Stay...
Twice in a single day Wesley had asked me if I had wanted him to stay, and twice I had replied with the answer I thought we both wanted to hear. After downstairs, and Charles, I had been so frightened of anything ever remotely resembling alone that the words had come tumbling out with a force I thought I had forgotten. And then, in the part after
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"I don't think 'fair' exists for us anymore."
I looked down, pushing my food along my plate with the fork but not eating it. There's a reason why people don't have deep thoughts early in the morning. Just like there's a reason why when they have them, they don't say them out loud. It's too much to handle before your second cup of coffee, and I happen to still need a first.
"Your turn."
Does Fred honestly think that I'm going to go back and forth with her spilling secrets about my new undying lover when I'm not exactly sure that's what he is yet? When I spend half of the time wanting to stake him and the other...
Okay, so she does.
It's been a long time since I've had a friendly, female ear to listen to all of my morning thoughts. All of my thoughts in general.
When I left my friends I was too scared to think of what I was being forced to walk away from. I had to be brave, complete my last mission, and try not to break down before the goodbye. I didn't realize how much I would miss this.
Even though we've both changed, we're still the same. Somewhere, underneath all of the emotional baggage and the constant dread, I'm still Cordelia Chase and she's still Fred Burkle.
"Spike makes things..." Easier and harder depending on what time of day I catch him. "I mean...he's...." Oh come on, I still know how to use words in sentence form.
"Spike is a pain in the ass." A pain in a really nice ass, but a pain in the ass nonetheless. "We fight like cats and dogs."
Something tells me this isn't the kind of girl talk Fred had in mind.
"That's just what we do while we kill time before we make up. Then we get it all out in the open, and then everything starts to slow down until the only thing I care about is being with him."
Oh crap, I wonder if this is how Buffy used to feel. Or how she would have felt if she had been capable of having that much human emotion. Either or. I'm just wondering if everyone who cares about him ends up as Queen of Psychoville like Drusilla.
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"I guess that's probally what it is then, making all this so hard," I agree quietly, somehow now willing to abandon the idea of food completely. I begin collecting the dishes, because somehow if we're going to say all these things, then the part where I can move, if only a little, helps.
If I accepted all of it, really accepted...would it make everything closer to what it was? By knowing that it won't ever be again?
"H..." Help me Cordy. "How do you handle it all so well?"
"Spike makes things...I mean...he's....Spike is a pain in the ass. We fight like cats and dogs."
This was probally easier to talk about as anything else, even with how difficult that it was to start. But the fact that we had somehow now moved on to the entirely open use of names wasn't lost on me.
"Spike fights with everyone I think," I conclude, carefully placing the dishes in the sink, maybe even taking a little to much time to line up one on top of the other, rinsed and even. "But I bet it's different with you."
"That's just what we do while we kill time before we make up. Then we get it all out in the open, and then everything starts to slow down until the only thing I care about is being with him."
"Everything slows down," I repeated warmly ,"and all you care about is being with him. All I...it'd be a little easy wouldn't it? To get lost for a while, and to want to stay there?"
I left the sink and traced the back of my chair before sitting once more.
"So why are we both fighting running away from what seems to help most of all?"
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I was about to deny that I was running from Spike, but then I remembered what I'd done. Got up, showered, got dressed, and left if you want to get specific. I didn't even let myself kiss him.
"I...It's new. You know?"
New in the sense that if an apocalypse don't surface from out of nowhere and knock us on our asses, it could work out this time. With Spike. Who isn't evil anymore and cares about me.
I wonder how many more times I'm going to have to do a mental rewind before it stops being weird.
"I've been trying to find the time to talk to Angel but I keep letting myself get distracted. We're going to have to hide everything wooden within a five mile radius of the hotel when I finally do say something about it."
Not because of me, because of Spike. I've given up on the idea that another of this could make Angel flip out because of me. Whatever we had wasn't exactly what we thought it was, but it was still and always will be something that I had with my best friend. Everything that went differently than I wanted it to, I can live with.
If I could die with it before, I can live with it now.
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"I...know." I actually smiled, and met Cordy's eyes in a moment of understanding. "Of if it isn't new, with all the gloss and the packaging, then maybe it's all ...unknown? Because I think we're all still a little worn."
I sighed, and wished that I still had a plate in front of me, something there...if only to distract.
"I need to remember how to make it better again."
I remembered once thinking that I might've been good at that.
"I've been trying to find the time to talk to Angel but I keep letting myself get distracted. We're going to have to hide everything wooden within a five mile radius of the hotel when I finally do say something about it."
"Are you ready to tell him," I asked softly. "I mean...do you think you keep getting distracted because you don't have it all sorted out yet? Or because you really are worried what he will do?"
I might've actually found another smile.
"We're the ones that couldn't even use names there for a while. Do you think we're up to talking to others?"
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