I've said it before and I'll say it again: Thank you so much to everyone who left feedback – you have no idea of the difference it makes.  And thanks to everyone still reading this story for waiting so patiently to get to "the good stuff".  Quick warning: This chapter is super-long and potentially a little confusing!

Confusion and Clarity

Cordelia sat on her couch and wondered why she couldn't stop shaking. Dennis knew she was upset, although she hadn't said a word, other than the occasional "Oh God Oh God" since she came home. He had floated everything but the kitchen sink over to her, trying to offer any comfort he could. Ice cream, a blanket, hot tea, Kleenex, and for some reason, her loofah. She didn't want any of it. Nothing would make her feel better. Nothing could fix this.

Why did I pick that fight with Buffy? In front of everybody. Wow Cordy, if you were trying to get them all to forget what a bitch you were, acting like that was clearly the way to go. It was just, when she had walked in the door, the door to the place where SHE worked with HER friends – it was hearing all that bad stuff being said about her on her turf, where she felt safe.

And it wasn't even that Buffy seemed to hate her. She hadn't lied to Angel – she did care what the Scoobies thought of her, but that wasn't what made her lose her cool. It was thinking about the people of Angel Investigations overhearing. Fred, Gunn, Wes, Angel, even Lorne – what if they had listened to the Scoobies and started to agree with them? This was the first time in her life she had friends who simply liked her, for no reason at all. She didn't want them looking at her the way the Scoobies did.

Of course, it wasn't the overheard slander that had her shaking on her couch, Cordy acknowledged. Angel had heard that last bit, the part about how Spike had stayed while Angel had left. What else had he heard? Where was he when Buffy and I were fighting? If he knew, if he had been listening when she had foolishly blurted out her feelings for him, Cordy didn't know what would happen. Her safe, cozy little world would come crashing down around her. Angel would probably freak. The man she loved was a dork at heart. He wouldn't deal with her unrequited love well. It's going to get weird. She was going to lose everything. Snuggles with Connor and Angel at bedtime. The smiles he slipped that seemed just for her. The casual touching. Oh God, I won't be able to touch him anymore. Cordy would miss that the most. The way she was allowed to lay a hand on his shoulder or run a hand down his arm. The way she wasn't allowed to touch his hair but how she did anyway, just to piss him off. The way that, lately, she had been finding reasons to lean on him. They would be watching a movie on the couch or standing in line at Baby Gap and she would just lean her head onto his shoulder or chest. And sometimes she would turn her face so her nose touched his shirt and just breath him in. And how, rarely, but ever so often, he would bring his hand up lightly to her waist. Making everything perfect.

But those privileges would be gone. Angel would get all paranoid about what each touch meant. Worry that he was leading her on. It would be awful. Junior high all over again.

Maybe he didn't hear. Maybe he was sleeping and he woke up and came down right away and just heard that last part. Yeah, that, that wouldn't be so awful. Sure he heard me basically tell Buffy that Spike loved her more than Angel ever had, but that wasn't SO bad. Not as bad as him possibly hearing me confess my love for him to his ex-girlfriend and her cronies.

Cordy decided she would just stay away for a couple of days. The Sunnydale crew would be gone by tomorrow. She could call in sick and avoid having to listen to their phony goodbyes. Maybe she could pretend to be really sick and stay home for the entire week. Maybe after a week, that whole I'm-in-love-with-Angel thing will just go away. And that icky yearning feeling in the pit of my stomach, that will disappear. And everything will just go back to normal, to the way it was. The way it will always be…

Cordelia wasn't sure that was possible. Could she stop thinking about Angel that way? Go back to a time when he wasn't even a romantic consideration. When he only looked at her as something he put up with, for the sake of the mission. Before she had started to care so very much.

"Dennis," she said in a wobbly voice. "I think I might be ready for that ice cream now."

"Cherry Garcia or mint chocolate chip," came a voice from the door.

She turned her head. It was him. Angel stood just inside her apartment holding two pints of ice cream. She hated that he knew her so well. That she had let him know her so well. Once you let them in, you give them license to hurt you. Her father had told her that.

"There is this custom we half-demons have, it's called knocking, maybe you've heard of it," Cordy said, trying to sound as normal as possible. I'll just ignore the fact that I know he can see all the tear-streaks on my face. Hell, he can probably smell them. Stupid vampire.

"I did. You must not have heard me. Dennis let me in," Angel said as he walked into the kitchen as if he owned the place. What's his problem? Who does he think he is, coming over here and bringing me ice cream, knowing I always need it when I do the breakdown thing? Oh I know. This is gonna be just like with the firing. He comes bearing gifts, we both agree we're still friends, and we just pretend it all never happened.

