Title: Third Time Lucky
Author: Alex Dollard
Posted: 11-26-2002
Rating: R
Email: prague_spring@hotmail.com
Content: A/C
Summary: Cordelia and Angel kiss. Stuff happens.
Spoilers: Spoilers for A:TS 2/3 'There's No Place Like Plrtz Glrb' and 'Billy' and BtVS 5/6 up to 'Once More With Feeling'
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution:
Notes:
Feedback: I LOVE feedback.
'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.'
- Auric Goldfinger, in "Goldfinger" by Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
He'd been thinking about it for a while. How long, exactly, he wasn't sure. Not years, there had been other things occupying his mind, but he was fairly certain that he HAD thought about it - briefly - a few years earlier.
When he first moved to LA, he thought about it again, not seriously, he had his new mission and doing it would just get in the way. Later, when it happened, he wasn't ready, wasn't prepared. Anyway, he knew it was for the wrong reasons.
No. He really started thinking about it when they took that trip to Plrtz Glrb and he almost felt human again. Walking around in the sunshine had really helped - he thought it might make it easier and Fred's regard for him made him think he wasn't completely repulsive. He thought that the whole fairytale element might have worked on his side, but true to form, it hadn't. It had happened, just not for him.
Now, though, at last, he'd done it. He wasn't expecting a fairytale, not after all this time. It was really little more than idle curiosity. Really.
"What the hell was that?"
Ah. This meant he had to explain himself, right? This was the point at which his carefully put together plans fell sadly apart.
"Er, a kiss," he muttered, not looking at her.
"Yeah, caught that. I am here, you know. Angel, look at me. Angel?" She had that tone in her voice, the tone which suggested he better look at her RIGHT NOW unless he wanted perforated ear drums and a close encounter with a stake.
He looked at her. She was still standing on the other side of Wesley's desk, dark hair tucked behind her ears, arms full of old books, one eyebrow raised. Some devil of mischief caused him to sweep his eyes over her, taking in the pretty vest top and faded blue jeans which hugged her slender legs. He forced himself to meet her eyes, expecting to see derision or contempt lurking in the hazel depths. Instead he saw only confusion.
"Why?" She asked softly. "Why now? Why here?" She gestured at the office.
He sighed and leaned against the wall.
"Don't leave," he said quietly, "I can't do this without you."
"Oh. So you kissed me so I'd stay?" Now she sounded pissed.
He looked at her. Yep, she looked pissed too. She tumbled the books onto Wesley's desk with little regard for their age.
"No. No, that isn't why I kissed you. I don't want you to leave BECAUSE I kissed you. I need you with me to get through this. All of this, Wolfram and Hart, the agency, all of it and I'm going to shut up now. Do you think babbling is contagious?"
She looked like she was trying not to laugh, "Either that or you spent WAY too much time with Willow."
He looked at her, his heart in his eyes, "Are you going to leave?"
She really did laugh this time.
"Over a little Sunday school kiss?" She sobered and shook her head, "I told you a long time ago that I'd be with you until you shoe shined."
"Shanshu-ed," he corrected, smiling.
"Whatever. You going to help me with these books or not?"
*
The trouble was, once it had happened - and Cordelia was honest enough to admit that she'd thought about kissing Angel more than once - she wasn't able to forget about it. She kept reliving the moment he leaned over the desk, touched her cheek with his hand and pressed his mouth to hers for one endless moment. Just a quick, closed mouth kiss. Not even a proper kiss at all. She felt cheated. If Angel was going to blur the lines of their already complicated friendship then the least he could do was to do it properly.
She was a great kisser. She knew this. She'd seen more than one guy go all weak at the knees and goofy because all the blood in his brain was heading elsewhere due to her kissing him. Apart from Angel, apparently. He kissed her and then it was like, no big deal.
The whole situation sucked.
He didn't seem to have any problems with it at all. Probably just wrote it off as some lingering effect of letting that Billy guy touch him. It was such a guy thing to do. Kiss a girl and not think about it again.
Almost the worst part of it was not being able to talk to anyone about it. Wesley would probably have a serious talk with Angel and lecture her about doing something so stupid. Fred would spontaneously combust from sheer jealousy, Gunn would start practising his axe and Lilah would probably send her flowers and a thank you note. So. Not any of the LA group and the only other person she could think of was Willow who would be bound to tell Buffy which might possibly be worse than anything else.
