(Untitled)

[__visiongal]

It was light when I awoke the next morning. I hadn't meant to fall asleep, hadn't even meant to stay the night, not really, but... Wes had needed me, had asked me to stay, offered me a shoulder to cry on - a place I could cry, without ever feeling guilty about doing it

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[__visiongal]

"How could I know you and not know that I loved you?"

The last time my heart started thumping like this - and I mean the good kind of thump, not that dull ache - was... Well, months ago. My birthday, actually. I woke up from a world that was so different to mine, so changed-- And I was back, in the Hyperion, with Angel and my friends.

"Love?" I can't seem to manage to get my voice more than a whisper. "You... You love me." I love him too. Not just in the big brother way, or the best-friend-kinda-family way. I love Wes. I love him. And it took so long to see it - it took visions and everything falling apart and, okay, the possibility of my untimely death.

If this is it? If this is the best my life's gonna get and I don't get the second chances? Then, honestly, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with the fact that I'll never sleep with Angel's son or betray him that way. I'm okay with the rest of it. I'm okay because somehow, today, I found out that one person I'd hoped I could protect and never expected protection from told me that he loved me.

And I really am okay.

"I love you too." I whisper, quietly, still unable to talk louder. If I do? I'm scared that I'll mess all this up, as if the words themselves will carry and bring back a world full of bad. Something this right shouldn't feel that way... "I love you too, Wes." I say again.

[wesley_w_pryce_]

For a second when I tell her I love her she sounds surprised and my stomach plummets a little, but then she is whispering that she loves me, saying it twice like she's tasting the words and I smile and bury mny face in her hair.

"How did we manage to not notice?" I have to ask, friends and colleagues and supposed detectives how did this just go past our noses.

Although the scent of her skin and the warmth as I kiss her shoulder is making me rather not care as long as I can be this way forever, or for whatever time we have.

[__visiongal]

"Oh, I dunno..." I smile a little, "Things getting in the way? Demons, vampires, the usual..."

Of course, there was always that first kiss. Who'd have thought that Wesley and I had any kind of future together after that?

He buries his face in my hair and for a while, it's so easy to forget. It's so easy to forget about all of this - about the visions and everything but Wesley telling me he loves me. Sooner or later - and right now, it's sooner, rather than later - reality keeps trying to crash back in. Reality as in Wesley loving someone who mightn't have a future at all.

Reality as me being selfish enough to love someone when I don't even know for sure I could change what was coming.

I close my eyes then, wrap my arms around Wes and bury my head in his shoulder, drawing in a ragged breath. I don't want to give up my visions. Ever. That's not an option. But giving up something I'd pretty much given up on with the rebar incident? I don't know how I do that either...

[wesley_w_pryce_]

She closes her eyes and buries her face in my shoulder, I can feel how upset she is and I only have the vaguest knowlege of why.

"Tell me Cordelia." I say while stroking her hair. "Although I warn you if you are going to say something about it's not right for us to be together expect a fight."

[__visiongal]

I seem to forget that this guy has been one of my best friends for, like, ever. He knows me better than anyone, he probably knows that my entire speech started with a round of how good he was to me, how much I love him... And ended with how I couldn't be with him, how he shouldn't want to be with me.

I almost let that slide.

"It is right," I whisper, "Despite Groo and how much I hate what I'm doing? It is right. For me. But you..." I pause and take a breath, "Before you say all that crap about rather having loved than lost and never loved at all? It's bullshit." I say firmly, "All bullshit. Loving and then losing is-- Well, it hurts. And you've been there. And I don't want to be the cause of you going there again."

[wesley_w_pryce_]

"I know all that Cordelia. I know that with what you've told me there is a good chance I will lose you, or several people I care about."

I move back a little so I can look at her so she will understand how serious I am.

"I am not willing to throw this away on chances. I may lose you, I may lose everything but I will not give this up because of what may happen. And if, note the if there because I have not given up on the fact we have a chance to change what's to happen, if I lose you I want to have memories to help me survive the loss.

[__visiongal]

"So what? We continue like this and we just hope that maybe you're right and that, if I do die, you have enough memories to last you? Great."

And there she is again. Cordelia Chase, Super Bitch. What he's saying, every word he's uttering is what I'd say, roles reversed. I wouldn't give up, not on Wesley.

So why the hell am I so adamant that he give up on me?