Wiping at her eyes and sniffling, Cordelia hauled her aching body off the couch and walked into the kitchen. Angel was spooning the Mint Chocolate Chip into a bowl. Ha! Guess he doesn't know me that well! Before she could point out his mistake, Angel spoke.

"I know, when you're sad you like to eat it straight out of the container, but I'm sorry, that just goes against everything I believe in," he said, without turning around to look at her. He put the ice cream into the freezer than turned around. "Hey, you just got out of the hospital, you need to stay off your feet." He pushed her into the chair and placed the bowl of ice cream in front of her. Oh my god. He's "handling" me. I'm letting myself be handled. Cordelia was confused and tired and at a loss for what to do. So she picked up the spoon and ate, while a vampire with a soul sat down at the table across from her and watched.

* * *

Angel wasn't exactly sure how to proceed. He had known what to expect before he came over here –that's why he stopped for ice cream. The confrontation with Buffy, seeing that kiss last night, plus the ordeal of being ripped open by a demon. He knew it would leave Cordy tired and hurting and vulnerable. She hated feeling vulnerable.

So he brought ice cream.

When he walked out of the door of the Hyperion, he hadn't had much of a plan. Nothing beyond telling Cordy that he loved her. He had practically flown out of the hotel, he was that eager to see her (and he was lucky the sun had been setting—he hadn't even bothered to check). On the way over to her apartment, he realized it wasn't that simple. There was more to say than "I love you." There was explaining what happened the night before with Buffy. There was the curse. There was the fact that she had jumped in front of a demon to save his ex-girlfriend and seemingly thought he would have no problem with that. It wasn't going to be easy. But this is worth fighting for.

The weird part was that he wasn't used to being the aggressor in these situations. Usually it was him hurting and her stepping in and making him feel better. In the end, he decided to copy a move from her playbook. Which is why he brought the ice cream. He was using her patented "sweep in, take charge and get them talking before they realize what's happening move". He needed to get her to talk to him. Never had two people so desperately needed to talk.

But it was hard, now, seeing her upset and not sweeping her into his arms and holding her the way his body screamed to. To smell her tears and not try to kiss them away.

He couldn't do that, not yet, but he couldn't seem to figure out how to start the talking either. So he just watched her. Her little perplexed face as she stared at him and at the bowl of ice cream. The way her nose wrinkled, how she finally picked up the spoon and got a scoop, how she brought it up to mouth level and just sighed, how she finally ate it, sighed again, then put the spoon down. Then she would start the process all over again, starting with the bowl stare. She did it four times. She didn't look at him once. She didn't say anything. But he couldn't seem to either. So he just kept watching her.

Finally she put the spoon in the bowl and pushed it away from her.

"This isn't working," Cordy said, watching her nails as they tapped at the edge of the table.

Angel flinched. Not working? We haven't even started yet, how can we already not be working? His level of confusion must have shown on his face, because she hurried to clarify.

"The ice cream," she said, pointing to the half full bowl. "It isn't working. I'm not feeling any better."

"Did I get the wrong kind?" Angel asked, frowning. He was sure he knew what she liked.

"No, it's not that. It's not the flavor that makes me feel better. It's the part where I put on my sweats and curl up on the couch with a carton and a spoon and listen to Sarah McLaughlin and eat until I need to puke. And I can't do that. Not with YOU here," Cordy huffed.

"But we're friends." Best friends. "You can do anything in front of me."

"Trust me," Cordelia said. "You wouldn't BE my friend if you saw the way I inhale ice cream when I'm by myself."

Angel guessed that now was not the time to tell her that he had seen her before. How on one of those nights earlier in the year, when he used to come over in the middle of the night and watch her, when he was worried about the visions getting worse…he had seen Cordelia with the ice cream. She had put away a pint of Cookies and Cream at three in the morning, watching "An Affair to Remember" between her tears. And I thought Angelus was a messy eater.

Instead he reached across the table and touched the top of one of her hands. "I'll always be your friend, no matter what I see." She smiled and for the first time that night, she didn't seem so distant.

"And no matter what I hear," he added. She yanked her hand away and her eyes shot open in what looked a lot like fear. Angel figured that worked as an ice-breaker. All right. Now it's time.

* * *

"Cordy, we need to talk," he began. First they would deal with what happened in the park. Because, while Angel was happy, hell, practically perfectly happy, about her confession of love for him, he was also more than a little angry.

