Part 2
Angel stood over the still smoking remains of the Hyperion’s front desk, mentally kicking himself.
He resisted the urge to poke at the smouldering remains with his shoe, reminding himself that they were his favourite shoes. Cordelia had bought them for him.
Out of the corner of his eye Angel could see her hovering behind Fred, looking bored but beautiful, as per usual. He was always looking for more and more inventive ways to get and keep Cordelia’s attention, but blowing up the lobby was a little extreme, even for him.
Angel’s thought process was interrupted by a large man, smacking him on the back.
“Way to go Angel!” Gunn said, sarcastically, “Man! What the hell did you say?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“How could you not KNOW?!!” said an angry British voice from somewhere behind them.
Wesley’s voice sounded odd, but that was probably because he hadn’t been using it in the past hour. He had been too busy sweeping up a thin layer of ash that had already settled on the floor. That, and ignoring Angel.
The tone was harsh, but Angel stood straight and refused to flinch. Cordelia winced in sympathy.
“…but you do have an inkling?” she said.
“All I know is that we were exchanging greetings, and I said something about his cape, and then boom!”
“Half the reception area missing?”
“Exactly!”
Wesley silently mumbled, “I told you to keep quiet!”
“I was only saying ‘Hello’…”
“Well,” Gunn clapped his hands together, trying to cut the tension in the room down to a tolerable level, “Guess we can scratch that client off our ‘incoming finances’ list. I say we all stop moping and start…”
“…cleaning?” said Wesley, hopefully.
“Actually, I was gonna say start drinking. Or we could go hack some big nasty in to tiny pieces – that always makes me feel better.” The rest of the group, even Angel, grimaced at the idea.
“Or we could play poker!!” Fred added, enthusiastically. Gunn pointed a finger at her, his face cold and expressionless at the suggestion.
“No.” was his only reply.
“Well, I suppose a quick drink wouldn’t do much harm.” Wesley threw the brush on the floor, officially giving up, “Or more accurately, more harm then Angel has already caused us…”
“Hey!”
“In fact,” Wesley said, “I think I could do with a brandy. Or even twelve.”
Before he had finished his sentence, Cordelia was halfway up the stairs. Stopping momentarily on the landing, she yelled “I’ll get my coat!”, and continued to climb the stairs in a hurry.
Angel watched her bound the steps, two at a time, like she was an excited child. He smiled secretly to himself. Where the hell did she get all her energy from? She was like a freight train sometimes…
And that idea put a very interesting thought process into Angel’s head.
“Freight trains can move all night,” he said, completely at random. Shaking off the weird looks her got from his colleagues; Angel remembered he was supposed to be feeling guilty.
“Y’know,” Angel tried, “considering the shaman could have done a lot worse to us, I think we got off light with him destroying our front desk.”
Gunn was dusting off the front of sweatshirt, “Angel, give it up, man.”
Behind him, Fred was anxiously running her fingers through her hair, and looking back and forth between Angel and Wesley, like she was watching a particularly worrying game of tennis.
“Wait… do we all know for certain that this shaman guy isn’t coming back? To mush us, I mean?”
Wesley chose to ignore her. He was tired. The last thing he wanted was something else to worry about.
“I really need that brandy. I wish Cordelia would hurry.”
“That girl will take forever, and we all know it. Let’s say we’ll meet her there. We’ve done it before.”
Angel baulked at the idea. “Hey! We’re not leaving without Cordy, okay?”
“I think you’re in no position to give orders right now, Angel.”
“Yeahh! You’re in the doghouse now, bro!” Gunn began to stride confidently towards the front doors, not willing to wait for anybody, or anybody’s permission.
Angel took a couple of unconscious steps towards the staircase Cordelia had used a few moments earlier.
“I just think it would polite to wait for the woman whose visions are pretty much our only source of income…”
“… thanks to you.” Wesley added.
“Again, HEY!!”
“Cordy is a self-sufficient young woman, she can find her own way to Caritas without us escorting her.”
“Yeah, she’s done it before. ” Seeing the irritated look on Angel’s face, Gunn bit back a chuckle. It was too easy to push his buttons, especially when it came to Cordelia.
Enjoying the sour look on Angel’s face a little too much, Gunn turned to walk out of the glass doors and into the street, stopping only momentarily to playfully add, “Let’s go! Screw Cordy!”
Angel shrugged, “I won’t deny I’ve thought about it.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
As Gunn slowly turned around, he could see that the irritation on Angel’s face had been replaced by an unrecognisable facial expression: absolute horror.
His eyes bugged out almost comically, and a pale hand crept over his face and covered his mouth as if to stop any other words from unexpectedly falling out.
An unsuspecting Cordelia skipped down the stairs, carrying her coat in her arms.
“Oh, yay! You guys actually waited for once! Great, now I don’t have to kill any of you…”, everybody appeared to be staring at Angel, who in turn was looking paler then usual.
When nobody made any movement to acknowledge her presence, Cordy started staring too.
“Jeez.” She said, “Who died?”
“Stake me.” Angel managed to squeak.
***
After a painfully awkward car journey, Angel finally found himself at Caritas. Fred, Wesley and Gunn immediately made a beeline for the bar, seemingly trying to find the quickest method to erase certain mental images out of their heads.
Cordelia, still confused, stood beside Angel. “Okay, I want an explanation.”
“For what?” Angel asked, innocently.
“For the past twenty minutes of painful silence I’ve had to suffer. I leave the room for five minutes and the group dynamic goes to hell? Did you say something wrong again? Am I going to get back to the office and find Fred blew up my favourite office chair?”
He shrugged nonchalantly, “It’s not my fault they can’t get the mental image of us having sex out of their perverted little brai-… crap.”
Suddenly, Caritas seemed like far too small a venue. Angel realised he had done it again; he had opened his mouth and said the very first thing that had come to mind.
Cordelia looked more confused then anything else, like she couldn’t quite believe what he’d just said. She blinked empathetically once or twice, like Angel was some kind of hallucination, and seemed that little bit more shocked when he was still there once she had opened her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Cordelia said, “What did you just say??”
“You look pretty.” Angel blurted, and was forced to cover his mouth again. Crapcrapcrap. The first thing that can to mind, again! Was this what it was like to be Cordelia Chase?
Thankfully, Lorne manoeuvred his way into their line of vision and interrupted before it could get any more nauseatingly embarrassing then it already was.
“Lorne!” Angel shouted, gleefully, “Lorne’s here!!”
Now Cordelia was even more confused. Narrowing her big brown eyes, she looked, quite frankly, annoyed as hell. Angel wondered if he possessed the ability to blush? Having a reflection sure would have been handy right about now.
“Hi, my little dumplings! What an unexpected surprise!” Lorne sing-songed, “Not here on business, I hope?”
“Nope.” Cordy said, “Angel already saw to that. Huge hole in the middle of our office.”
“Hey!”
“Oh dear.” Lorne looked amused. Glancing at Angel, he did a double take, presumably intrigued by his aura.
“Oh dear, oh dear!” He said again, doubly amused.
Looking ever dashing in his lemon coloured cravat and cufflinks, Lorne scrutinised Angel for a moment. He took a couple of moments to walk 360 degrees around the stiff and terrified vampire, smiling secretly to himself, and all the while examining.
Eventually, Lorne stopped directly in front of Angel and paused, cupping his chin in one hand in a thoughtful pose.
“Well, your problem is as plain as Pylean Pin up. You pissed off a shaman, didn’t you?”