"Was' going on?" Doyle asked as he came in, examining the water trail that started near Cordelia's desk and dribbled down the stairs to Angel's apartment.
"Buffy's here, that's what's going on," Cordelia complained, "And you're late."
Doyle grinned at her. "Oh! Buffy, eh? And since when do we punch a time clock?"
Cordelia didn't return his smile. In fact, she only seemed to frown harder.
" 'Oh. Buffy, eh?' Is that all you have to say? I can't believe you," she grumbled.
Doyle perched on the edge of her desk, "Okay, I get it. You want I should be the strong shoulder, right? Fine, then. Tell Uncle Doyle what's wrong."
Cordelia's frown turned into an even angrier scowl, "If you have to ask, then I'm not going to bother telling you," she snapped.
Doyle sighed and shook his head. "'Delia, my princess, it really doesn't have to be a big deal every time Buffy shows up to talk to the boss. I mean, Angel can't turn human every time, right? Maybe she just needs his help with something."
Cordelia turned a withering glare on her friend, "Haven't you been paying attention? Every time Buffy graces us with her presence, Angel goes all Lithium Boy, and we almost go out of business!"
He frowned a little. "Last time was different, Cordelia. You know that."
"Maybe," she said, "But... whatever happens, things won't be the same from now on. It's not like she just cruised on down from Sunnydale -- she appeared out of thin air. That CAN'T be a good sign."
"She... what?" Doyle asked.
"Not here, *POOF*, Here!" Cordy said, waving her arms in illustration.
Doyle's eyes went wide. Leave it to Angel and his mate to have a mystical reunion like that.
"Well," he said, "Maybe they've just been brought together so they can work all this out. Find some common ground that they can work together on. That can only be a good thing, right? To have a Slayer -- and the greatest Slayer in history, no less -- on the consultants' list? The Powers must be into that..."
"You think so," Cordelia snorted, "You didn't go through three years of this with them!"
He couldn't respond to that -- he hadn't. But he'd heard stories... and he also knew full well that Cordelia's little hissy fit sprung from more than her upset over the method of the Slayer's arrival.
"Why don't you tell me what's really bothering you?" he said in his most gentle, encouraging tone. It was a trick he had learned from working with 9-year-olds that he hadn't used in a good, long time.
Cordelia looked up at him, her big brown eyes flooded with tears and her mouth screwed up into such a painful scowl that it seemed her whole face might shatter and break off at any moment. She rose from the desk and stared out the nearest window at the bright, bustling street below, and felt that tugging feeling in her heart that she always got when things were about to change in a way she just wasn't comfortable with.
"I don't want her back in his life, Doyle. She's never done anything but make him unhappy," she turned and looked back at him again, "You know, the three of us have really made something, here! Like... like those guys -- the swordfighter guys with the hats in that Leo DiCaprio movie?"
Doyle chuckled, "You mean The Three Musketeers? It's also a book..."
"Yes! Exactly! We're a team! We're a family! Buffy just doesn't belong in the mix!" she said.
Doyle got up from the desk and stood before her, "I know what you're getting at, 'Delia... but... there were actually four musketeers. And, whatever trouble Angel and Buffy have been through together, she is the only person he's ever really loved. He's just not complete, without her -- at least in his mind... I think maybe you should give him a chance to work this out on his own terms," he put his hands on Cordelia's shoulders, and looked deep into her eyes, "Don't think for a minute that Angel's relationship with Buffy can change anything about the way we all fee about one another..."
Cordelia's posture softened as she found herself suddenly and surprisingly comforted by his words, his gentle hands on her shoulders, his soothing blue eyes...
"Maybe you're right..." she whispered.
"I know I am," Doyle said, and smiled warmly at her, "Everybody deserves a second chance. Okay, so, it's more like a fifth chance. But they still deserve it."
Cordy finally returned his smile. She knew what it felt like to need a second... or a fifth... chance.
*************************************
Buffy fidgeted nervously, doing slow laps around the apartment as she waited for Angel to finish getting dressed.
The place was so him. But more so, as if his personality had expanded and grown far beyond the man she'd known in Sunnydale. She could feel his essence in everything she touched -- in the very air around her -- and couldn't help but notice that, for the first time, his lair felt like a home. There were photographs, here and there, of Cordelia and Doyle, a few even including himself. There were other touches that were different, too: a couple of Cordy's abandoned fashion magazines and copies of Variety on the coffee table, the lived-in feeling of the kitchen, some of his drawings... She would even be willing to bet there was now more than just blood in the fridge...
What was she doing there? One minute, she'd been thisclose to dusting Spike in a moment of fury, and the next, she was staring at Cordelia, 110 miles away. How had she gotten there? What did it all mean?
From long and painful experience, Buffy knew that nothing ever happened to her by chance. There was always some momentous reason for everything.
She noticed a half-finished drawing on his desk, and followed her compulsion to look more closely at it.
It was her, sleeping. In some strange bed that she never remembered being in. A look of utter peace graced her features, and the detail was so perfect, it was as if each fine line he'd drawn was really more like a gentle caress. He'd captured the morning light pouring in from a single window, and it lit her so she looked positively angelic.
Buffy stared at it. Was this how he still thought of her?
"Sorry I took so long," his voice came suddenly from behind, making Buffy jump, dropping the sketch back on the desk as she spun around.
Angel, now dressed and fully coifed, looked at her, then at the drawing, then back at her again.
//Oh god... She... I don't want her to...//
He approached and stepped between Buffy and the desk, desperately trying to find an excuse, or something to distract her from what she'd just seen. He only hoped Buffy hadn't yet looked at the 10 or 15 others beneath it, each one capturing some moment of the Day That Wasn't.
"Those are... I was just, uh..." he stammered, struggling to make up some plausible excuse, but knowing there was none. He was, quite simply, busted.
Buffy looked up at him. "It's beautiful..."
Angel stared helplessly down at the sketch he'd been working on the night before.
"It's the subject that's beautiful... I was just recording it," he whispered, unable to meet her gaze.
Both of them stood, looking at the sketch for a long, burning moment, neither knowing what to do or say next. When Angel was finally able to raise his eyes to look at her -- at her real face, which he knew he could never adequately capture with his flimsy talent -- he found himself lost, awash in a sensation of spinning, of falling...
Buffy looked back up at him with her big eyes, whose mutable hazel was dark with confusion, and blinked furiously, trying not to let her knees buckle as they were threatening to.
They were barely a foot apart. All either of them would have to do would be to take a single step, and a million truths that were hidden within each of them would burst to the surface, exploding the walls they had so carefully built around themselves for the past year.
Neither moved.
*************************************
