as Cordelia chimed in. He'd have
to remind Wesley later that using the speakerphone was not always the best idea
when Cordelia was around. In the meantime, he needed to focus on the issue at
hand. "What happened to Rebecca? Is she alright?"
Wesley rushed to reassure him. "She's fine.
Cordelia called me when she realized that Rebecca had been pumping her for information.
We rushed to the office—"
"But you were long gone. We found Rebecca
unconscious in the elevator. It was just a bump to the head. And some severe
emotional trauma." There was a long telling pause before Cordelia continued
in a more tentative voice, "Angel...did you...I mean—"
"I didn't kill anyone, Cordelia."
Angel heard the sighs of relief on the other
end of the line and smiled softly. If you had told him a year ago that Cordelia
and Wesley would be a part of his life, much less the center of it, he would
have laughed. But there they were. A family of three. He supposed stranger things
had happened.
One of those stranger things began to move
on the bed as he awoke. Xander's arm slid across the sheet, finding only emptiness.
He sat bolt upright and his eyes met Angel's. Angel pointed to the phone and
indicated Xander should be quiet. Xander nodded, a confused look clouding his
face.
"Angel? Angel? Is everything alright?"
Angel heard the concern in Wesley's voice
and realized that they must have been speaking to him while he was watching
Xander.
"I'm fine. I'm calling you from the cell phone.
I think it's a bad connection. You...uh...faded...out?" God, he was bad with
these contraptions. He couldn't even remember the correct terminology.
"Oh well then, we were asking where you were."
Angel took a deep, and completely unnecessary,
breath as he braced himself. "Sunnydale."
"WHAT?"
Angel pulled the phone away from his ear as
Cordelia screeched at him. And she was just getting warmed up.
"I don't believe this! You have worked so
hard to get over her high and mightiness and what's the first thing you do after
your soul goes into seclusion? Hop aboard the next train to Slayer Angst Central?"
Angel smiled sadly, not bothering to correct
her assumption, as his gaze remained frozen on Xander. "Yeah...Buffy...I didn't
find her though."
Angel knew the moment that Xander realized
he had his soul back. It was as if a curtain had fallen across Xander's expression,
blocking his thoughts and emotions from view. Angel closed his eyes. He couldn't
look at that closed face without remembering how unguarded it had been only
a short time ago.
He cleared his throat. "Look, guys, I think
this battery is running low. Sunset is in a few hours. I'll wait it out here
and then head back. I'll see you both tonight."
Angel disconnected the call without waiting
for a response. Then, he opened his eyes and looked at Xander.
"We need to talk."
Xander stood, mindless of his extreme lack
of clothing, and Angel couldn't help but wonder anew how Xander had managed
to hide that beautiful body under those hideous baggy clothes for so many years.
Xander moved to the dresser and grabbed a pair of sweats and a shirt, pulling
them on.
"What's there to talk about? You've got your
soul back. I think that says it all."
"Xander, last night—"
"Was last night. It was one night, Angel.
There's really no reason to make a federal case out of it. Angelus and I fucked
for months and you never felt a need to discuss that."
"That was..." Angel trailed off uncertainly.
"Different?" Xander laughed bitterly. "No,
trust me. I've been screwed by Angelus enough to know that last night was pretty
much the same as usual."
Xander reached under the sofabed and found
his sneakers. He sat down on the edge of the bed and jammed them angrily on
his feet.
Angel growled in frustration. "Damnit, Xander!
You can't just avoid this like you avoid everything else in your life. 'Maybe
if I ignore it, it'll go away' isn't going to work here."
Xander stood and whirled on him in fury. "Me?
What about you? From the minute you got back into this dimension, you avoided
me every chance you got. You couldn't even bring yourself to look at me. Why
was that? Too afraid of what you might see?"
"I couldn't give you what you wanted."
"Oh yeah. Big Badass Angel the Vampire was
afraid that some mere mortal was going to jump his bones and he'd be powerless
to prevent it." Xander crossed the room, turning as he reached the stairs. "I'm
leaving until after the sun goes down. I expect you to be gone when I get back."
He made a move to head upstairs and then froze
as Angel spoke softly.
"I couldn't be him." Angel stared at Xander's
back, silently willing him to turn around and look at him. "You wanted Angelus.
And that's the one thing I could never be."
Xander just shook his head. "If you really
believe that's what I wanted, you're even dumber than I am." He headed upstairs
and out of the house, never turning back, leaving Angel alone to ponder that
cryptic parting remark.