Cordelia came in and shut the office door behind her, flipping through the mail randomly as she made her way inside. Bill, bill, occupant, bill, Victoria’s Secret catalog. [Well, at least the morning isn’t an entire waste. Oh look! Semi-annual bra sale.] She dumped the rest of the mail on the table next to the coffee maker and settled down in her chair to peruse the catalog thoroughly. Besides the quiet flipping of the pages, the office was completely silent. Eventually, the interminable stillness broke through Cordelia’s happy underwear-shopping bubble, and she let out a sigh of exasperation. [Angel is so gonna have to buy us a tv to put up here one of these days. Or maybe just get us some actual clients.] Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden opening of the door.
“Doyle! Yay, it’s Doyle! Good morning, Doyle!”
Doyle stared at her with a slight grin. “Well, if I thought I’d get this sort of reception I’d come in late every day. You seem cheerful today, Princess, especially for it being a Monday and all.”
“Hey, you know what they say, another day another dollar. Which, with what Angel pays us, is pretty much accurate. I’m glad you’re here, though. This place has been a morgue all morning.” She paused. “Well, you know what I mean.”
Doyle sat down somewhat heavily in the chair in front of Cordelia’s desk and ran his hand through his hair. “So, no clients then I take it.”
“Notta one. The phone rang about an hour ago, but unless asking if I want to refinance my credit debt is somehow code for asking for our help, I’d say this morning has been entirely client-free.” Cordelia plopped back into her chair and picked up the catalog again. Doyle got up with obvious effort and got a bottle of water out of the mini fridge before sitting back down.
“Well, it’ll probably pick up after lunch. Most of our clients are more night people anyway.” When he was sure she was engrossed in her reading, Doyle reached his hand into his pocket and as quietly as he could removed a small bottle of Excedrin, making sure to keep his hands out of her line of sight in case she looked up.
Cordelia made a noise that sounded like a cross between a sigh and an irritated groan. “Don’t remind me. I hope Angel doesn’t expect me to stay late again tonight. Wasn’t last week enough? I swear, though, I don’t even know why I bother coming in during the mornings anymore. I should just be like you and come in at noon still hung over,” she said, giving Doyle a pointed look.
He smiled sheepishly. “So you noticed, yeah? It’s not so bad, really. In fact it’s nothing compared to my head-crushing vision headaches. I guess the Powers are really doing me a favor by lettin me know just where even my worst hangovers stand on a cosmic level and all.”
Cordelia narrowed her eyes at him. “Whatever. What you do on your own time is...your own time. Just don’t complain to me if your extracurricular activities leave you -”
“Don’t complain to you about what?” Angel’s quiet voice came unexpectedly from the door to his office, cutting Cordelia off.
Doyle responded first. “Nothing, man. Just a little chat we’re havin here...”
“He’s hung over and in pain. Again.” Cordelia added.
Doyle sighed and ducked his head. “Thanks, Princess,” he muttered.
Angel’s chocolate eyes widened in sympathy, but no real surprise. “Is it bad?” he asked, moving closer to Doyle.
Doyle shrugged “No. I just need to take a coupla pain killers now and again and I’ll be fine. Really.” He added with an extra-large fake smile to try to convince Angel to stop feeling sorry for him.
Angel didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure? Because I might have a way for you to get rid of it completely.”
Doyle, caught off guard, looked up into Angel’s eyes for the first time that morning. “Really? What, like an ancient mojo method for gettin rid of headaches?”
Angel smiled a small, secretive smile that made Cordelia wonder if maybe Angelus hadn’t made a special guest appearance during the wee hours of the morning. Then he held his chin in his right hand and looked pensive. “Hmm. Sort of like that, I guess. It is an ancient method, but there’s not really much magic involved so much as redirecting the flow of your blood away from your brain. Less blood means less pressure and less pain.”
Now it was Doyle’s turn to look pensive. “Wait a minute. This ‘redirecting’ doesn’t mean draining, does it? Because -”
Angel smiled that weird smile again. “No.”
That was enough for Doyle. He stood up and put the Excedrin back into his jacket pocket. “Sounds good to me. What do you need me to do?”
Angel turned and led him into his office. “We just need someplace quiet for a little while. Cordelia, you’ll get the phone, right?” and with that, firmly shut the door behind Doyle.
Cordelia stared after them for a full second, then looked back down at her Victoria’s Secret catalog without really seeing it. She didn’t know why she felt so angry at both Doyle and Angel all of a sudden. It was probably just the idea of being left all alone in the office again for however long this blood...thing lasted. It probably wouldn’t be too long, though, and then Doyle would come back out, throbbing-hangover-free, to flirt clumsily with her like he did every other day.
[Unless of course I wasn’t actually imagining those Angelussy vibes that were coming from Angel. But I had to be imagining them. Because we all know Angelus isn’t exactly known for his Mr. Subtle Plan routine. He would have just ripped our throats out.] Satisfied, she took a deep breath and turned another page of the catalog. Then she froze.
