Safety

After Angel took Marietta to the hospital, which was just across the street, he rushed back home, saying something about needing to get a few things. The hospital staff wheeled Marietta away quickly, leaving Judith and Claire suddenly alone and waiting for news.

Angel returned before the doctors did, a travel mug in hand, asking for the direction they'd taken her, and dashing off before they could ask what or why.

They waited again, holding each other's hands for comfort. Judith's agitation was a quiet one: mostly internal and cultivated from growing up in a family that didn't show emotions. Claire, on the other hand, showed her agitation in fidgeting, muttering to herself and to Judith, asking questions and making up stories for what could be happening with Marietta at that moment. Several times, she got up to pace for a while until she calmed down enough to sit again and take Judith's hand.

Eventually, Angel returned, looking more exhausted than before. Judith and Claire stood up.

"Well?" Claire demanded before Judith got a chance to.

Angel nodded once, as if it cost him great effort. "She'll make it."

Judith and Claire let out deep, relieved, shaking breaths, and Judith embraced Angel. She hadn't noticed Claire move forward at the same time until she also embraced Angel. Angel tensed uncomfortably, but wrapped one arm around Judith and patted Claire's back.

"Thank you," Judith said eventually.

"You helped," Angel said quietly. "I couldn't have done it without you."

Judith pulled away, which prompted Claire to pull away, also, and she gave Angel a small smile. "You're exhausted," Judith told him. "Go home."

Angel started to say something that looked like a protest-or at least an offer of support-but Judith cut him off. "The sun's coming up anyway."

Angel glanced toward one of the windows, as though surprised he hadn't noticed, and nodded. That was all the goodbye they said, and Claire and Judith went to sit back down and wait for the doctor in silence.

They sat at Marietta's bedside all day, taking turns napping or getting coffee. By mid-afternoon Marietta finally awoke. A new doctor had just come on rotation who didn't understand the notes from the previous doctor in the chart (who, apparently, knew Angel and had left her notes purposefully vague and benign), and asked several questions that none of them knew how to answer.

"You're not anemic, you're not hypoglycemic, you're not running a fever…" the young male doctor was saying. "You came in severely dehydrated, but that does not explain the heart rate of 28 and death-like coma, which, honestly, you shouldn't have come out of. I need an honest answer about the drugs, ma'am."

"She's clean, doctor," a deep voice said from the doorway, and everyone turned. Angel stood there, looking only somewhat more rested, his body still slumping more than usual. "I explained the situation to Dr. Mandel. She's taking responsibility for this patient."

"Not while I'm on duty," the doctor shook his head. "She's my patient while I'm here and it's my license on the line. I can't proceed until I have more information."

"Then I suggest calling Dr. Mandel," Angel replied. "Sort it out with her."

The young man sighed. "Look," he said tiredly, "I'm under the same confidentiality laws as Dr. Mandel. Whatever you told her, you can tell me."

There was a brief but deep silence in the room. Then Angel asked, "Doctor, can I speak with you privately a minute?"

The young doctor sighed and agreed, and they left the room. Judith, Claire, and Marietta looked at each other in their absence, and Judith went to sit on Marietta's bedside. She took her hand. "He'll sort it out," she promised. She had no idea how...but he would.

"I'm sure…" Marietta muttered under her breath.

A few minutes later, Angel returned alone and shut the door behind him. He didn't say anything about the young doctor, and none of them asked. Angel approached the bed cautiously, eyeing Claire a bit nervously as he passed her.

"How are you?" he asked Marietta, stopping on the other side of the bed from where Judith sat.

"Oh…" Marietta said slowly, partly due to her daze and utter exhaustion. "Better than can be expected, I suppose. Judith and Claire tell me I nearly…" she swallowed, seemingly unable to deal with the concept of her own death.

"You should have," Angel replied, Judith thought a little bluntly.

Marietta nodded, but then turned a little green, as if the motion made her dizzy. "Well…" she said softly. "Thank you, then."

Angel nodded also. A heavy silence fell. Angel shifted a bit awkwardly, and Judith wondered if he was going to leave again. She spoke before he had the chance to decide,

"We're not sure what we're going to tell Jack-Marietta's husband." Angel looked over at her. "He's with his ill mother in London," she explained. "We don't know when he'll be back, but either way, he'll see the insurance statement. If you have ideas..."

Angel looked away thoughtfully, and after a moment, said, "I'll take care of it."

Marietta frowned, brow furrowed in confusion. "Take care of what? You're going to call my husband?"

"No," Angel replied. "I've got contacts. I can pull favors. You were never here."

A stunned silence followed.

