Just some Angel/Collins stuff. My fluff is important for the storyline, I promise!
R&R pretty please!
Oh, and thank you regular reviewers, you guys make me muchly happy :)
It gets late. Dark. I look for Roger but can't find him. He'll probably be back tomorrow, he always comes back eventually. So I come home and get some sleep. Collins sleeps on the couch, Angel in her new bed. She's probably not asleep though. The moonlight seeps in through the dirty windows, keeping Collins from falling asleep. I bet that would be his excuse anyway.
Collins concentrated his gaze on the edge of his thin blanket, where it was frayed and slowly unravelling. He messing about with it was just making it worse, the whole side becoming tattered. He gave a heavy sigh and wondered whether to take Mark's advice, and go and talk to Angel. He didn't see the point now, she was already angry with him, and probably asleep anyway. He wished he could just have Angel understand him, and understand that he was just stressed out. He wished he hadn't even acted off with her at all. What if she didn't want to be with him anymore? What if she ended up out on the streets again? What if she got sick again and had no one to take care of her? Collins couldn't stop worries running around in his head. He felt he had to check up on Angel, just to see if she was still there. He felt like she might disappear at any moment.
He quietly opened the door to her new room, glad that the new hinge didn't squeak at all. He didn't want to be held responsible for waking her up, when it was rare that she could sleep at all. The light from the tiny window cast shadows over her already peaky face. She looked so different, so much weaker, curled up in a ball under the thin blankets. Her breathing loud and heavy with illness, occasionally broken where it was caught in her sore throat. Collins sucked in his breath and sat gingerly on the end of the bed, trying his best not to wake her up. He really wanted to lay down next to her, wrap his arms around her body and never leg go of her, and maybe that way she would stay forever. But he didn't. He just sat, and watched her sleeping. She twitched, rolled over, started coughing. Collins winced at the sound of that cough, it sounded like she taking all her insides with it. Or like she was suffocating.
Eventually the noise was too painful for Collins, and he felt like had to wake her up. He knelt down next to her and shook her gently, grabbing for the glass of water on her bedside table. It was a moment before Angel's eyes snapped open and she focused on Collins, she didn't acknowledge him for the moment, just grabbed the glass of water and gulped it down messily. When she had finished she set down the glass and stared at Collins with tired eyes
"I came in here when I heard you cough..." Collins said quietly in explanation, feeling the tension between the two of them.
"Liar," Angel said, but with a smile creeping on to her face. Collins couldn't help but smile back. He had missed seeing her smile. "I heard you come in...I was never really asleep" she explained.
"You fake that coughing fit?" he asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
"Oh hell no, honey. You think I would willingly cough like that? It hurts like...I can't even think of a comparison!" For Collins, just to hear her say 'honey' was enough to improve his mood. It meant she wasn't mad at him, and that she was still herself. He knew he now had to tell her about going to the hospital the next day, she would be angry with him if he didn't pretend that was what he gone in there to tell her. That he had even thought of keeping it as a secret until the next day. It was difficult. He knew Angel wouldn't want to go in. She would probably think that she would never going to get out again. Collins reached out and took her hand, brushing his fingers against her palm gently.
"So...if you didn't come in here because I was coughing, then why did you come in?" She asked quietly, closing her hand so that she was holding tightly on to his. Collins didn't know what to say. He couldn't say, 'I wanted to check you were still there' because that would probably depress them both. He told himself to tell her about the hospital the next day.
"I felt I needed to check up on you...and ask you something," he began, but stalled at the end of his sentence, silently wishing that she would agree to everything and not be mad at him.
"What?" Angel asked eagerly, squeezing his hand gently. Collins took a deep breath before attempting to carry on.
"I want you to go into hospital...tomorrow." He felt Angel let go of his hand but didn't look up to check her facial expression before carrying on talking. "I know what you'll say. But please...I want you to go in..." He looked up for a moment and caught Angel's eye. "For me."
Angel turned her head so that she was staring straight at the wall and shook her head. Collins put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently.
"Please Angel. You don't have to be admitted, just go in and have an appointment. Then I can relax when they tell me this is nothing." Angel didn't stop shaking her head, just kept her gaze fixed on the wall and shook off Collins's touch.
"Who's gonna pay for it?" Angel asked.
"I have money saved from my last teaching job...to pay for stuff like this," Collins said, reassuring her, although she had actually been looking for a loophole in his idea, and he has just made her feel worse. He watched Angel closely, mostly just to see if she could bare to look at him. He saw her swallow.
"And what about...if it isn't nothing?" Collins didn't say anything, he sat just sat there, shocked by something negative coming out of her mouth. She turned to look him straight in the eye. "What if we go, and they tell you that I only have a week to live? Wouldn't we be better not knowing?" Now Collins was the one to turn away. He hadn't imagined things could go that way. He had had it all set out in his head; they would go to the hospital, get Angel checked out and the doctor would say it was just flu and she should just drink plenty of liquids. She would get better and they would live happily ever after. He tried to think of something to say back. Something to prove he was right.
"If that was the case, then we would come home...and live our whole lives in a week. We would be ready," He sat on the bed, right next to Angel, pulling her away from the wall and into his arms. He held her there for a moment in silence, just listening to her breathing, and try to speculate what was running through her mind. "Angel..." he whispered quietly, and she turned to look at him.
"What?" She asked softly.
"If you don't do this...and something happens...then for the rest of my life, I'll have this little voice in my head. This little voice saying 'maybe if Angel had gone to the hospital, she would be here to buy that skirt...or to tell Roger he's complaining too much...or Angel would be here to say something tasteless in Spanish, and make everybody laugh. If Angel had just gone to the hospital, I wouldn't be back where I began, stuck in a dead end job like someone has pressed the pause button on my life.'" Collins stopped talking for a moment, he couldn't carry on for all the emotions that were suddenly flooding into him. Sadness, that Angel would leave him one day, or he would leave her. Love...love that she was in his arms, and Collins could feel her breathing on his face. He took a deep breath to finish what he had been saying. "You're changed my life too much...changed it too much to leave it now. So please, do this for me...this one thing...just...please." Collins exhaled slowly once he had finished, exhausted by confession everything that was on his mind, he had to push hard for each word.
Angel reeled a little, she was shocked by everything that Collins had said. It felt like it was her duty to stay with him. When she thought about it, she could understand everything he was saying, she just had to see the situation through Collins's eyes. If he was sick, Angel would do anything she could to make sure he stayed with her. Even if it meant forcing him into hospital. But now, she couldn't help but see it. A doctor walking out and telling her that she only had a week. Seconds slipping through her fingers and nothing that the two of them could do about it. She could fall asleep now and never see him again. It horrible to know that she couldn't control what her body would decide for her. Angel felt a pain rise in her throat, and not from her illness. Tears slipped down her cheeks and soaked her shirt. She couldn't do anything. She couldn't do anything but cling to Collins and whisper that she loved him. Collins couldn't do anything either, he felt her shaking with sobs and tried to hold her still, planting kisses on her forehead. He shhhed her, rocking her back and forth a little.
"It's ok Angel...we're going to be together forever...I know it." She held back her sobs for a moment, to look up at him.
"Are we?" She asked rhetorically, but Collins responded anyway.
"Yes. If you ever believe one word I say, believe that."