Unfortunately, that still left one person.
"Do I have to sing?" Cordelia pleaded with the green demon, "I really, really can't sing. You know! You heard me." She reminded him.
Lorne adjusted one of the cuffs on his flamboyant suit.
"Ah yes. The pain-filled, tequila-aided rendition of 'We Are The Champions'," he shuddered in remembrance. "I'm sorry, sugar, but you know the rules. You have a question, you sing. Would you like to look through the songbook?"
"Not really. Can I have a drink?"
"Do I look like a bartender?" Lorne asked her acidly.
Cordelia looked around the club. Caritas was still trashed from Gunn's friends attacking.
"I don't see anyone else."
He rolled his eyes and stepped behind the bar.
"I mix. You sing," he ordered.
"Fine."
She flicked through the songbook idly. An evil thought struck her.
"Hey Lorne, what's your favourite song?"
The green demon replied without thinking, "'Unchained Melody', I just love the title," He said reminiscently.
"Okay then. Oh, my looove, my dar-ling..."
"NOOOOOOO!"
*
Two sets of tortured ears and several restorative drinks later, Lorne and Cordelia were sitting around one of the only unbroken tables.
"So, what do you think?"
Lorne stirred his drink, "I think you know what I think."
"Look, I don't need another Cryptic Guy in my life thanks, I already have one."
Lorne looked at her.
"Sugar, if you do this, you could be handing him to Wolfram and Hart on a silver platter."
"I'm not going to sleep with him. God, you're just like Wes. Just because you've seen him ticked off does NOT make you an expert on Angelus. I am. I lived through him tormenting Buffy. He threatened all of us, he killed Willow's fish and murdered Miss Callander - and nearly killed Giles. Not to mention when he got drugged into perfect happiness and Wes had to knock him down the elevator shaft. I don't ever want that to happen again, thank you. Twice in one lifetime is enough. Besides, who do you think Angelus would come after first?"
"I take your point. Cordelia, be careful."
"Duh!"
*
Which conversation had brought them to this point really. She and Angel were ostensibly training. Ostensibly because she was suspicious of his motives A.K (after kiss) and suspected that he enjoyed the time alone with her. She was also suspicious that a certain amount of ogling might be going on - if only because she was taking every opportunity to ogle back.
It was very strange. She had somehow managed to forget just how attractive he was. She supposed that it was because she got to know him so well. So well that they had reached this point, where she knew him, demon and all, from the inside out. From a purely aesthetic point of view however... Angel was definitely built. Fine. Hot. Sexy. Drop dead gorgeous and dressed to kill, no pun intended. She liked seeing him like this. Kinda lost in what he was doing, a more private Angel. Suddenly she felt honoured that he trusted her enough to share this with her.
He stripped off his wife beater top and stretched, cat like. Cordelia eyed the broad expanse of chest appreciatively. She thought maybe she was staring. Yup. Crap. Could she BE more obvious? Actually, she reflected, she'd been far over the obvious horizon over the last week and was accelerating right past blatant now. Even Gunn had noticed how jumpy she was around Angel and although Fred and Wesley were still tied up in their own little Billy induced drama, both of them had asked her what was going on.
It wasn't fair! She was SO beyond that lame crush she'd had on Angel back in Sunnydale. He was her best friend and her colleague. Damn it all to hell and back, they were already tied together by the whole Warrior/Seer thing, she didn't need to go falling for him as well.
"What's up?"
She jumped. Crap.
"Nothing. Nothing's up. I'm totally not up, I mean, I'm fine. Really."
"Uh huh."
"What? What's that for?"
Angel shrugged, "You just seem really tense recently."
Well duh, Cordelia's inner monologue commented, perhaps if you could keep your mouth under control, I wouldn't be tense. Out loud she said,
"I'm not tense."
"Uh huh."
"Again with the 'uh huh'. Since when were you monosyllable guy again?"
He ignored that and walked over to her, turning her away from him and placing big hands on her shoulders and rubbing.
"Jeez Cordy, you're twisted up like a pretzel."
Oh this was gooood. This was fantastic. His hands moved over her skin, kneading and soothing the tension right out of her. God this was amazing. How had she not known he could do this?