"If you want," Angel added hastily. "You could also just tell him you contracted an abnormally high fever. Up to you."

Marietta was silent for a long while before she told him she would think about it. Angel nodded and then turned to go.

"Oh," he said suddenly. "I almost forgot. Here." He pulled out of his pocket a small bag of some sort of powder and dropped it on the table beside Marietta's bed. "Take two spoonfuls in hot water three times a day. It should help."

Marietta nodded, eyeing the bag.

Judith thanked Angel, and he nodded. "I'm going to go to sleep," he told them, sounding so tired that he might have meant standing up right there, "but you can still call if you need anything."

"What were you doing this whole time if not sleeping?" Judith asked, hoping her tone didn't sound too maternal; after all, she had told him to go to bed.

"Had to get the demon's body out of my living room," Angel replied, glancing at her. "And then scrub the blood off my floor. And then I realized that would help," he nodded toward the bag of powder he'd given Marietta, "but I had to get a few ingredients…"

Looking impressed, Claire asked, "And you did this all during the day?"

Angel gave her half a smile. "Between sewers and the necrotempered windows in my car, it's much easier these days than it used to be." He gave one last glance around the room like looking for more questions, and when there were none he gave a little nod and left.

Both Claire and Marietta turned to look at Judith, and she understood. Sighing, she said, "I guess I have some explaining to do…"

Something about the ensuing question and answer session-which ended up being over an hour long-must have scared Marietta into wanting to avoid any questions from her husband that even glanced in the direction of the supernatural world, because she later decided to take Angel up on his offer to pull a few favors.

She was subdued through the entire discussion-due in large part to recovering from her near-death experience-and took each of Judith's words with a frown that oscillated with meaning from pensive to disapproving.

Claire, on the other hand, became progressively more interested as the conversation went on, her eyes lighting up with wonder, thrill, and the occasional jealousy. Judith was not sure which reaction was worse.

She explained about Angel, his unique moral stance (for a vampire), how she and William actually knew him, and what his true age was (Marietta thought that 476 was much better than 29, but Claire was not so sure). She told them about how Angel had saved her life once or twice, and her son's even more often. She told them about how Angel had become more of a father to William than Sam, even though he never wanted it. She told them about how she and Angel became friends; how they found a common respect for ideas and attitudes despite the stark differences of their lives.

It was this part of the conversation that Judith had the hardest time keeping her voice from shaking as she watched carefully for the signs that her friends finally realized the magnitude of the situation...and the judgment that would surely (and should) come with it. After all, she'd lied to them for years, and the lie had nearly led-again-to a friend's death. She was sleeping with a vampire; a creature literally created from Hell to kill, torture, ravage, and generally destroy the human population. There were circumstances, of course, but that didn't mean that she still wasn't on intimate terms with someone who had actually done all of those things.

And finally, she explained why she'd decided not to follow her friends' advice to take the emotionally-safe route out of the whole new sleeping-together situation. It wasn't quite the real reason. The real reason involved deeply personal things about herself, of which she was only just starting to become aware. Things that involved the psychological traumas of being partly responsible for the death of a best friend, which she needed to work out on her own before talking about. But it was a good enough reason.

"I've lived most of my adult life doing the practical thing," she told them. "I don't want the rest of my life to be so predictable."

Claire accepted this encouragingly and Marietta reluctantly, but both agreed to support Judith's decision and help deflect their other friends' curiosity. Having their support on that front alone was enough to make Judith feel like a great weight had been lifted, and as the next several days passed and she caught up on her rest, she started to look forward to her social visits with her friends for the first time in weeks.

When they had finished their conversation, all three of them exhausted, Judith and Claire left Marietta to fall back asleep. Claire went home to do the same and Judith found herself waiting alone for the next tram to come along that would take her to her flat. Her mind felt numb even though it was still running at high speed, drained of energy but not of things to process.

When the next tram came along, Judith saw that it was not the one she needed to get home, and in the exaggerated despair of having to wait the few minutes for the next one, she crossed the street after it passed like going to Angel's had been the plan all along.

Shortly thereafter, she knocked softly on his door. She expected him to still be asleep, and didn't wait long before pressing her thumb to the lock. It clicked open and she went in.

Judith stopped at his bedroom door, peering into his den. It was dark, as usual, but the heavy curtains had drifted open just enough to let a single ray of sun in, like a crack in the back of a cave. Angel's sleeping form at the far end of the room was silhouetted by it, the ray illuminating the edge of his pale, half-bare back like a cloud's silver lining. He was slightly curled toward the middle of the bed with the covers pulled lazily up to his chest like an animal that had given up halfway through circling its nest. He didn't breathe at all, which Judith now knew meant that he was well and truly asleep.

