ENDING #2: THE HOLLYWOOD DRIVEL

FIFTEEN

The following afternoon came solemnly. We were all tentative. Fred made her excuses and stayed away. The rest of us watched as the Furies swept the basement of all traces of dark magick, and then they sighed, "Mmm, Angel," (always creepy when they do that) and disappeared. Then Angel sang the refrain of Tiny Dancer, and Lorne, once again, pronounced him fit to be freed.

I hung back and sat down on the stairs. I watched as each person greeted Angel on his way out of the cage. First Connor, who actually cracked a smile and submitted to a hug (hallelujah, Good Gumby), and half-heartedly confessed that he was relieved to have his dad back. Then Gunn shook Angel's hand and promised that bygones were bygones. Angel complimented Gunn's tactical skills in the effort to keep Angelus in check, and assured him that he should never think of himself as "just the muscle." Lorne gave him a hug and then nervously threatened a dusty finish if this should turn out to be a fool-Lorne's-senses hoax again.

Then Wesley. The two men were solemn, serious, and rightly so. Their history was complicated.

Angel confessed the truth about Lilah's death, that she had perished at the hands of the Beast's boss, not been bitten by Angelus. Wesley apologized for his role in all of this, and the two reached a deeply-spoken, somber agreement that mending friendship takes time.

As he walked away from the cage, Wesley said, "But it's Faith whom Angelus hurt the most. I think the real mending is to be done there."

I buried my eyes in my palms in an effort not to cry. Wes was the smartest guy I knew, but there was still so much he missed, right under his nose.

"Thanks," Angel said, and Wesley plodded up the stairs.

We were left alone. Me and Angel.

A long, long silence ensued during which I held my position and tried to catch my breath, and Angel didn't make a sound.

I finally gathered the gumption to look at him. He was leaning against the bars on the outside of the cage, looking worried.

And looking painfully handsome. And I do mean painfully. I had to look away.

"Look," I said with as solid a voice as I could manage. "I don't suppose there's any chance that we could just go back to normal, being crime-fighters and all, and never have this discussion?"

He hesitated, then, "You know we can't do that, Cordelia."

"Go back to normal?"

"Never have this discussion." After a moment, he asked, "may I sit next to you?"

I nodded and moved to my left. He took his place next to me on the stairs.

Another silence while we both stared at the ceiling.

"So," I said, finally, with a clearly forced attempt at casual. "What do you want to talk about?"

Without hesitation, he said, "I'm sorry, Cordy."

"I know. I am too. I should have just left your soul in that safe where it belonged."

"We all make mistakes," he remarked.

"Yeah. But I don't know if either one of us is going to be able to come back from these last few. The past several weeks, there's been enough stark-raving insanity to go around."

He was silent for longer than was natural to make a reply. Finally he said, without looking at me, "I'm not sure I want to come back from this one, pretend it never happened and move on."

"Excuse me?"

"This is the third time I've gotten my soul back, Cordy, and each time I wake up with a conscience, I find that I've learned something from my walk with evil, and things are never quite the same again. The first time, when the gypsies curse me, I realized that people mostly just exist for each other, for their passions and for their connections. Having a conscience means honoring that; you don't murder someone's daughter, you don't look the other way when someone else does, and you don't screw your friends over. Everything changed once I worked that out, and I still believe in it.

"Last time, I learned about sacrifice. The whole Angelus debacle back in Sunnydale showed me that I had to sacrifice my happiness for the greater good. I learned more about the curse, and learned what happens if it's broken. And as you know, things changed from there on out. I've been the broody miserable guy every since. You might have heard about it."

"What did you learn from it this time?"

"What Angelus did to you... what I did to you as Angelus... I now know that I can never have perfect happiness again. Not that that means I should try."

I'd been with him thus far, but now I wasn't following. "I'm not following," I said.

"He and I are almost literally two sides of the same coin. His drive to kill and maim is equal to my drive to fight evil. Where I have desires he has obsessions, and my desires, the things I care about, become his obsessions. Which is why none of my friends are safe when he's around," he explained. "This time around, Angelus was obsessed with you."

"Because I so smartly pushed my way into that cage with him!"

"Yeah, well, it didn't take a lot of pushing, did it? What, did you have to talk to him for two minutes, maybe three, to get him to agree to spill his guts and help save the world, just so he could have a go at you? He never bothered to torture you, he didn't kill you, and he didn't tell anyone about it, even at his most chatty. All of those things would have pushed you away, one way or another, and he wanted to keep you, to continue to..." he trailed off, either afraid to continue or embarrassed by the revelation itself.

"So what was all that don't scream junk?"

"Just like you said: a vampire's wet dream. The girl screams, the blood goes all hot and salty, which is... well... extremely stimulating to a vampire. Eventually, he gave up on having the perfect scenario and it became an excuse to come back."