"Oh my god," she moaned, "I think I'm keeping you."
Rumble of laughter behind her. Very close behind her.
"Wouldn't let you get rid of me," he teases, sliding his hands down her ribs and onto her hips.
Somehow, without her exactly being sure about it, they were pressed together, Angel's hands slipping around her waist, his chest hard against her back. His fingers were stroking her hips, just gently tracing the shape of the bone beneath her sweats. He dropped his head down to hers and pressed his cheek to her hair.
"Mmm," he murmured, rocking her slightly.
Cordelia's mouth was dry and her palms were sweaty. Her breathing sounded laborious in her ears and she was sure she could pick out every beat of her heart. Slowly, she turned in his arms. Angel was surprised, she read that easily on his face, but he didn't drop his arms from around her. Feeling almost as if she was trying to lift her arms through some heavy liquid, she slowly placed her arms on Angel's shoulders, feeling the heavy muscles bunch and shift under her hands.
"Cordy..." His voice was questioning.
She put one finger over his mouth.
"Shut up. Just. Shut. Up."
"Mmm."
*
Okaaay. This was confusing. First Cordelia brushed off his kissing her in Wesley's office, then she was jumpy around him for a week, then she tried her damnedest to suck his lungs out through his mouth while they were training. Talk about mixed signals. Angel was feeling more than a little grumpy about the whole situation.
Which of course, he wasn't supposed to be in at all. Unfortunately, he recognised the symptoms and knew he was a fair way to falling for Cordelia Chase. This was not to the good. She was his best friend and closest confidante. Not only that but she was his seer as well. He'd thought their relationship couldn't get any more complicated. He was apparently wrong.
The problem was, what was he going to do about it? The answer was, naturally, not a lot. Even if Cordelia lost control of her senses and fell for him too, they were in the ultimate bad situation. Couldn't be together and, thanks to the Powers, couldn't be apart.
For a few idle moments, he considered going to Sunnydale and begging Willow to perform on him whatever spell she performed on Buffy to bring her back from the dead. Or hunting down that bloody demon that made him human more than a year ago. He sighed.
The trouble was, when it came to women he was a bloody wanker, his inner monologue commented helpfully, sounding disconcertingly like Spike. He couldn't even argue back because it was true. Unlike his blond offspring, he hadn't even managed to stay faithful to Darla for the many decades they were together. Oh no. The ever changing line up of the Scourge of Europe saw to that. First Penn, and he had been pretty enough and quiet enough that Darla hadn't objected to him sharing their bed. Then Stella, the little girl he'd turned for Darla. She'd had a fancy to the girl, played with her like a doll. Stella was sharp enough to play on this, resembled Darla enough to be able to play at mother and daughter. But she had hated and loathed Penn and it had been exhausting trying to keep them from killing each other. Penn had left, already reliving his brutal slaying of his family, driven out by the frightening combination of Darla and Stella. She was demanding, cruel and evil beyond even Angelus's expectations. A child in body but not in mind and now, in the twenty-first century, he occasionally wondered if Anne Rice had ever come across Stella because her child vampire Claudia was hauntingly similar. And wouldn't it just amuse Stella to be immortalised in print. Druscilla, next, broken and clumsily put back together and Spike, just as broken and more like Angelus than either of them cared to admit.
Cordelia would make a good vampire. The thought snuck in unbidden. Angel groaned and banged his head against the wall. He did not need to be thinking about Cordelia like this. For a moment, just a moment, he entertained the thought of turning Cordelia, finding Dru and swinging by Sunnydale to collect Spike. God, he really was a bloody wanker, inner voice number one commented in Spike's derisive tones, the last bloody thing any of them needed to know was that he'd been thinking about turning Princess. Even if it was only in fun he shouldn't be thinking about Cordelia flushed from the hunt, eyes bright, dark hair tousled, lips parted and stained with...
He banged his head against the wall again.
"Somethin' wrong?"
Angel lifted his head slightly and let it bang back onto the wall again.
"No," he lied.
Gunn cocked his head.
"'Cause you spend so much time tryin'a knock down walls with your head," the renegade commented critically. "Man, you've been twitchy for the last few days. What's up?"