She went softly across the wood floor to the near side of the bed and leaned over to touch his shoulder; hating to disturb him, but hating the thought of turning around and going home alone more. Angel tensed and stirred, breathing in suddenly and deeply (smelling, she realized), then squinted open his eyes.

She didn't really know what to say. She was so tired of talking, and she didn't even really know why she was there. Silent company, she supposed. Solidarity? She was too tired to think about it.

"Can I stay a while?" she found herself asking.

The corner of Angel's mouth twitched as if he were trying to smile, but was too tired. Perhaps as a second attempt, he gave a single nod, and then his hand slid out from under the covers, took hers, and tugged gently. Judith let him guide her up onto the bed, sliding her shoes and coat off as she did. She settled in next to him under the covers, her back leaning low against the mahogany headboard while his arm wrapped around her waist.

She ran her fingers gently through his hair, relaxing into the safety of his firm hold. Her dark room of secrets was still there. People knew about it now, but they still couldn't get in. Shedding light at it didn't mean shedding light in it.

It suddenly struck Judith how literal her own metaphor was in that moment. It was a dark room, indeed-though her eyes were adjusting now-and Angel was both a keeper of so many of her secrets and a secret himself. Not many could simply walk into his nest the way she had, and that meant that she was utterly safe. In the embrace of the dark room and the dark creature next to her, not even judgment could touch her, unless it was her own. And that was something she didn't want to think about.

It took a long time for the darkness to eat away her thoughts; a slow and involuntary process much like osmosis. As her mind slowed, her head dropped. A little too high to rest on Angel's head and too low to catch on any of the carved swoops the headboard, it wasn't exactly comfortable, but before she could decide to shift, she'd fallen asleep.

Judith woke with a terrible crick in her neck, and she winced painfully as she slowly straightened her head, easing out of the spasm. She reached up with a hand to support and massage the muscles, trying to remember where she was and why.

It came back suddenly, once she realized that she was in Angel's bed, his arm still wrapped around her waist and head pressed into her side. She'd come from the hospital, where Marietta was recovering, and Judith had felt so tired and vulnerable from the terror of the past day that she'd found herself seeking Angel instead of solitude.

It was dark outside now, but since it was winter, that was no indication for how late it really was. Judith twisted gently toward the clock on the nightstand behind her, trying to see it without waking Angel. She managed to see the clock (8:18pm), but not without waking Angel. He must have been close to it anyway, since she'd made more motion leaving his bed in the early mornings before and not woken him then.

"Sorry," she whispered as he rolled onto his back and stretched.

He made a grunting noise that sounded sort of like, mm-mm, which Judith wasn't sure if she should take for dismissal or mere acknowledgement.

Judith pushed herself up a bit higher against the headboard, wincing at her stiff muscles.

"Whassit…?" Angel mumbled, settling back into his pillow and draping an arm over his eyes. "Sometime after 8? 8:15?"

"Good guess," Judith told him.

"Mmno," he said, "position of the sun."

Judith had forgotten that he could sense where the sun was. He'd explained once, a long time ago, that every time he moved, he had to readjust to the latitude and season shifts to tell what time it was without a clock—not because of the light, but because of the sun's position in the sky. Noon felt different at the equator than it did above the Arctic Circle.

"Hungry?" Angel asked, his voice croaking with sleep.

Judith had been so worried all day that the thought of food had made her sick, but now that she was more relaxed, "Yes, actually."

Angel lifted the arm that was draped over his eyes and used his thumb to double-tap the ring on his middle finger. A holographic screen flickered onto his palm.

"What d'you want?" he asked. "Anything."

"Not anything…"

"Sure. I have beer and blood in my fridge, so it's got to be delivery."

"Oh, Delivery Dash," Judith said, understanding. She hadn't expected Angel to know about the delivery service that picked up orders from restaurants and delivered them anywhere in the city limits.

"Had to use it for the boys a few times," Angel explained.

Oh, that made sense. Well, now that a whole city of restaurants was open to her… She eventually decided on fettuccine alfredo from her favorite Italian restaurant, promising to pay him back.

Angel gave a little shrug. "I'll accept it in drinks," he told her as he tapped the Palm off and slumped back into his pillow.

"Deal," she agreed.

"How's Marietta?" Angel asked after a short moment of silence.

"It seems she'll be alright," Judith replied. "She'd like to take you up on your offer, if it still stands."

Angel nodded.

"I told them everything I could," Judith went on. "I think Marietta would like to be able to deny it all, so that's why."