Immediately, she was out of her chair, interrupting him. "Fine. You're right. I know you heard…what you heard." Oh my god, he heard. He heard me say I loved him. Why did he have to hear? "So lets just …not make a big deal about this. It's nothing." Yeah, my falling in love with a blood-sucking UV-allergic vampire and him not even having the courtesy to love me back, that's nothing.

Nothing? She thinks the fact that I stood in a hospital waiting for her to wake up, waiting for hours for her to open her eyes, that's nothing. I can't believe she didn't tell me about how she got hurt.  He kept remembering what she had said in the hospital, when he had asked her what happened. "It's not the first time I've gotten in the way of a big slimy demon." She had been so blasé. As if her life was something to be trifled with. Something she would sacrifice for Buffy.

"Nothing? How COULD you not tell me this right away?" Angel winced when he heard how loudly he was talking.

Cordy wondered how she should have told him right away. What, she was supposed to have realized she was in love with him, run downstairs and said "Hey, sorry about the winter weight comment, by the way, I want to spend the rest of my life with you." Okay, maybe I could have told him a little sooner. But I didn't even tell myself until yesterday. So really, this WAS done in a pretty timely manner. He really shouldn't be complaining.

"Angel, I'm sorry I didn't tell you right away. I guess I felt a little uncomfortable," she said as she paced around the kitchen table.

"If you felt so uncomfortable, why did you do a thing like this in the first place?" Angel shot back. Why was she fearless when it came to risking her life to save Buffy and then afraid to tell him about it?

Why did I fall in love with him in the first place? "Excuse me?" Cordy said, "HELLO, it's not like I planned this." Yeah, like I wanted to fall for a poor single father who can't have sex. That was my goal from the get-go. "I didn't really have a lot of choice in the matter."

Angel felt like steam was coming from his ears. However much he loved her, this woman was still completely infuriating. She didn't have a choice? Seems to me she could have CHOSEN to not jump into the path of a demon who was perfectly willing to tear her apart. "No choice Cordelia," Angel said. "I don't buy that. This was a conscious decision, a stupid crazy decision."

So the idea of me and him is stupid and crazy? Fine. "I get it," she said, slumping into her chair across from him again. "Look, lets just pretend you don't know. I'm sure we can both get over this."

"It will take you weeks before you are back to normal," Angel noted grimly. The doctor said it had taken 20 stitches. He began to grind his teeth, thinking how small she had looked in that hospital bed.

Weeks? I fall in love, really in love, for the first time in my life and he thinks I should be over it in a few weeks? Cordelia didn't know what to say that.

"I can't believe how stupid you were." Apparently Angel did know what to say.

Cordy took a deep breath. Stupid. My feelings are stupid. My loving him is stupid. And this is my best friend talking. "I am not going to apologize for the way I feel."

"You had no reason to feel that way," Angel said. This time, he got up and started pacing. He really didn't know why Cordy had tried so desperately to keep Buffy from getting hurt. Does she honestly think that her life is less important than Buffy's? That her dying wouldn't hurt me, wouldn't break me?

For a minute, for Cordy, it was like an echo in the room. She kept hearing Angel telling her "you had no reason to feel that way," over and over again. Telling her she had no reason to think he could ever feel that way, about her.

"I was wrong," she mumbled in a small quiet voice.

"You were very wrong," Angel said, his back turned to her.

"I guess that I mis-read certain…signs," Cordy told his back. "I thought you…" I thought you might learn to love me back just a little.

"I don't see how you ever thought I would be okay with this." Angel didn't understand how Cordy couldn't know what losing her would do to him.

"Angel, I'm sorry." Cordy was starting to get a little ticked off. She got the part where he didn't feel the same way about her. But he seemed WAY more angry than the situation warranted.

"Sure you're sorry, now, when your stupid crazy decisions have gotten you hurt."

Maybe it was because that was the third time he called her stupid. Maybe it was the fact that he seemed to be telling her that her broken heart was all her fault. Or maybe she was PMS-ing. For whatever reason, the dam broke.

"Listen," she practically yelled, flying out of her chair, spinning him around to face her, and then shoving him into the refrigerator. "I refuse to accept all the blame here buddy. You played along. You encouraged…with all the…touching. And the kissing." Okay, we were possessed at the time of the kissing, but still…..

So she sees me kiss Buffy once and thinks that I would die if I lost her? Angel saw more than a few flaws in Cordelia's logic. "Geez Cor—"

"And it's not just that. It's all the time together. All these almost-moments that keep happening." I know I wasn't imagining those moments. When we're training. In bed with Connor. Yesterday, on the couch. Last night at Caritas…before he decided to suck face with Buffy.