"Nothing," Angel said, giving up on the wall and inwardly snarling at the Spikevoice which had segued into a Wesleyvoice ("I think that we're going to have to chain you up again,") and a Xandervoice ("Deadboy, you seriously thinking about dating Cordelia? I did and look where it got her, impaled on a rebar. And I'm not a vampire"). The initial Spikevoice was chanting, "Wanker, wanker, wanker," at the highest volume it could and there was also a disconcerting Druscillavoice who was singing something incomprehensible about the stars. Not to mention a raspy Southern drawl who sounded suspiciously like Lindsey and a series of growls from the demon who obviously thought it was getting too crowded. Angel sympathised.
"So you wouldn't be in love with Cordelia then?" Gunn asked innocently.
The voices were stunned into silence.
"Er, what?" Angel asked feebly. The inner riot started up again. The Spikevoice and the Xandervoice were ganging up on the Wesleyvoice, the Druscillavoice was trying to bite the demon who was complaining very loudly. Needless to say, the Lindseyvoice was sniggering and a seventh voice popped into existence sounding remarkably like Marvin the Paranoid Android and moaning about the wretchedness of life. Angel was in full agreement.
"You think we're blind?" Gunn asked in disbelief, "Man, you been lookin' at her like she's the last bloodbag in the fridge."
"I have not!" Angel protested loudly, trying to drown out the Spikevoice and Xandervoice who were chanting, "Liar, liar, leather pants on fire."
"Well, maybe not," Gunn conceded, "but definitely like you wanna take her back to the bat cave and do vampy things to her."
Angel sighed.
"Even if I did think about her like that - and I don't - did you forget the soul issue? Even if I was in love with her, nothing could ever happen, it's too dangerous."
"So you're both gonna do the 'suffer in silence' thing then?"
Angel's lips twitched at Gunn's doleful tone.
"Better miserable than Angelus," he said cheerfully. Now he had come to some decision, he could close the door on his inappropriate feelings for Cordelia and get on with what he was supposed to be doing. The voices had fallen into silence apart from the Spikevoice who said, with surprising gentleness, that he loved her enough to set her free.
"And Cordy, she get to be miserable too?" Gunn asked nonchalantly.
"She'll be alive." Angel said flatly, "And so will you, and Fred and Wesley. And the Sunnydale crowd and a whole lot of other people." His tone changed, "She's young, and beautiful too. How long do you think it's going to be before she falls for some guy who can give her everything she wants? Someone she can walk in the sunlight with, have children with. Normal stuff. Human stuff," he added bitterly.
"Living is over rated," Cordelia remarked from the door. Angel spun around in surprise. He had been concentrating so hard on silencing the voices and arguing with Gunn that he had totally missed her presence.
"Says who?" He snapped.
Cordelia shrugged, "Well, Buffy for one," she said flippantly, "I just got off the phone with Sunnydale. Xander and Anya are getting married. How amazing to be able to spend the rest of your life with the person you're in love with," she said in a hard tone of voice.
"I'll leave you two alone," Gunn said, sidling out.
*
The ensuing argument went on for nearly three and a half hours. Gunn, and later Wesley and Fred watched from the lobby, occasionally catching bits of dialogue or seeing them waving their arms at each other. A couple of times, Cordelia threw things at Angel who managed to dodge five thousand pages of Werrick's 'Guide to Household Demons' but ended up with a cold cup of coffee all over his white shirt. He was not amused. Shortly after this, Cordelia slammed the door open and stalked out, radiating anger.
"DO NOT SAY ANYTHING," she warned, glowering at Fred, Wesley and Gunn who were doing a credible impression of Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil and See No Evil.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Wesley said blandly. She eyed him suspiciously for a few moments and then stalked out.
There was an ominous quiet from Wesley's office. When Wesley ventured in, he found Angel slumped against the wall and his head buried in his arms.
"Angel?" Wesley asked tentatively.
There was no reply for a long while. Then Angel lifted his head and looked at Wesley. His face was impassive, his eyes guarded, barely any sign of the severe emotional strain he had been under showing in his visage. The only evidence lay in the faint tearstains tracing his face.
"She's gone," he said hoarsely and Wesley's throat constricted as he realised that Angel meant more than Cordelia leaving the Hyperion.