Angel nodded again. "Makes sense."

"Does it? I'm worried."

"Why?"

"Denial isn't healthy," she said like it should be obvious.

"It's a natural part of the process," Angel replied. "Totally normal at this stage."

"Is it?" Judith bit her lower lip.

"Sure," Angel said confidently. "You were just weird in how you coped."

Judith laughed.

"Give it some time," Angel continued. "Like, not the day she almost died from demon possession."

Laughing again, Judith agreed that he had a point.

Angel smiled, rubbing the last of the sleep out of his eyes. His hair was mussed on the left side where he'd slept against her. He groaned, like he'd just thought of something he had to do but didn't want to do it, and stretched gently again.

"Does it usually take you this long to wake up?" Judith asked as she watched him. They'd never seen the other's morning routines, having vastly different chronological definitions of "morning."

Craning his neck to look up at her, Angel replied with an ambivalent noise, "Depends on how much of a motivation I have to get out of bed. Right now…I have moderately compelling motivation."

"Really? What's that?"

"I have to pee."

Judith chuckled and told him that perhaps that was a good reason to get up, to which Angel reluctantly agreed. He turned over and literally rolled out of bed, his feet hitting the floor before the rest of him was fully upright, his movements lithe like a lazy cat.

Judith was somewhat surprised to find that he was fully nude, and she averted her eyes automatically, even though the room was still dark and it was hard to see much at all. Angel didn't seem to notice, though, still rubbing at his own eyes as he crossed to the bathroom and closed the door.

It was such a strange juxtaposition, Judith thought, pushing herself up even higher against the headboard to a full sitting position: friends and lovers both separately and simultaneously. Feeling embarrassed to see him naked now, even though she had on a half dozen occasions already and at those times feeling—well…not comfortable in the familiar sense, but at least right about it. Lovers could see each other naked anytime. Strangers and friends could see each other naked in specific nonsexual circumstances – communal bathing and nudist beach and park areas, for instance. But in the privacy of homes and intimacy of bedrooms, it felt like a line was being crossed in their friendship, similar to the one that had existed when she'd tried on the corset.

When Judith and Angel were not actively engaged in sexual activities, their friendship was distinct. Wholly "friend-like." As it was before, except perhaps with some new memories and knowledge about the other. There had been no middle ground on which to walk naked across the room without having had sex first.

Until, Judith realized, she had walked in that afternoon and blurred the line.

Interesting.

The bathroom door opened and Angel came out again, looking more awake and running wet fingers through his hair, blindly trying to fix whatever sleep had done to it. He left the light on so that it streamed into the dark room, silhouetting him. Stepping up onto the end of the bed with his knee, he did a controlled sort of flop face down onto his pillow again, sighing in what sounded like relief.

Well, if the line was already blurred…

"Do you always sleep naked?" she asked, trying not to belie her hesitancy.

"Mostly," Angel's reply came muffled through the pillow.

He had such lovely curves, Judith observed; broad muscle strokes defined by strength. She could follow the path of his spine easily by the dense muscles on either side, holding each vertebra in place with flexible precision, upright from his neck to the bottom of his ribcage, and then dipping into his lower back. His gluteal muscles were firm and flowed seamlessly into well-defined legs, strong from use. The shadows cast from the bathroom light made the curves seem all the starker. He could have been an excellent study for an art class.

"Do you?" Angel asked after a moment, voice still muffled in the pillow.

"Hardly ever," she replied, reaching out to touch the tattoo on his shoulder. "Though lately I'm starting to see the appeal."

Untangling his arm from under the pillow, Angel stretched it out to wrap around Judith again, this time wrapping around her hips rather than her waist. The tattoo glided over the scapula as it moved, hugging the bone's curves with a sexy sort of taut fluidity. She fingered the lines, marveling at how uniform the skin felt. Judith had no tattoos herself and hadn't much occasion to really examine one before. Although she knew better, part of her expected to be able to somehow feel the ink or a change in skin texture.

Angel let her feel it, seeming to relax the longer her fingers dragged over his skin. He didn't do that with the brand, she'd noticed. She'd brushed over the sun-like mark with her lips once and noticed him flinch slightly under her, like he'd received an unexpected static shock. She hadn't yet gotten up the courage to ask about it, and hadn't gone near it again since.

"Does it need to be touched up?" Angel asked about the tattoo, turning his head toward her and unmuffling his voice.

"I can't quite tell in this light," she replied.

He nodded.

He'd seemed content with that, but Judith, finding that she was not, turned on the light beside her and looked more closely.

"I think it's fine," she said. "A few spots perhaps, but only on close inspection."