Angel squirmed against the fridge. He had fallen in love with a crazy person. All the time together? He had seen Buffy maybe five times in three years. "We've hardly spent any time together," he told the beautiful but insane woman who had him pinned. "Not the important kind of time." Not like the time you and I have.

Right around the time she heard his remark about important time, Cordelia lost it.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhh," she screamed into his face. She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, saying, "How can you say you and I don't spend important time together?" She let go of him and spun around, walking over to the table. "How can you say that we haven't been having a whole helluva lot of very out-of-the-ordinary, non-platonic, ALWAYS INTERRUPTED moments." She kicked a chair for impact and it went skittering into the stove.

Angel was very very confused. Because he had been kidding before, about her being crazy. But now she really was acting crazy. She wasn't making any sense.

"Um, Cordy," he said, as calmly as possible. "What are you talking about?"

What am I talking about? What does the idiot think I'm talking about? What have we just spent the last ten minutes talking about? He hadn't moved from the place she had assigned him against the refrigerator and now she stalked back over to him.

"I'm TALKING about how you heard me tell them how I was in love with you. How you come here and act like it was ridiculous for me to think you could even LIKE me like that. Like that's me, CRAZY CORDY." She jabbed him in the heart with her index finger. "I'm TALKING about how you should be letting me down gently before you ride off into the sunset with Buffy and instead, you came over all yelling and mean. HELLO, I'm wounded. You are being MEAN to the walking wounded here." And with that, she went back to the chair, sat down, and laid her head down on the table.

Angel sighed. Somehow they had been talking for fifteen minutes and hadn't managed to actually SAY a word to each other. It's like, whenever we finally don't have any obstacles, we manage to create new ones. This was progress though. She had admitted she was in love with him. He had been worried he would have to drag it out of her.

Suddenly, the tiredness and frustration started to fade away. Cordy loves me. There hadn't really been time for that to sink in. But it was true. She'd said it twice now. She loved him.

He walked over to her and sat back down too. "I know you're wounded," he said in a quiet voice. "I found out you got hurt trying to save Buffy. That's what I've been talking about this whole time. How you pushed Buffy and let that demon slice you open."

"Oh," she said into the table. "That's what you were talking about?"

"Yes."

"You heard that?"

"Yes."

"And the other? The thing I was talking about?"

"The part about how you're in love with me."

Cordelia was glad her face was buried in the table and she didn't have to watch him say that. "Yes," she mumbled.

"Yeah, I caught that too."

Cordy knew she needed to look up. But she couldn't. Not just yet. It was much easier having this conversation with the table.

"Angel, please don't get all broody and awkward about this. This love thing, it doesn't have to change anything."

Angel got sick of having to hear her voice through a block of Formica. He crouched down next to his Seer and tried to get a peek at her face. "Cordelia, I don't see how that's possible. It changes everything. And we are going to talk about that. But first, we are going to talk about the fact that you essentially were willing to trade her life for your own."

Finally, she turned her head to face him, but still kept it on the table.

"Ughhh, Angel! Trust me, I didn't think of it that way at the time. Geez, that makes me sound all martyr-y. Ughhhhh."

"Well it doesn't make you sound good," Angel agreed. Her face was just inches from his and he wanted nothing more than to just touch her lips. With his fingers, his lips, his tongue, anything. But he couldn't. Not just yet. "How could you think that I'd want to sacrifice you for Buffy?"

Cordy sat up. "Angel, I didn't think of it like that. Really. I'm no saint. I just, I guess all I did think was that I couldn't watch you lose her again. I wasn't sure you would be able to deal a second time."

Confident that she was through talking into the kitchen table, Angel sat back down. "But I'd be just fine 'dealing' if I lost you?"

Cordy leaned forward, looking into his eyes. "Angel, we are talking about Buffy here," she said slowly, as if she were explaining something complicated to a child.

"I'm talking about you," Angel said just as slowly.

"Exactly," she told him. She leaned back in the chair, pulled her legs up and cradled her knees with her arms. Somehow the fetal position was always appropriate when your heart was breaking. "I'm not…and no matter how I…" She didn't know how to explain.

"You're not what? No matter how you what?" Angel wondered if he would ever understand her.

"I saw you Angel. Last night. At Caritas."

"Yes, you did." There was no avoiding this part. Angel knew that.

"I pick a pretty good time to announce my love for you, huh?," Cordy chuckled bitterly. "Right after you get back together with the love of your life."

Angel rubbed his face with both hands. "Buffy and I are not back together."

"But she is the love of your life."

"Yes. No. Sort of."

Cordelia wrinkled her brow. "Well, which is it?" she asked.