"Yes," he said thickly. "Yes, she has."
Angel looked away for a moment, and when he looked back at Wesley, his eyes were full of a terrible hope.
"But she gets to live, right? This way she gets to live."
"You are a bloody idiot!" Wesley snapped, darting forward quickly enough to arrest the vampire's sudden slump towards to the floor. He eased Angel down to the cool floor, feeling the heavy body surrender completely, giving up the fight.
Angel looked up at him in surprise.
"This was NEVER about you," Wesley informed him. "This is about Cordelia. Go after her, you idiot."
"But, she's gone," Angel said, demonstrating yet again that the reason why he was single was not because of his curse.
Wesley resisted the urge to bang HIS head against the wall.
"Yes, she's gone. And now you go and find her and apologise for the next week and then she'll come back and make your life hell for the next month."
Angel looked confused, "That's how it works?"
Gunn appeared in the doorway, "That's how it works," he affirmed, "It sucks."
"Do I have to?" said Angel, and Wesley briefly entertained the notion that they'd slipped into an alternate universe because he NEVER thought he'd hear a vampire whine.
Or, at least, a vampire that wasn't Druscilla.
Or Spike.
Hmm.
"Let me put it simply," Wesley said, because quite frankly, he'd had enough. Angel and Cordelia had been dancing around the whole situation for MONTHS and it was seriously interfering with whatever it was he and Gunn had going on. "Find. Grovel. Make up. Got it?"
"Got it." Angel said dolefully. "Thanks for the help." He added acidly.
"No problem," Gunn said, and it sounded like he was trying not to laugh.
"Are you still here?" Wesley demanded.
"Physically, yes." Angel snapped.
How was it, exactly, that he was in the wrong? To channel Cordy, the whole situation sucked.
He looked up at Wesley and Gunn, "I'm never going to be in the right with that woman, am I?"
"Welcome to dating," Gunn said cheerfully, "You're gonna love it."
"I'm making up for a hundred years of pain and misery. Can't see how dating's going to help there." Angel grumbled, heading for his car.
"And you were afraid you were out of practice," Wesley remarked, watching the vampire leave. "Pain, misery, torture - all essential ingredients of the LA dating scene."
*
Cordelia had been beyond angry when she left the Hyperion for Caritas but sometime on the way there, her anger had begun to cool and she had started thinking rationally.
She loved Angel. She knew this now. Loved him completely, desperately and passionately. Loved him for the man he was trying to become as well as the man he was. Loved him so much that she couldn't imagine her life without him.
It was exhilarating.
It was also exhausting and frightening.
Angel already had her heart; she knew him well enough that he would demand her body and soul too.
At some point in the far too distant future when she forgave him for being an asshole.
How dare he treat her like that? He was the one who started this with his big sad eyes and his 'I need you with me' and his goddamn lips. He got her all wound up and then decided it was 'too dangerous'.
Too dangerous, my ass, she thought furiously, life is dangerous. That's the point. What's the point of living if you don't feel alive and hey, isn't that a quote or a song lyric or something?
She slowed down the power-walk-from-hell and dropped thankfully onto a convenient bench, swinging her cute Louis Vuitton knock off bag onto the seat next to her.
It didn't really matter where she went, he'd find her. Even, she had the sneaky suspicion, Sunnydale. And that gave her a warm feeling deep inside, knowing, without him telling her, that he'd brave not only the evils of Wolfram and Hart for her, but also Xander, Spike and Buffy.
That was like, solid.
And the no sunlight and the no children thing, well, that was only for the time being, right? No one, not even Wesley, knew just when Angel was going to shanshu, exactly. It could be in the next ten years. It could be tomorrow.
Okay, so it also could be two HUNDRED years from now but she was trying to be optimistic. Anyway, if the vision thing didn't start getting better, she might have to get him to turn her.
As the ultimate last resort, naturally. She was way too young to be Druscilla's mommy.
"This seat taken?"
She looked up, not really surprised to see Angel standing in front of her, looking uncomfortable.
She shrugged, "Go for it," she said, keeping her bag between them.
There was silence as they watched LA go by and tried not to look at each other.
"I didn't mean it. You know, what I said," Angel confessed.
Cordelia spoke straight to her shoes, "No. Me either. It's just..."