"Good," Angel replied. Now his voice was muffled against her side as she had leaned forward to look. "Thanks."

Judith settled back again, and her hand began to trace other invisible lines on his back. Angel's hand began to wander, too, exploring until he found the hem of her shirt and sliding under it. Her skin tightened pleasantly under his hand as his fingers traced similarly invisible lines on the side of her torso.

Of course, she knew this was where they were headed. They must, being alone in an already-intimate setting. It would have felt incomplete to share Angel's bed but not his body (especially now knowing it had been naked this whole time), even though that was far from the reason she came to his bed in the first place.

Angel knew it, too. Judith wasn't feeling especially libidinous, and she wasn't sure that Angel was, either, but she knew they both felt that something needed to happen to justify their current situation.

Angel pushed himself up on one arm and Judith had to adjust her arm around him to accommodate. His head reached the level of her chest, but his eyes were looking up into hers. "How much time do we have?"

How quick do we have to be?

Yes, given that it must happen, it should happen now. Best not delay too much longer. The line was already so blurred.

It was ironic that sex was their solution to un-blurring it.

But not that ironic, really, if she thought about it. They usually shared a bed after sex; this time they shared a bed before. It was only the order of things that was blurring the line.

Judith tried to figure out how much time had passed since she'd ordered the food. She tried not to wonder why she hadn't insisted on going home for dinner instead. She had to work tomorrow, after all; her uniform was there, her shower things...

"Fifteen minutes?" she guessed. That should be enough time.

Enough time to right the course again. To divide the intimacy between sex and friendship again. Afterward, they could have dinner in the kitchen, fully dressed, and talk about the Prime Minister's new cabinet or the Viking art exhibit that just came to the museum. Then she could go home, sleep in her own bed, and start the work week worrying about Marietta and Claire in the back of her mind instead of lines she'd blurred.

Really, she decided as she sat up to pull off her shirt, this was the safer option.

Marietta was released from the hospital and had returned home before her husband. She made a recovery so thorough that, through his grief at just losing his mother, Jack Goldberg didn't notice Marietta's easy fatigability or the fading bruises on her arms where Angel had gripped her. Whatever was in the powder Angel had given her helped her so much that she actually went to see him on her own to thank him after she returned from attending the funeral in London.

According to separate reports from both Marietta and Angel, it apparently had taken most of the courage that Marietta had had at the time.

"Marietta," Judith had said exasperatedly, "I've told you, William used to visit Angel alone all the time as a child. What were you so afraid of?"

Marietta had pulled herself up in her chair and wrapped her arms around herself protectively. She had mumbled something that Judith couldn't catch, and Judith had asked her to repeat it.

Marietta had glared at her in a way that Judith was expecting something silly to be the reason, but when Marietta had repeated herself, it was with a cool smoothness that she said, "He scared Rankos, Judith. I don't see why I shouldn't be scared, too."

That gave Judith much to ponder in the coming weeks as she and Angel continued seeing each other. She couldn't deny Marietta's point, but at the same time…

Death seemed to surround Judith, and now even more literally as she let Angel wrap himself around her with his dead body (unalive body, Judith preferred to think of it), himself historically and ontologically a bringer of death.

And yet, if it weren't for Angel, she'd be attending a second funeral in as many months, grieving yet another loss for yet another friend. The death that surrounded her this time had brought life.

Maybe her curse was broken, she started to let herself hope. Maybe her first word hadn't been as prescient as she'd thought. Angel was safe from death; untouched by it.

Maybe he could lift death's finger off hers.

The End

A/N: Thank you for reading! The series continues with the next story, And None Contented.

If you're interested, a little bit of commentary, since this story kind of warrants it:

Before I first wrote this story back in 2010ish, I never envisioned Angel and Judith getting together in any capacity, and this story was an AU experiment to stretch my own writing skills (i.e. I wanted to try my hand at writing sex scenes). There were reasons I chose Judith over anyone else to experiment with, and part of the exercise was seeing how I might bring them together for a night without any previous attraction, and then just as easily let them go on their way.

Except I kept writing after their first encounter. Although this story has gone through several alterations of varying sorts, the flow is true to the original. I had no particular plot in mind, I just knew that I was curious about their relationship after this first night. What comes in the following chapters is the organic result of that exploration, and I liked it so much I made it canon.

This story is told completely from Judith's POV as she's mid-50's and single and thinking about the aging process, and I absolutely adored writing this story from that angle. As she says in the Dragon's Crown, society tends to ignore the sexuality of older women, and I loved the opportunity Judith gave me to embrace it. I hope you enjoyed it, too.