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Notes, Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four

Failure to Communicate, Part Five

Angel stretched out the hand with which he wasn’t holding the box of doughnuts to knock on the door of Cordelia’s apartment, and then thought of the time. Four in the morning. They would be asleep. He really needed to see them - to see for himself that they were alive and well - but perhaps what they really needed was some rest. He was still hesitating, thinking of his journey home, driving too fast, other headlights a blur in the rain, the wash of the spray from his tires brushing against other lives as he passed them, when there was the sound of a chain being unhooked and a lock pulled back very quietly. When the door swung open to reveal neither Cordelia nor Wesley, and a light that was eased up to the lowest glow by which a vampire could navigate his way across a room, he realized who must have let him in. “Thanks, Dennis,” he whispered. He waited while the ghost locked up behind him, the care he took putting on the chain suggesting that Dennis was still shaken up by Faith’s visit as well.

That reminder wasn’t helping to lessen the feeling of anger and panic because he could have lost them tonight. He hadn’t thought the Powers would send Cordelia a vision when he wasn’t there to be told about it. Weren’t the Powers meant to be omniscient? People died every day in this city and he couldn’t save them all, it was the job of the Powers to select the ones that he could save, and that meant not sending Cordy a vision when he was too far away to help. If Xander and GI Finn hadn’t decided to stick their nose into his business….

He frowned as another thought struck him: perhaps this vision had been for Riley and Xander all the time? The Powers had known they would be coming and had decided that the four of them could deal with a Netraxan sacrifice without him? Well, he didn’t agree. He didn’t think Cordelia or Wesley were in any fit state to be dealing with any killer demons right now, even with the help of two other people, especially when those two other people were only ordinary human beings. The anger flared for a moment, so bright and hot it was like seeing the world through the veil of the flames of hell, because maybe he deserved whatever fate threw at him, but had had never consented to these two being used up and thrown away just to save the lives of strangers.

The anger died as he realized that they had all consented to this. That was what working for him entailed. It was a risk every time they stepped outside of the offices. In fact - thinking of Penn with his arm around Wesley’s neck - it was a risk even inside the offices. He slipped his feet out of his shoes and walking silently across the sitting room, looking for Wesley on the couch, but the couch was empty, and he felt another twinge of fear.

They trusted him these two, perhaps too much. Cordelia had told him she would kill him dead if he ever lost his soul again, but the fact remained that when he had appeared to become Angelus, they had chained him up, not killed him. He had woken to guilt, memory, and their pale, exhausted faces, black circles under their eyes from where they had watched over him all night. All it had taken was a few words of praise and Wesley was ready to forgive him everything. In fact, Wesley had been adamant there was nothing to forgive. Just as Wesley had forgiven him for taking Faith in and taking care of her. Cordelia was made of sterner stuff, but she still trusted him. And he loved that they did. It gave him a different kind of warmth from the one he had felt when he realized Buffy loved him, that he was capable of eliciting love from a spirit as pure and good as hers, but it was a powerful glow all the same, and one he didn’t want to give up. All the same, he wondered if they trusted him enough to want him creeping in to look at them while they slept. So great was his need to see them, however, that he found himself doing it anyway.

The door to Cordelia’s bedroom was ajar and he gently pushed it back further. The drapes weren’t drawn all the way across and moonlight spilled in to show Cordelia and Wesley lying on her bed. They had fallen asleep with their clothes on, like children overtired after an exhausting day. He took another pace, able to scent Xander and Riley on them, just a faint brush of them, but enough to set his nose twitching with dislike. Another pace revealed that they had actually fallen asleep with his clothes on. He moved closer and saw the black folds of his t-shirt wrapped around Cordelia, too big for her, of course. She had kicked off her shoes and slacks and had wrapped herself in the folds of his t-shirt, the length of it falling halfway down her thighs. Wesley was still fully-clothed, although he had taken off his shoes and socks, but he was also wearing Angel’s clothing, swamped by a black sweater whose sleeves came down so far they hid all of his hands except for his fingertips.

Angel smiled in relief. He could hear the deep, even rhythm of their breathing. Another pace and he winced a little because he could detect that metallic salt scent of blood still coming from Wesley, those too-fresh wounds still oozing between their scabs, thinking of him tied to that chair with Faith’s knife to his throat, smelling of fear and pain and - if Angel was honest - food. He hadn’t felt able to tell Wesley how proud he was of the way he had behaved, both in that room when he had helped Angel to get Faith away from him, and afterwards with those council goons. It might have sounded patronising to praise him, and it was the first time they had seemed to be working together as equals. But looking down at the sleeping man now, even the bruises on his face not preventing him from looking so very young, Angel realized that Wesley probably still needed to hear that he had done well.