"Hard." Angel finished gloomily.
"Really, really hard."
They lapsed into silence again.
"So, what do we do now?"
Angel turned to look at his seer, "I think we take a risk," he said honestly.
"Isn't that like, totally stupid? And weren't you all 'this is too dangerous' guy an hour or so ago?"
He shrugged, "Just a kiss, Cordy. Just a kiss, no holding back. And then, we'll know. And yeah, it is dangerous. But maybe the not knowing is more dangerous."
"Know what?" She was being deliberately difficult, but she needed to hear him say it.
"If this is just, you know, co-dependency or..." He took a deep breath, "Love."
"Co-dependency? Have you been reading self-help books again? Damn, Wes and I thought we'd burnt them all." Cordelia said. Her brain caught up with her ears, "Love?"
"So that's where all those books went," Angel was aggrieved, "Do you know how LONG I looked for them? And I'd borrowed them from Lorne and you can guess how pissed he was when I couldn't give them back. What do you mean 'love' in that weird tone of voice?"
"They were Lorne's? Well, that explains a lot." Cordelia said, "And I don't have a weird tone of voice. It's just. Love. Hello, that's huge. I mean. You love me?"
"Well, what did you think it was?" Angel demanded. His face fell, "Oh, god."
"Don't freak out," Cordelia said hastily.
"You only want me for my body!" Angel accused her.
"You are freaking out," she sighed, "You love me?"
"Of course I do, although at moments like this I really, really wonder why," Angel told her roundly, "Yes. I AM freaking out. I thought this meant something and just when did I turn into the girl in this relationship?"
"We don't have a relationship." Cordelia pointed out.
"Riiiight."
"We don't. Trust me, if we did, you'd know about it."
"This IS a relationship," Angel insisted, "You alienate my friends, humiliate me in public, run my life and we're not having sex. Sounds like a relationship to me."
"Hey! That was almost funny. Did you sneak off somewhere and experience perfect happiness?" Cordelia demanded.
"With you around? Not an option."
"What's THAT supposed to mean?"
He grinned suddenly, blindingly, "This. We argue. A lot."
She sniffed, "Well, a little friction is good for a healthy relationship."
Angel smiled, slow and sexy, letting his eyes linger on her curves. She caught him looking and rolled her eyes.
"Friction is good," he said huskily, sliding his hand over hers. She turned her hand over, lacing her fingers with his.
"One kiss?"
"One kiss," he confirmed.
"And then what? We go back to normal? I'm not sure that'll be possible."
Angel shook his head, "No. Then we get creative."
"And if things get out of control?" She asked, because she had to know.
"Well," he said, drawing her inexorably into the curve of his arm, "There's this witch who owes me a favour."
"A red-headed witch?" She asked archly.
He chuckled, "How did you guess?"
"Didn't you know? I have psychic powers," she said, straight-faced.
He collapsed into laughter.
"Oh, way to kill the mood, Cordy," he said when he had recovered.
"Kill the mood?" She asked, admiring the difference that laughter wrought to his face, "I'm not sure that's an option."
He looked at her, "I love you," he said honestly. "I never expected to, but I do."
"I love you too," she admitted, "But..."
Her words were lost, because Angel gave a whoop and pulled her to her feet, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close.
"You love me," he crowed.
She struggled to free herself, "Angel! Listen to me! I'm not sure if this is a good idea."
He looked confused, "I love you, you love me. Where's the problem?"
"Your curse? A few blondes? How do you know you love me like, like that? And how do I know that I love you like that? Maybe we're just confusing friendship with something else," she said seriously.
"So? We kiss. I told you. You can tell in the kiss." Angel said blithely.
She quirked her eyebrows at him, "You are very weird, you know that, right?"
He nodded, "I get that a lot."
"Okay then," she said quietly, but there was a bright spark in her eyes.
Angel smiled and very gently stroked one finger down her face. She smiled back at him and he touched her chin lightly, turning her face up towards him. She took a nervous deep breath, kept the smile in place and closed her eyes.
There was a moment of extreme silence. It seemed to Angel that when Cordelia closed her eyes, the life had drained out of the entire world and nothing existed. Although he was dimly aware that LA life continued around them, everything that mattered to him was right in front of his eyes. Had been right in front of his eyes for nearly three years.