"Oh, God," I whispered. An interesting, and disturbing, revelation hit me just then. And then Angel put it into words for me.

"And let's be honest: it was an excuse for you, too. If you'd wanted out, you would have screamed a lot sooner."

I needed time to process what he was saying. If Angel's desires become Angelus' obsessions...

I looked up at him. "You... want me?"

"It's more than that, Cordelia."

I waited for him to continue, but he left it there. He was going to need prompting.

"What does that mean, Angel?"

He avoided my eyes. "It means that yes, I want you. Part of me always has. Part of me has always known that I could have you anytime I wanted you... including the Angelus part of me. But it's grown into something bigger. It means that every time I save the world, my first thought is of saving you. That every night when I fall asleep, my last thought is of you. I have spent hours trying to research gypsy magick (which can't be done, by the way), trying to figure out how to get around the 'perfect happiness' thing." He smiled in embarrassed amusement at himself. He said to me softly, "I might hold the world's record for longest time spent reading about how to get the girl I want."

I smiled with him. "Why not try Anita? She's got a potion for everything." Lame attempt at a joke.

"I did try. She didn't have anything that would suppress euphoria, only things to enhance it, go figure," he said, shrugging. "Can't count on your demon brothels anymore."

"Cryin' shame."

"Yeah."

We were silent for a while, but inside, I was in overdrive. I was replaying his words in my head, trying to remember every nuance of his voice and body language, just in case I had heard wrong. I had heard words that convinced me that Angel loves me. Stop me if you think I'm grasping here.

I began to wonder about something. "But... you said that now, you know that you can never have that perfect happiness again."

He sighed heavily. "If I tried to... if you and I ever... Cordelia, if I made love to you, I'd feel the same pleasure that Angelus felt with you. The way your body moves, the way you feel inside... oh God." He covered his eyes with one hand. Mortified? Scared? I was never sure.

"Go on," I said.

"And that would be good. It would feel really good," he told me, simply.

"Yes."

"But I would also see the bruises, the bite marks, the red rings around your wrists."

"The bruises are almost gone, see?" I said, showing him my cheek.

"That's not what I mean. They don't actually have to be there for me to see them I will remember them, remember the sickening things I did and said to you, the even worse things I was planning to do to you... and I'd never be happy. Even the... moment of happy would be tainted with the memory of tasting your blood, and... " He stared off into space for a bit, and then added, "of course, it's pretty presumptuous of me to even think you'd want to... now."

I took his hand, and stood up, forced him to meet my eye. "Not presumptuous. I do want to... now."

"Now, now?"

"Yes, now," I told him. He'd stumbled upon the cure... good enough for me.

"But what if..." he stood up as well.

"Angelus comes back?" I asked him, eyebrow cocked. "I'm pretty sure I can take him."

He smiled. "I'm pretty sure, too."

We fell against each other, and for the first time in a long while, we enjoyed a long, languid kiss. Our tongues danced, our bodies sang.

I put my hands on either side of Angel's head, to pull him closer, to bring him into me, as part of me. We caught fire. My fingers wandered to his shirt buttons as our mouths clawed at each other hungrily. But he stopped me.

"No, not here. I have a better idea."

He led me across the room to where there were about a million boxes stacked up. He cleared a few of them away, and to my surprise, revealed an elevator door. I knew that the hotel had an elevator, but we hardly ever used it, and it never occurred to me that it would extend to the basement.

A brilliant strategy. We could go upstairs without the others seeing us or asking questions.

We stepped onto the elevator, and Angel hit the button for the 5th floor. We took our kissing very seriously for the 30 seconds it took to get up to his penthouse suite, still waiting for him from three weeks ago or so, but it seemed like a lifetime. We continued down the hall, awkwardly smooching, clumsily opening and closing the door of the suite. We stumbled to the bed, then, we gracefully melted into each other, and elegantly made love.

And oh, it was good. To finally have him on top of me, moving inside me, doing things just right. But I could see the tension in him, the anxiety as we began to move faster, and the memories came flooding back. I made no move to comfort him, as his discomfort was the only chance that he and I had for the life we both wanted. When I came, his jaw tightened until I thought he'd ground his teeth down to nothing, and his eyes darkened. And in the moment of his own release, he braced himself on his elbows, and I heard him say, "no, no," just before the spasms began, and then the final exhale.

Later, as we lay staring at the ceiling, me in bliss and him in... something else, he said, "I wanted to bite you. I really, really wanted to. Your wounds haven't healed yet, I can still smell the blood." He was speaking in a halting manner, and I could tell he was disgusted with himself, and was internally struggling with the "should we or shouldn't we" of it all.

I didn't say anything. I figured it was one more obstacle that might keep him just unhappy enough. For a while anyway. After that, we might have to get a bit more creative.