Wesley stirred and then opened his eyes. There was a second of shock followed by something that was a hundred percent relief. Angel felt the warmth spread straight through him, because even a few weeks ago, Wesley’s instinctive reaction on waking to find Angel gazing down at him would have been fear, and there had been not a flicker of that. “Are you okay?” Wesley whispered.

Angel nodded. “You?”

“Yes.” Wesley sniffed the air. “Is that…?”

Angel realized he was still holding the box of doughnuts. There had been a lot of voices in his head on the drive back from Sunnydale: Buffy telling him that she was with someone else now, Faith asking if it ever got better, the guilt for crimes committed that could never now be undone, Cordelia’s cool dismissal, clearly thinking he was cracked, and, bizarrely, in the midst of it, Wesley saying: 'I understand why you chose not to turn her over to them. I do not, however, understand why the woman who brutally tortured me last night, this morning - gets pastries.' It was that last voice that had made him pull into a gas station and buy a family pack of doughnuts.

Feeling a little lame, he held up the carton. “I thought you might be hungry.”

Starving waifs in gutters might possibly have had that carton out of his hand a little faster, but he doubted it. “Dear Lord, I’m starving. Cordelia…” Wesley shook her. “Cordelia, wake up.”

“No, let her rest….” Angel protested ineffectually.

Cordelia woke up with something between a snarl and snort. “What?”

Wesley thrust the box at her. “Angel’s back. He brought food.”

“Oh, thank God.” She grabbed a doughnut and devoured it in three bites, which was one more than Wesley had needed to finish off his. She glanced up at him as she grabbed another doughnut, saying through mouthfuls of pastry: “That you’re back, I mean.”

Angel sat down on the bed, feeling those jangling feelings of rejection and soul-stirring pain at seeing Buffy again begin to recede, like the tide of his old life going out and leaving him on the shore of the new one. “So, did you miss me?”

“Oh, yeah.” She crammed another doughnut into her mouth. “We totally did.”

“Not that we couldn’t cope or anything.” Wesley chewed his way through another doughnut with every appearance of ecstasy. “God, these are good.”

“Xander said you had a run in with some Netraxan demons?”

They exchanged a guilty look, pausing briefly in their chewing, and then Cordelia grabbed another doughnut as she swallowed the last of the one in her mouth. Wesley hastily snatched one himself.

“Well…?” Angel prompted. “Because I distinctly remember telling you not to do any demon-killing while I was away.”

“There were babies,” Wesley protested. “Very small ones.”

“Do you know what those Netraxans would have done to you if those two clowns from Sunnydale hadn’t turned up?”

Cordelia held up a finger. “Talking of which - you owe us for clothes. Ours got melted.”

Angel’s eyes widened as he took in the reason why these two were both wearing his clothing right now. “You let them bleed on you? Are you hurt? Let me look - ”

Cordelia pointedly tugged down her t-shirt. “Hands off, buddy. We’re fine. Well, I’m fine. Wesley’s still the way he was when you went down to make Buffy feel better about yelling at you.” She narrowed her eyes at Wesley as he reached for the final doughnut. “How many have you had?”

“Only four to your five. Which means this last one is mine.” Sighing, Wesley nevertheless tore the doughnut in two pieces and gave Cordelia half.

Angel felt his heart catch as he looked at them, both of them sleep-crumpled and bruised, and now lightly dusted with sugar. Wesley sucked on his fingers to get the last few grains of sweetness from his skin, clearly still hungry, while Cordelia’s long dark hair tumbled loose around a shoulder left bare from his oversize t-shirt slipping it from it, the edges of her hair catching white sticky threads of frosting as it touched the edge of the doughnut carton.

“I’m sorry I left you alone,” he said softly.

They both looked at him in surprise, big brown eyes and big blue eyes showing equal amounts of confusion. “Did Xander and Riley…say something to you?” Wesley asked.

“They said a lot.” He grimaced as honesty asserted itself against his will. “Some of it true.”

Cordelia waved a dismissive hand. “Those two just need a hobby, if you ask me. Or a pet. Until I totally outmaneuvered him, that Riley guy was building up to kidnap Wesley, I could see it in his eyes. I bet he spent his childhood taking in strays who weren’t even strays. It would be all ‘Hey, mom, he followed me all the way home - can I keep him?’ when the whole time the poor mutt would have a collar and a name tag and people out looking for him.”

