Title: Don’t Need You.
Author: Samsom
Posted: 7/2/06
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Rating: R to NC-17 to be safe
Category: UST
Content: Cordelia POV
Summary: Just a little encounter that takes place post Thin Dead Line, after Cordy tells Angel she doesn’t need him anymore.
Spoilers: Thin Dead Line, S2.
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution: Just ask
Notes: I feel the need to apologize in some way because I can’t seem to write anything these days without making it about sex between C/A, implied or outright.
Thanks/Dedication:
Feedback:Adored. Concrit is also welcome.
The sickening clench in her belly is still there when she leaves Wes’s room. It wouldn’t let her eat when Gunn brought sandwiches and it nearly choked her as she tried to talk to Wes without betraying the tumult of her encounter with Angel.
The nerve he had, coming to the hospital in some lame attempt at caring. If he hadn’t left them, Wes wouldn’t have been shot, wouldn’t have nearly bled to death while they desperately tried to get help. It felt good telling him they didn’t need him, felt like she was taking some of her power back by walking away with the last word and leaving Angel to stare after her.
But now she’s shaking inside, feeling like a part of her has been amputated.
It feels like she’s the one bleeding out.
She passes the nurses’ station and the bank of elevators, rushing for the emergency stairs and pushing the heavy doors open as she gives in to the spill of tears finally, feeling raw inside, like she’d been through a war she was drafted into fighting.
Barely resisting the urge to sink to her knees once the doors shut behind her, she angrily wipes at the trail of tears running down her face and thinks about going home. Dennis taking care of her and a hot bath sounds so good after the crapfest of the last six hours but first she needs to pull herself together.
She climbs the stairs to the roof, needing some fresh clean air after the sterile smell of the hospital.
She wonders if she should tell Wes about Angel coming but thinks it might be a bad idea. She knows he’s not coming back, and she doesn’t want him back after the way he’s treated them. Telling the Watcher might get his hopes up. She doesn’t think she can watch Wes’s inevitable disappointment on top of swallowing the bitter bile of her own.
She doesn’t hear anything that might warn her she’s not alone, just the pain of being shoved facefirst into the wall as she walks the landing between the fifth and sixth floors.
Rancid breath and snarling are her clues that she’s dealing with a vampire, probably one that woke up hungry in the morgue. She tries to throw her head back like she saw Buffy do once, to hit it in the nose and loosen the crushing grip on her arms but she doesn’t have enough momentum and panics as she feels her collar being ripped and pulled away from her neck, exposing the flesh.
it can’t end like this it can’t end like this it can’t it can’t
Just as she feels the piercing pain of fangs sinking in there’s a roar and the pressure on her back is abruptly gone.
She turns and finds Angel beating the vampire to its knees, vamp face on and snarling. But it must be really hungry because it kicks Angel in the knee and rushes past him, tackling her to the ground and trying to get its teeth back in her throat. It was little more than a wild animal, newly risen and wild with the taste of her blood.
She screams and tries to push it off her anyway, feeling as it clawing her shirt even more in the struggle.
Angel grabs it by the hair and pulls it off her, throwing it into the opposite wall and proceeds to beat the crap out of it.
Longer than is needed to subdue it, she thinks.
Finally she can hear the dusty explosion and then there’s nothing but the quiet.
She looks up from her prone position to see Angel standing above her, still vamped out. For a horrible second she’s reminded of Angelus’s face as he tackled her in the graveyard one week after killing Jenny Calendar.
He doesn’t say anything, just runs his golden eyes over her body. Her shirt is torn down the side and his gaze lingers on the swell of one shoulder, following it up to her neck. His nostrils flair and she suddenly realizes she’s bleeding.
Her hand flies up to cover the wound as if it might stop the speculating look he gives her.
It doesn’t.
He keeps staring at her, and she wonders what he sees.
Is she food?
Is she something else?
He reaches down and hauls her up with one hand on her belt, and she yelps at the rough handling, arms flailing to get her balance. He stands her on her feet and pushes her until her back hits the wall, standing close enough that her breath reaches his face in puffs.
She’s afraid suddenly that maybe Angel isn’t just beige anymore.
“I’d tell you not to hold your breath waiting for a thank you but you being dead and all…”
Her voice trails off and swallows nervously.
He reaches down and pulls a white hankerchief from his pocket as his demon melts away to leave just Angel’s carefully blank expression.
He gently wipes the blood from her bite before putting the white square back in his coat pocket, keeping her eyes caught with his.
“Looks like you might still need me a little after all.”
His tone isn’t smug but satisfied..and not satisfied…at the same time.
She watches him silently as he turns and leaves her standing there, heart pounding with something like fear, but maybe something else too.
~*~
