a.connor  a.doyle  a.lindsey  a.oz  a.spike  a.wesley  a.xander  a.other  three.somes  het.fic  character.study           
Title: The Art of Subtlety
Author: Jana Kay
Rating: PG-13
Setting: 'Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?' Cordelia POV


Drinks, drinks ... let's see what I've got.

**opens cupboard**

Coffee! Lots and lots of coffee. Well that's
definitely me. Vision girl recently, and coffee girl
... well kinda always. Guess it's a vice.

Hmm, never knew I had a vice before. I don't think I
like it ... but coffee keeps me alert when we're
fighting butt-ugly demons ... not to mention all the
adrenaline and heart pounding *FEAR* so I don't think
I'll be stopping anytime soon.

**puts water on to boil and grabs down two mugs**

**measures out a teaspoon of coffee**

**puts it in one mug**

Now Wesley, he's got a lot of them. Books, preferably
old and moldy, tea, only his special British-Guy tea
which we've argued over like a million times, and men
... but yeah right, he'll never admit that last one,
especially if you consider the fact that it took *me*
so long to figure out in the first place.

Come to think of it, I don't even know how I did.
Maybe it was just the way he always glanced a second
too long at Angel, a wisp of a smile tracing his lips
and his eyes lighting up as they caressed broad
shoulders under black leather, or the way he looked at
Gunn sometimes when they were talking, glasses
slipping down his nose just enough to show a feral
look hiding behind a thin veil, almost as though he
wanted to ...

Okay! I *so* don't need to be thinking of Wesley's
love life or lack there of.

**opens cupboard again**

I know there's tea in here somewhere, so where is it?
He bought some at the store and brought it over here
specifically, and he always checks to see when it's
running out so he can get some more. He *always* has
to have his tea. Like I said, vice.

And you know, he's so British that he doesn't even
drink coffee in a crisis, like Giles sometimes did.

It's kind of funny actually. You would always know
there was an apocalypse coming if you saw Tweed-Man
with his 'Kiss the Librarian' mug ((which I gave him
for Christmas the year before I left
thank-you-very-much all wrapped up with a shiny bow))
filled with freshly brewed coffee. I almost had a
heart attack the first time I saw it, and I didn't
even know what it meant yet.

I wonder ... does he still do it?

It's weird to think of life in Sunnydale still going
on when you're not there. Because of course, you know
it is. It's the Hellmouth after all. Buffy is still
the Slayer and slaying away, Willow is still the
witchy-witch, getting busy with her spells, and Xander
... well I still don't know what he does ((except
research)) but they've kept him around so long he
*must* have a purpose.

And I guess all the stuff that I used to do is now
being done by demon-girl and Willow's friend, not to
mention Riley, the Iowa boy I've heard *so* much about
from Angel.

And no I don't pay any attention because Angel loves
Buffy, and no matter what Wesley and I think he'll
*always* love Buffy, and therefore whatever his views
of Buffy's new boyfriend, they'll undoubtedly be
clouded.

Because if there's one thing I know about Buffy, she
has good taste in men.

Aha! I knew it was here.

**takes tea out**

**sniffs**

Oh ew, gross. I think there's something wrong with
this. It smells a little *too* much like old wax
mixed with pot-pourri. And flowers. Is it supposed
to have flowers in it?

**shudders**

Is this a new brand? Well he can just drink it
anyway. I mean *I* don't know about tea. Maybe it's
supposed to smell that way. And besides, it's *tea*,
it can't go off. Add some boiling water, he'll never
even notice.

**puts the bag in a mug**

Okay ... now where's that water?

**kettle whistles**

There it is.

**pours water in both mugs**

**adds milk and sugar to first mug and stirs**

**puts them on a tray**

Well that's two down. Now where's ...?

**checks in refrigerator**

Damn! Oh wait ... oh there it is. Last bag, right at
the back.

Is he hiding them again?

Idiot. I'm so not disgusted by him drinking blood
anymore. You think he'd notice by the way I bring
them to him and stay in the same room as he drinks,
even going so far as to tell him to hurry up and just
*drink* the stupid thing already instead of just
hemming and hawing around it, fingers twitching around
the container because I know he wants to drink it but
he's too ashamed by the need ... but he always was Mr
Oblivious, capital M, capital O, so I can't expect too
much.

**pulls it out and takes off cap**

**sniffs**

Smells like copper pennies.

**sniffs again**

Like, *really.* Has this thing gone off? Wait, no.
I only bought it yesterday. It was the other one that
went off, and I threw it out.

**sniffs a third time**

So why does it smell like this? Maybe I should warm
it up ... Wait, no. He doesn't like that.

Well actually, he does. I've seen him drink blood
warm when he thinks nobody's paying attention to him.
Like, as if! We always pay attention to him, even
though it may not look like it. Soulful or not, he's
still a vampire, and the silly thing with us humans is
that we fall into habits easily, and so if you start
to get used to ignoring one vampire, you might
accidentally start ignoring another, and then another,
and another, and then pretty soon you end up dead.
Now that's something I'm so *not* wanting.