“Cordelia…” Wesley protested. “I resent being compared to a flea-ridden mongrel. And Xander was equally as willing to kidnap you.”

“I told them to stay away from you,” Angel admitted.

They both gave him another look of confusion and Wesley grimaced. “They were actually rather useful. In all honesty, I’m not sure that we could have managed without them.”

“Oh, without them we’d have been totally dead, for sure.” Cordelia shrugged and licked her finger before rubbing it around the inside of the doughnut carton to catch the last few strands of frosting.

Angel knew that he was in the wrong here, but that didn’t mean he had to admit it. “Yeah, well, I didn’t like that Finn guy. At all.”

“Wow, and with him sleeping with Buffy, too, who would have thought it?” Cordelia observed.

“Just promise me that next time, whatever vision Cordelia has, you two won’t try killing things by yourselves.”

Cordelia gave him a level look. “You know, it’s a funny thing about my visions, but they don’t actually come with that ‘Don’t try this at home, kids’ warning. If you don’t want us mixing it up with slimy things when you’re not around, then - stick around, because, like it or not, this is our mission too, now.”

“Exactly.” Wesley stopped trying to scrape the last of the frosting from the box that Cordelia had missed and looked at her. “That’s exactly what I meant to say to Riley and Xander.”

“Yeah, me too, but what with the whole defending Angel thing - not to mention trying to stop Riley staging an intervention - ”

“You defended me?” Angel couldn’t help lighting up a little. He was still very shaken up by seeing Buffy and what might have happened to these two - first with Faith, and then with the Netraxan demons - but it was still nice to hear that they were loyal to him.

“Damned straight.” Cordelia looked him in the eyes. “If we want to bitch about you, we can, but we’re a family - no one else gets to criticize you or Wesley in front of me.”

That was definitely a warm fuzzy glow he was feeling now. “If you have eggs I could cook you breakfast,” he offered. “Kind of a ‘Sorry, if I didn’t make it clear how much more you mean to me than Faith, and I’m very glad you didn’t get dismembered by Netraxan demons’ gesture.”

Cordelia’s face was a cool mask. “So, you think you can just waltz off to Sunnydale without sparing us a thought and then come back here and buy back our affections with food?”

Angel winced. “I was hoping so, actually, yes.”

Cordelia and Wesley exchanged and look and then shrugged. “Throw in some toast and you’re free and clear with me,” Wesley assured him.

“Me too. I know I just ate five and a half doughnuts, but I’m still starving.”

As they scrambled out of bed to troop barefoot to the dining table and expectantly await their breakfast, Dennis obligingly turning up the lights for them, Angel feared the warm fuzzy feeling he felt for these two was in danger of turning into either sentimental speeches or girlish tears. “You know I…” he began.

Cordelia gave him a beaming smile over her shoulder. “We know.”

“Wes…?” Angel held his gaze. “Are we…?”

“You did the right thing, Angel.” Wesley handed Cordelia a napkin and shook out one for himself. “And any time you want to make a start on those eggs is fine with me.”

Angel went into the kitchen, Dennis helpfully turning on the gas for him while Angel searched around in Cordelia’s fridge and found that she had both eggs and bacon, as well as bread. Presumably they had been too exhausted to cook for themselves when they had staggered home to bed. The way they hadn’t even properly undressed and had been curled up together like the Babes in the Wood, suggested that whatever they were telling him now, the night had been long, tiring, and scary. As he reached for the bacon, he saw a pot of something that looked like….

He sniffed it curiously, and sure enough it was pig’s blood. Cordelia must have bought it for him when picking up the rest of the groceries. He glanced out at them and they were both squabbling amicably as if they hadn’t a care in the world, it evidently feeling like daylight was breaking over the city to them, even though it was still as dark as pitch outside, just because he had come back and everything was better now. He remembered Xander saying: “Don’t you get it, Mr Super Strength? You’re their safe place…” and realized that it was true.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you two,” he said too quietly for them to hear, but he detected approval in the way Dennis handed him a saucepan.

“After breakfast, I’m putting Neosporin and arnica on those cuts and bruises,” Cordelia was telling Wesley.

Wesley rolled his eyes. “Fine. But I reserve the right to complain bitterly throughout the whole operation.”

“Did I mention that I really didn’t like that Finn guy?” Angel called through to them.

