Hey everyone! I'm sooo sorry this took so long…again. I have finals in like a week so school has been really hectic and involved lots of studying with not so much free time. I have a four-day weekend coming up for Memorial Day and will try to update again then. Send me lots of reviews PLEASE! I love them and the more I get the sooner I update and if you have any ideas for the story tell me! Oh! This is definitely NOT a C/A (I HATE Cordy), B/S or B/W it is B/A     

I want to thank my beta, Leslie. Your great!

 "You can't." Those were the words repeating themselves in Angel's head like a mantra for the past two weeks. Of course "Get out of my house and stay the hell away from me!" was also mixed in. Angel couldn't seem to get any rest since he left Sunnydale two weeks before when Buffy had kicked him out of her house. 'Hell,' he thought, 'she probably had Willow do a spell to keep me out.' 

Buffy had woken a few hours after Angel had left her room and walked downstairs to see him sitting on the sofa and had kicked him out, with protest from him. Angel had gone to Spike but the bleach blonde had told him to figure it out on his own and that he was going to have no part in hurting Buffy and more. So Angel had ended up back in the Hyperion having accomplished nothing but pissing Buffy off even more. Cordelia had left for a vacation the day Angel got back and, luckily for Angel, had yet to return. He had enough problems trying to fix things with Buffy that he didn't need to deal with Cordelia too.

Fred and Gunn had been watching Angel pacing in the investigation center for the past ten minutes and it was starting to get on their nerves. When Angel had come back he had gone straight to his room and stayed there for a week, only coming out for emergencies. When he started coming out on a regular bases he refused to discuss with anyone what had happened with anyone.

"Angel, man, you have got to stop the pacing. It's getting damn annoying." Gunn said, breaking the silence. Angel stopped for a moment to shoot Gunn a glare before continuing to pace, trying desperately to come up with a plan that would get Buffy back, or at least get her to start talking to him. If he called and she answered, he was hung up on. It was even worse if Dawn or one of the Scoobies picked up: there was yelling, threatening, and a few not-so-nice words before he heard the dial tone again."Angel!" Fred yelled, also tired of his pacing. "Sit down, stand, I don't care, but please stop pacing!"  Angel said nothing but moved around to the opposite side of the table of Fred, nest to Gunn and sat down, while they continued their lunches.

"Angel, will you please tell us what happened with Buffy?" Fred asked, desperate to help her friend.

"I did something stupid…again."

"Could you clarify that a bit?" Gunn asked, he didn't know Buffy well but did find himself liking her during her short stay and wanted to know what could have happened between the blonde and Angel to make the vamp lock himself in his room for a week.

"We argued, talked, kissed and were pretty much set on getting back together. I kissed Cordy and she saw, she packed her stuff and went home. I went to Sunnydale to explain to her what she saw and try to fix it. She told me I couldn't and kicked me out of her house." Angel summed up quickly, not wanting to get into detail. "Any questions?"

"Yeah, I got one. Why were you kissing Cordelia right after getting back with the Slayer?" Gunn asked.

"That is kinda stupid. Cuz, one, any girl in Buffy's position would be upset and you should have known that and two, she's the slayer and could have beaten the crap out of you for that instead of just walking away." Fred commented, thinking of haw stupid Angel was and how heartbroken Buffy must be.

"Yeah, tell me something I don't already know." Angel said with annoyance in his voice. "I'm completely stupid. I wasn't thinking straight at the time. Now I have to figure out how to make this up to Buffy. Any ideas?"

"Whatever you do is going to have to be big. You really screwed this up." Gunn said, not telling Angel anything he didn't already know.

"Angel, we all like Buffy. Even Connor seemed to like her and Lorne and Gunn and I really like her too." Fred told Angel, making a half smile for on his face at the thought of his friends and ever his son liking Buffy. "So, we can wait for Lorne to come back from wherever her is and then we can all help form a plan so that you can make up to Buffy for being a complete ass."

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"Buffy!" Dawn bellowed from the bottom of the stairs to her sister upstairs, tapping her fingers while waiting for Buffy to come down. "Hurry up! I'm gonna be late for school!" Buffy had patrolled until late every night and wasn't eating much since they got back from L.A. and it made her and everyone else worry about her. Dawn knew what had happened in L.A. with Angel, as did the rest of the Scooby's and they knew that's what had Buffy off her game. Now, though, Buffy seemed to be bouncing back a bit. She even had a date with Principal Wood the next night, which creeped Dawn out a little, but she was still happy that her sister was getting back to normal. She heard her coming down the stairs then Dawn grabbed her bag so they could go.

"Ok, come on." Buffy said as she reached Dawn. She had gotten her license a few weeks ago so that Xander wouldn't have to pick them up and drive them to school. Buffy had even gotten a car, a pretty blue Psaat (don't know if that's how to spell it), as a present from Giles.

Once they go to school the two sisters parted ways, Dawn going to class and Buffy to her office. The blonde sat at her desk looking up stuff about the new demon in town, but not really concentrating. She hadn't been able to get the picture of Angel kissing Cordelia out of her head since she saw them. She knew her friends were worried about her and that was why she had said yes to Wood when he had asked her out for the next night. She knew she had to at least try to get over Angel and she genuinely liked Wood and figured she could have a good time with him. 

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Faith knew Buffy wasn't doing as well as she pretended to be and knew Angel was the reason why. She had gotten sick of seeing her sister-slayer hurting because of a guy, and was going to do something about it. In the time Faith had been living with Buffy, about two months, the two had resolved their issues and had become friends and Faith, for the first time, knew what it was like to be accepted and cared about and didn't want to see the person responsible for that in pain. Which was the reason she was heading to Angel Investigations.

Once there she walked to the back door that lead directly to AI instead of the hotel lobby. As she walked in she saw Cordelia sitting behind her desk doing something at the computer.

"Welcome to Angel Investigations. We help the helpless." The seer said without looking up from the computer screen.

"Yeah, whatever. Where's Angel?" Faith asked. She didn't particularly like the other brunette to begin with and liked her even less after she heard Buffy's story.

"Gees. Rude much?" Cordelia asked in her snobby voice, finally seeing who had come in.

"Look bitch, I don't like and I don't want to stand here making small talk with you, so where can I find Angel?" Faith asked again, getting more than a little pissed as the girl.

"Everyone is in the conference room in the back." Without saying anything else Cordelia Faith walked towards the back and opened the door to the conference room without knocking and walked right in, startling everyone there.

"Uh, Faith…what can I do for you?" Angel asked hesitantly.

"I want to talk to you. In private." Faith said looking around the table and waiting for Angel to move. "Now."

"We can go to the training room." Angel knew Buffy must have told Faith what had happened and that Faith wasn't to happy about what she heard and Angel figured it was a good idea to have mats around while they talked.

"Fine. Lets go." Faith said, walking out and heading down a hall that lead to Angels workout center, that was similar to the one Buffy and she used in the Magic Box. Angel got up and followed her reluctantly, everyone else sitting at the table watching him leave and thinking how glad they were that they weren't he.

Once they got to the work out room Faith sat down in one of the chairs and pulled another one out so that it was in front of her and indicated for Angel to sit.

Angel sat and decided to get the dreaded conversation going since Faith didn't say anything right away. "Let me guess, you want to talk about Buffy?"

"Yup…"