"It's not a 'what may happen' situation, Wes. It's a what-will. We both know that taking back what Skip did..." I can't look at him. "This was supposed to be easy. My big hurrah. Instead of screwing up my friends lives horribly, I let a vision blow out the back of my head and things are okay again..."

[wesley_w_pryce_]

"No. You are trying to oversimplify it Cordelia. I know that there's little chance, but we were given a chance and I am choosing to take it."

I cradle her face in my hands, so much of my life I was afraid to make choices I let my family..my father..and my job make them for me. Now I am choosing for myself.

"I have to have faith that there is a chance we can change things, otherwise why be shown the path we were on and where it was going? We may have to undo what Skip did, but even if there was no way to save you from that do you think I would let you face that alone?"

[__visiongal]

He doesn't get it. Sooner or later? He'll come up with a cure. He's gonna yell a 'eureka' into the office, Fred'll look up with those hopeful eyes, Angel won't dare to even dream, Gunn will sit there and pray he's right... And they'll take my visions away.

"Wesley..." What am I supposed to do? Make him promise he's not going to try? I wouldn't listen to that, why should he? I touch his cheek almost reverantly, wishing I'd never opened my big mouth. "I know you wouldn't let me face it alone, that's not even an issue, I just-- Sometimes? When you change things, it's not always for the good, y'know? And sometimes, when you think you have the right decision? It's really the wrong one."

[wesley_w_pryce_]

"I said may have to. That obviously is not the first choice of paths. I didn't see what you did, I don't know what I need to do to change things, I just know that from what you have told me so far we need to change things."

I want to wrap myself around her and shut the world out. I can't protect her, I can't take her pain all I can do is love her and try to save her.

"Tell me what you want me to do, I will do it."

[__visiongal]

"I want you to kiss me." I say, softly.

We were doing that, if I remember rightly. We were doing that and reality snuck in and bludgeoned me over the head. I'm back to that place again - that place where I was six months ago where every day I worried that my friends would find out just how serious this all was.

I'm back to that place where I need to hide, bury myself in denial for just a little while longer. I can't ask him to not try, no matter what he promises.

"I want to remember why it is that every word you just said made me feel like you saved me all over again when I was the one supposed to be saving you." I don't wait for him to kiss me. I just want to forget. I want him to forget. So I kiss him, again, different this time, desperate. Harder, softer-- Okay, indescribable. But nice. Wonderful, even. And I find it hard to remember why I stopped doing this...

[wesley_w_pryce_]

She wants me to kiss her again, telling me I saved her, when really she saved me, but I don't want to argue about that when she has started kissing me again in a way that is making my knees weak.

Yes, for a while I want to forget, to just be us. Pretend that we have all the time in the world.

I pull her close, never breaking the kiss and slip one hand down her side, feeling the velvety soft skin of her side where her shirt has come untucked.

[__visiongal]

I keep expecting to laugh. Not that Wes kissing me is funny or anything but-- It's like that episode of Friends. I always thought that if ever Angel, Wes or Gunn even went near my ass or any of my other body parts, I'd laugh said ass off.

It's funny, in the way that's not, because right here? I have nothing to giggle about.

I kiss him, sliding one hand between us to begin unbuttoning his shirt. "I think," I murmur against his lips, "That this may constitute as more than kissing." And hey, look at that, forgetting is starting to work.

[wesley_w_pryce_]

"I think that more than kissing is all right with me."

Cordelia unbuttons my shirt and her hands sliding over my chest make me warm and somewhat melting my brain at the same time. The entire world is seeming to fall away from us.

It doesn't seem fair that I should be unbuttoned if she's not and I start to work her shirt loose, sliding one hand up underneath caressing her ribcage and cupping one breast.

"Is it all right with you?"

[__visiongal]

"Mmmhmm," I nod, smiling at the slight hitch of his breath, "Very all right."

I scratch my nails lightly over his chest, kissing the corner of his mouth, before pushing the shirt off his shoulders. Salty Goodness! My brain screams and I giggle, pulling back to look at him. "Y'know, we could have wasted a lot less time if you'd just shown me your kind of hot and rugged manly chest beforehand."

[wesley_w_pryce_]

I choke out a laugh, leave it to Cordelia to say something like that.

"Don't you mean my rather pale British chest?"

I push her shirt off her shoulders and plant a kiss on her collarbone, tickling with my breath.

"Good, glad we are in agreement on the more than kissing."