“We thought he was a very nice chap.” Wesley glanced across at Cordelia. “Didn’t we?”

“Seemed like a great guy to me - and not even that Village People, despite the uniform,” Cordelia confirmed.

By the time Angel brought them the plates of eggs, he was worrying almost as much about Riley and Xander wanting to ‘rescue’ them as the Netraxans killing them. “What if they come back?”

Wesley had to swallow the mouthful of eggs he was ravenously devouring before he could manage that: “The Nextraxans?”

“Finn and Xander.” Angel scraped some more bacon onto Cordelia’s plate. “I don’t think they’ve given up on their intervention idea. If they come back - what are you going to do?”

Cordelia shrugged. “It really depends on whether or not they bring doughnuts.”

Wesley nodded. “Absolutely.”

Angel reached out and took their hands in his, them both looking at him in surprise, while he felt the warmth of their blood flow against his fingers. He could see the ridged cuts around Wesley’s wrist, and those patterns of bruises, blue and yellow and purple and gold. “I’m serious.”

It was Wesley who said gently: “We’re still here, aren’t we?”

Angel slipped his fingers through theirs, feeling an odd feeling of peace steal through him, because even though he had lost Buffy to another man, he still had these two, and they still trusted him. “So am I.” He squeezed their hands. “And I’m not going anywhere. This is home now. You two are home.”

That smile of relief that momentarily lit up their faces was quickly banished as they lowered their eyes so he wouldn’t see how happy they were, how much they needed him, and how unsure they still were of how much he needed them.

“Was there any toast?” Wesley asked in a voice that sounded a little choked up.

“I wouldn’t hate a coffee,” Cordelia added with a catch in her voice.

He slipped his fingers loose from theirs a little reluctantly and headed into the kitchen, to find that Dennis had put the toast into the toaster and had the Mr Coffee bubbling, leaving him only the simple task of making Wesley a cup of tea. When he looked back, Wesley and Cordelia were smiling at each other as they ate, and Angel could already imagine the pattern of Wesley’s bruises as they faded, those cuts healed, until at last there would barely be anything to show what Faith had done to him. He thought of Buffy, and it felt like a thread fraying, never snapping entirely, but that thick strand of connection wearing thinner and thinner over the years as their lives went in separate directions. For the first time, he realized that not even to have back the life with her that they had briefly imagined, could he give up the life he had here: this sense of purpose, and these two people who needed him and whom he realized, with a sense of shock, he truly loved.

When he carried in the toast, coffee and tea, they were eating at a less ravenous rate and Wesley politely allowed Cordelia to take the first slice. Angel sat down at the table with them and stole a crispy piece of bacon from Wesley’s plate, chewing on it curiously. “You know, human flesh smells a lot like this when you cook it, but it doesn’t taste the same.”

Neither of them so much as blinked. Cordelia gulped down her coffee while Wesley sipped at his tea. “There’s blood in the fridge if you want some,” Cordelia invited, as if surprised that he wouldn’t know.

“I saw. You don’t mind…?” That was too complicated a question to articulate, not just ‘You don’t mind buying pig’s blood for me? Having it rub shoulders with your groceries in the refrigerator where you keep your food?’ but also somehow: ‘You don’t mind me being a vampire?’ He remembered Buffy kissing him when he was still in game face and not even noticing, how he had thought at the time that he would never meet anyone else who could accept him so completely for what he truly was. Then he looked at these two, eating the food he had cooked for them, Wesley who had read everything about him when training as a Watcher, and Cordelia, who had been there in Sunnydale when he lost his soul, and yet here they were. He hoped he never started taking that for granted.

“Of course not.” Cordelia held out her plate. “You want my crispy fried bacon? You know, if you’re getting a yen for the bad old days?”

“Oh, help yourself to mine, too.” Wesley held out his own plate.

Angel took a piece from each plate and chewed on them. It hurt so much less to think of Buffy with another man here than it had in Sunnydale. He could even remember that this was what he had hoped for her - now that the first shocked feeling of betrayal had lessened - his wish that she would go on and have a life with someone with a pulse; someone, who, apparently, believed in protecting the innocent and saving the vulnerable as much as he did. He still didn’t like this Riley guy, but, despite the loss of Buffy and the concrete proof that she was now with someone else, as Dennis carried over his cup of warm blood, and Wesley and Cordelia ate their way, with only minimal squabbling, through the rest of their scrambled eggs, he found himself feeling curiously at peace.

The End