Shut Out
Cordelia glanced at the closed door to Angel's new office area.
A week ago he and Fred had cleaned out the old manager's suite ad turned it into a separate office area. They'd fixed up another room on the ground floor of the hotel for Gunn so no one could complain, but where Gunn barely used his office at all and Wesley generally left his door open to the lobby, Angel and Fred kept their distance from the rest of AI's staff.
They were spending their spare time looking for a way to secure Angel's soul now. Cordelia had had to hear that from Willow. They'd asked for her and Tara's help and Willow's next email had been filled with "I can't believe we didn't think to do this years ago." If not for the Wicca's gossipy streak, Cordelia wouldn't have even known what Angel's current spare time project was. He certainly hadn't asked her, Wesley or Gunn for assistance.
Cordelia sighed; the new office arrangement and the second hand communication chain weren't the only changes in the Hyperion. There were also the private dwelling signs Angel had added to the hallway leading to his and Fred's apartments. Beneath Angel's neat, old fashion handwriting Fred had scrawled, "That means stay out! We are talking to you!"
Cordelia remembered telling Angel she wasn't his friend back when he'd first returned after getting over his Darla-obsession. She'd never once considered how that might have felt. Now she knew.
Angel didn't have her blunt, tact-be-damned style, but that didn't mean he couldn't drive a point home with painful clarity. Angel had told them to either act like his friends or butt out of his personal life. Apparently he'd decided that the first option was now closed.
Cordelia squirmed uncomfortably. Okay, so she'd over-reacted the week before last. Blue jeans were a far cry from leather pants, even if they were way too casual to belong with the Angel she'd gotten used to. Shoving a cross in his face might have seemed a little extreme, but Angelus wasn't someone to kid around with. Plus Angel and Fred were on awfully close terms; how could she not worry?
It didn't mean she wanted to be politely, but firmly pushed out of Angel's life, or unlife, as the case may be.
Angel had even gone so far as to leave her a phone number so that she couldn't use a vision as an excuse to invade his and Fred's home.
Cordelia paused, surprised at her own thoughts, but it was true; the second floor of the Hyperion was Fred and Angel's home, theirs together. She knew they were renovating several more rooms beyond their apartments and had even heard them talking about maybe putting in a real kitchen someday so Fred didn't have to keep using the public one on the ground floor. Once Cordelia thought about it, she had to wonder where Fred and Angel were finding all the time for everything,
The ground floor was office space and the third floor had a few rooms made habitable for any clients they needed to put up, but the second floor was very simply a private home. One where Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn were clearly not welcome.
Angel's dedication to dealing with Cordelia's visions and their other cases was beyond reproach. Sure, sometimes he and Wesley had power struggles about the whole leadership issue, but the truth was it only happened when Wesley blatantly disregarded Angel's opinion. Angel had gone off on his own to deal with things his way several times. Still, those times only made it even more clear that Angel had learned from what happened with Darla. He was listening to what they had to say, only sometimes the two hundred and fifty year old, souled, vampire saw things in a different light from his co-workers and frequently he had a point, even if they didn't want to hear it.
The only real issue between Angel and his old friends was
that he didn't like them anymore. It
wasn't really something they could legitimately complain about, not anything
Angel would listen to them complain about actually, but that fact, that Angel
didn't want them as friends anymore, cut deeper than Cordelia had ever dreamed
it could.