And so Angel, when he thinks we're not watching him,
he pours the blood into a mug and everything rather
than just having it in a container, and his fingers
are completely white as he clutches his hands tight
around the mug, bones sticking out so you can see the
individual tendons. And I've never seen him drink
anything so quickly before, as if he just can't get
enough of it.

You know, for two-and-a-half centuries old, he can be
pretty damn *NOT* sneaky.

I wonder why he does that?

Maybe he thinks he's not allowed to drink it warm,
that it goes against the whole warrior background he's
built up around himself from the rubble, or that
drinking it warm reminds him too much of all the times
he's actually taken it warm straight from the source.
A neck or a thigh or a ...

**shudders**

Okay I'm not thinking about that. He's Angel, he's my
best friend, he's not killing anymore, I'm not going
to think of this.

... But you know, it's kind of hard *not* to think
about when he vamps out in a fight, and he's snarling
and growling and no matter what you're doing, you feel
like stopping dead in your tracks as the sound rumbles
through your bones, your muscles trying to twitch into
instant fight or flight, and then out of the corner of
your eye you see him moving like a 6ä2â predator,
straight at his target with a single-minded intensity
that rattles you so much you just can't move, and you
know, you just *know* deep inside you that he won't
stop coming until you're *dead*.

And it's kind of hard then not to think about all the
innocent people he hunted before, who were in the
exact same position as you and raced against the clock
to seek shelter before he grabbed them up in his arms
and sunk his fangs right in and ...

Or about the one's that he wined and dined and made
feel special before he took them back to his place, or
they took him back to their place and invited him in
and ...

Whoo boy. Let's not go there anymore, okay brain? Or
I may start hating him and ... okay it wasn't *Angel*,
it was *Angelus*, there's a difference.

.........

Oh who am I trying to kid. I've been fooling myself
for a couple of years now, and it's really getting
tiring.

They're not separate people, and even though I hate
admitting it, it's not fair to Angel to like him
because of a lie.

Angel is Angelus, just as much as Angelus is Angel.

I told Angel last year I'd kill him dead if he ever
lost his soul again, but after I said it, I made the
mistake of hanging around the big lug too much. I got
to know him after that. Like *really.* Quirks and
nuances and little habits that you'd probably never
share to anybody unless you knew you were dying the
next day, and then Rebecca and her happy drug came
along and I was forced to realize that, I didn't think
I could do it after all.

It scared me to think I actually had something in
common with Buffy. We all got so mad at her because
she couldn't just stake his ass already in junior
year, but I'm putting myself in the exact same
position now.

And I'm not even as strong as Buffy. She could barely
do it, how the heck am I supposed to?

All it takes is that one niggling doubt. What if I'm
staking the wrong one?

They share the same body and have the exact same
facial expressions. They know as much about you as
the other incarnation does. They're skilled in the
art of manipulation to the extreme, whether it's
Angelus so you'll invite him in against your better
judgment, or Angel so you'll leave him alone even
after he did something unacceptable.

One look, one touch, and you find yourself thinking,
there has to be some Angel in there somewhere. The
soul couldn't have made no impact at all after a
hundred or more years. Just like when Angel touches
you sometimes and his grip is a little harder than it
should be, his words harsher than you expect them to
be, and you know that Angel isn't all flowers and
puppy-eyes like you want to believe so badly. Not
house-broken or on a leash, no not at all.

He's a demon with a muzzle. And one that isn't really
wanted.

He said so himself, didn't he?

There's a clarity that comes with being solely evil,
and he misses it sometimes.

No more guilt, no more pain, no more wishing he could
have done things differently so none of us ever got
hurt. No holding my hand so tightly I had bruises
after I came out of my vision trance, no constantly
helping Wesley around for a week because he wasn't
allowed to leave without a wheelchair.

And when you start to think of how much you're really
friends with a demon, you start to get scared of just
how much danger you're really in.

Even the happiest and most well adjusted puppy will
bite you sometimes if you're not careful.

And the problem with Angel is that he really does
bite.

And you know that no matter how close you are to him,
no matter how much you care for him and want to be
there for him when he needs you, there's every chance
that one day, he might find himself staring at your
neck, a demon's voice whispering in his head about how
sweet it would be going down his throat. How even
warm blood, his secret vice, is no match for the real
thing.

Scalding and pumping and flowing like a river down his
throat.

But I'm really stupid I suppose, because I really do
love him. Not *love* love, but love. He's my best
friend. He's been practically everything to me this
past year, it's weird now imagining my life with him
not in it.

And for all the bad times, there's a zillion good
times to make up for the fact that I'm best friends
with a some*thing* rather than a some*one*.

Plus he acts so immature and childish sometimes, so
weak and human that it's surprisingly easy to forget
that he's not human at all.

**puts container on tray**

But everyone makes mistakes. Humans, demons, it's the
one thing we have in common I guess.

So if I just happen to spice up his usual routine a
little, who could blame me?

Just a little something, so he'll forget about our
necks for a while, just a little something to be sure.

Because you're my friend Angel, and so is Wesley and
even Gunn, and I don't want to see any of us get hurt.

**takes cinnamon off spice rack**

**uncaps and taps some into the blood**

What, I can't try something?

~Finis~

Feedback