He suddenly felt incredibly calm. This was right. This was supposed to happen. When he kissed her, the world would come back.
He kissed her.
Her mouth was soft and slick under his and he could taste the cinnamon flavoured coffee she'd had that morning, and something else. Something sweet and pure, the essence of Cordelia. This was hopeless. He was already addicted. Already hooked to her taste, her smell, the soft but desperate sounds she was making, the feel of her in his arms, so close and he wasn't EVER going to be able to let her go. This made up for all the loving glances, the teasing touches, the concern and warmth in her voice when she talked to him that had him tantalized and aching All The Time. She gasped into his mouth as he brought her closer, pressed the full length of his body against hers, let her know exactly what she did to him. Her hands closed hard on his shoulders, the slight pain spiking with the pleasure, the silken rasp of her tongue over and under his, the feel of her hair, her back, her ass under his eager hands. The warmth and heat of her body almost like an inferno which threatened to incinerate him - and he wanted to be consumed by it. To take the fire that they generated into himself to heat his cold body.
This was better than the quick kiss they shared in Wes's office, was better than the passion of their encounter during training. This kiss was about friendship, and attraction and passion all melded together into something new and transcendent. A flood of warmth flowed through him, and they both heard a great pealing of bells.
Slowly, they pulled apart.
"What was that?" Cordelia whispered.
He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes tenderly, "If you don't know, then I wasn't doing it right."
"No, the bells and the silver rain and stuff," she said.
"I don't know," he said and then stopped. Because something felt different. Something had changed.
"What is this? Third time lucky? Third KISS lucky?" Cordelia asked, an edge to her voice. "What the hell happened?"
Angel started to smile, "'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action'," he quoted.
"Huh?"
"James Bond," he clarified, "But I don't think that was enemy action, not really."
He kissed her and felt it again.
When they pulled apart, his eyes were shining in a way she'd never seen before.
"What?" She asked, and then she knew. "Your soul," she whispered.
Angel was stunned, "It's anchored," he breathed, "It's anchored to yours."
"I guess this is what they mean by soul mates," Cordelia said, but her eyes were a little panicked.
"I think this is a reward," Angel said, "I think this is supposed to happen to us."
"I wish we could talk to the Oracles and ask them," she said, distractingly stroking her fingers through his hair.
"Hmmm." Angel replied, marvelling that all it had taken was the right woman and the right moment.
She tugged slightly on his hair to get him to look at her, "I love you," she told him seriously. "I really, really love you. I think I've lost my mind, but... I love you."
"I know," Angel said, and he did know. He could feel it. "I love you too."
She exhaled and smiled as they disengaged.
Feeling like a schoolboy, Angel took her hand in his as they started to walk back to the hotel.
"This is so weird," Cordelia said, laughing a little, "I was expecting something to change. To feel something that I didn't feel before."
"Wasn't going to happen," Angel said positively, "It was there all along. We just didn't KNOW."
She cocked her head at him, "Do you think this would have happened if you hadn't kissed me in Wes's office last week?"
He grinned, "I nearly kissed you when we did all that laundry," he confessed.
"What? But I looked a total mess. I was all... messy," she finished lamely, remembering how she'd ended up staying up all night with Angel because he found all that laundry to do. "Oh my god," she said, realising what she'd done.
"And I nearly kissed you when the computer crashed."
"But I was all angry and not happy. And you said I'm scary when I'm angry," she pointed out.
"Yeah. Scariness is hot." Angel shrugged.
"Says the man who dated a Slayer," Cordelia owed. "Fair enough. I get that."
"Because I love you, I'm not going to mention Xander."
"Because I love YOU, I'm not going to draw any parallels between the two of you. Hey! Stop that!"
Cordelia doubled over in hysterics as Angel poked her.
"Don't you think we better wait until we get home?" She gasped, fending him off with her bag.
He glanced around, "Cor, it's half past midnight on a Tuesday. Anyone who's wandering around this neighbourhood now has better things to do that watch us," but he stopped tickling her. "Home?" He asked not-so-nonchalantly.
"Yeah," she said archly, "The hotel. Which has all those nice comfortable beds."
"Why Miss Chase," Angel said in mock horror, "Are you trying to seduce me?"
"Not yet."
End.