[But wait! What if psycho-guy has finally wised up to the fact that trying to rip our throats out only leads to him getting his ass kicked? What if now he is going for Mr. Subtle Plan? What if he’s going to drain Doyle and turn him, then me? He could be doing it right now, and not giving me any kind of clues because he so knows he’s no match for a full-alert Cordelia Chase! “Blood redirecting” my ass! Omigod! Doyle! I have to save him. I have to think. I have to get a damn weapon!] She ripped open the top drawer, seeing only leaky pens, crumpled up bits of paper and last month’s Cosmo. Finally she grabbed something and held it up. [Score! Pencil! I’ve seen Buffy use one of these on a vamp before. I know I could...well, maybe...damnit! I need something better.] She threw the pencil down and started to stalk across the room to the filing cabinet, where she was pretty sure she had remembered to replace the axe they kept in there for emergency purposes. [And this is definitely an emergency.] Just as she opened the highest drawer, she heard a noise coming from Angel’s office which made her freeze. Had that been a moan? And a thud. And...a growl? Fearing that she was already too late, Cordelia grabbed the axe and ran over to the door to Angel’s office. There she paused for one more minute, trying to gather the shreds of her courage, before another growl made her freeze yet again and then quickly shove open the door.
What she saw at first confirmed her deepest fears. Angel [or Angelus, I guess] was standing with his back to her, and he had Doyle pinned facedown on the desk, or, more accurately, bent over it. That was all she needed to see to make her heft the axe up in what she hoped was a good grip for cutting off her former employer’s head. But as she went to take a step forward, certain details of the room finally forced her to pay attention to them. [Wait a minute. Why are they both naked? And why isn’t Doyle fighting more? I mean, Angelus isn’t even touching him, he’s just standing behind him and...standing RIGHT behind him, but still. And why is Angelus moving against him...OH MY GOD!!! Rape! Doyle’s being raped!] Except it was at that precise second that Doyle chose to moan again, with Cordelia’s proximity allowing her to hear the words this time. “Oh yeah, Angel, right there. Harder. Yeeeeaaaaahhhh...” Cordy’s eyes and mouth both opened wide and the axe slid from her grasp to land with a loud clang on the floor. Both men turned to stare at her as she continued to gape at them. It was Doyle who spoke first, smiling and motioning her inside the office. “Hey there Princess. What’s wrong?”
This broke Cordelia at least partially out of her immobile state. “Wha..what...what the hell are you doing?” she demanded, never taking her eyes off where the mens’ bodies were joined together.
Doyle looked backover his shoulder at Angel for a second, then smiled at Cordelia again. “Oh, um, well...you see, Angel’s method for redirecting the blood really works. My headache’s gone, at least.” He broadened his smile, hoping to draw Cordelia’s eyes to it from where they were currently resting on his backside. Finally he realized that wasn’t going to work and resumed speaking. “See, this is just the redirecting part, you know, because the blood has to be redirected someplace, and it’s being redirected...south.”
“What?” Cordelia snapped, taking hold of the doorframe for support.
This time it was Angel who answered, much to Doyle’s evident relief. “The hangover. It’s gone. I told you it was an ancient therapy. We’re just about done here, but if you want to watch the rest you’re more than welcome to.”
Cordelia’s eyes widened again for a moment before a sly smile graced her features. She glanced down for a second at the axe she had dropped and then realized Angel was still talking to her.
She looked up to meet his worried brown eyes. “Cordelia? Are you okay?”
Doyle’s concerned gaze matched the vampire’s. “Yeah Cordy, what’s wrong?”
She swung her gaze from Angel’s face to their bodies, seeing Doyle sitting innocently, fully clothed in the desk chair with an also dressed Angel standing behind him, gently massaging the muscles of Doyle’s upper back and shoulders.
For a moment, she was at a loss for words as she tried to push the remnants of her fantasy aside. “I thought I heard moaning...I wasn’t sure if you were in trouble or...” she began.
“So you ran in here with an axe? I hate to break it to you, but there’s no trouble here. It’s nice to know you care so much, though. I’m just moanin because Angel here has just massaged away months of tension from fighting demons. Oh, and years of sleeping on a just about the hardest mattress on God’s green earth. One of these days I’m really going to have to buy myself a new one. Maybe one of those with the little control that moves it up and down. You know, the kind you’re always seeing in those commercials in the middle of the day.”
She blinked at him. “You mean a Craftmatic adjustable bed? Doyle, those are for old people.”
“What? Are you saying I’m too young to get the most out of my mattress?”
“Whatever. Like I’m interested in what you sleep with. I mean on!” In order to cover her embarrassment, Cordelia quickly bent and retrieved the axe at her feet, then turned on her heel and left Angel’s office, shutting the door hard and leaving two very confused men staring after her.