"She's the love of my, of my youth." I would have said love of my past, but then she'd probably bring up Darla and I'd prefer to keep the majority of my exes out of this discussion.

Cordelia blinked. The love of his youth? "Angel, weren't you like 240-something when you met Buffy?"

"I might as well have been 15," Angel muttered, pushing out of his chair and calling dibs on pacing around the table.

"Huh?" Cordelia asked the vampire circling around her.

"Cordy, you know that first time you kiss someone and feel more than lust? The first time you're near someone and realize that they make you happier and stronger and just, better? The first time you have someone worth…everything?"

Cordy bit her lip. Yeah, I was 21 and that someone was you..

"Well," Angel continued, "All those firsts were with Buffy. And everything feels like its bigger than the world the first time. Didn't you feel that way with—"

"With Xander," she exclaimed, appalled. "Are you joking?"

"Well that's the way it was with Buffy. It was new and forbidden and dangerous and larger than life. All the things you want when you're young. It was what you want before you learn. Learn what real intimacy and closeness is."

Oh, now I get to listen to him talk about how real intimacy was sex and losing his soul with her? Fabulous. Cordelia shot out of her chair. "If you're going to talk about you and Buffy and sex, I'm going to need more ice cream," she said, heading to the freezer before Angel grabbed her by her wrists. He pulled her closer to him, with her arms bent at the elbow and propped up between their two bodies.

"NO," he said, shaking his head. "I'm talking about real intimacy. It's not sex. It's knowing someone without the mystery." In his head, Angel saw all the times he had watched Buffy from the shadows. Heard Spike telling them both they weren't friends, they would never be friends. "Its being there when they're in danger and, more importantly, when they're not." He pictured Cordelia watching him out of the corner of her eye as she talked to Wes. Dragging him to parties. Letting him pull out the splinter she had gotten that day they killed the Aliwri demon. "In that way, Buffy and I never were…intimate."

"Look, Angel, it's great that you two have now reached new levels of intimacy and whatnot. Best of luck. Cheers. Mazel Tov."

"Cordelia. We are not back together. I'm not in love with Buffy."

Cordelia hmphhed. "Sure. Whatever you say. You're not in love."

"I didn't say that," Angel corrected. Oh, I'm in love, you beautiful clueless woman.

"See," Cordelia whined. "Now that that's settled…" Cordelia never finished her sentence. She forgot what she was going to say when Angel lifted her up and sat her down on the table. For a minute, he just stood in front of her, swaying from side to side. He almost looked…nervous.

"Cordy, I have something to give you."

She couldn't help but sigh. "Angel, I really don't need a 'Sorry I don't feel the same way about you' present. It's cool. You don't have to let me down easy." I wonder if it's clothes again.

Clearly the two of us are in for a life sentence of getting our signals crossed Angel thought. "Cordy—"

"I've always known it couldn't happen," she interrupted. "That's why I didn't let you know. That's why I didn't let myself know." She started to kick her feet a little. "I may make fun of it, but I do understand the whole star-crossed lovers bit. You don't have to hand me a little blue box to make up for not loving me—I assume it is a little blue box, because if I was mad and you wanted to make it up to me, Tiffany's would be the way to go."

"Cordy, I do love y—"

"I know, I know. As a friend. And that's great. That's…enough." That will have to be enough.

Angel had had enough. "Cordelia. Shut up."

Her jaw dropped open. Then it snapped shut. I think that may be the first time she's ever listened to me. "Can you just let me say this? Because I do have something to give you. And I'm not leaving until I do."

Once she realized he was waiting for an answer, Cordy nodded. "Right. Fine." Her words belied a sense of casualness she didn't feel. I'm scared. Why am I so scared? It's just a present. "Watcha got for me?"

"My heart," he said. Her jaw dropped again. He waited, but it didn't look like she planned on talking any time soon.

"I know. It doesn't beat. It's, well, it's slightly used. But other than that, it's in perfect working order. And it's yours." Angel studied her face. She made no move to speak, but her eyes looked suspiciously damp. "Free and clear." She blinked. "It actually has been," he added. She bit her lip. "For a while now." There. I said it. Balls in her court.

Except Cordy wasn't playing ball. She didn't say a word. Long slow seconds passed until Angel was on the verge of grabbing the chopsticks she kept in the drawer on the left and staking himself.

"Well," she said, sliding her hands out of his grip, hopping off the table and taking a step or two back. "I prefer merchandise that's brand new. I'm not usually interested in second-hand items." She seemed to hesitate and then a watery smile broke out on her face. "But I happen to think you and your heart would look pretty good on me."

TBC….

I know, I know, I'm evil for just leaving it that way