As much as I'm enjoying this forced death-march down memory lane -- Wesley, "Birthday"
What you did in there. . .it was extremely stupid.
The words hung between them for a moment, until finally Cordelia said, “You’re welcome.”
“For what?” he asked.
“I must have heard you wrong, so you’re welcome. Considering that I did you a big fat favor, I know that what you must have just said was some form of ‘thank you.’ It only just sounded like you were calling me stupid, which wouldn’t make any sense. Because if I’m stupid, and I just did something you haven’t managed to do in two years. . . ”
Wesley slapped his hand against the chair in agitation. “Exactly what is it that you think you’ve done here, Cordelia?”
“I made a breakthrough in there, with Angel. Gunn said so.”
“In case you didn’t notice, Gunn was trying to get in your pants. And he’s my closest friend, but, I’m sorry. He’s hardly the expert on Angel.”
“Oh, and you are?”
“Yes, as a point of bloody fact!” he snapped. “Angel has become my life’s work. And you think you can just swoop in here, do your little bit of good, and flutter away. The way you make a public service announcement, or host a fundraiser, and you think you’ve cured cancer. For all I know, you might have made the situation worse.”
“How?” she demanded.
“I don’t know! But I have to go in there tomorrow – and the day after, and the day after – and I have to find out. You’ll have moved on to your other good deeds by then. No need to trouble yourself.”
Cordelia slammed down the beer and started to stand up. Then she thought better of it, smiled, and leaned back onto the sofa. “You’re just jealous,” she said.
“Jealous?” he repeated, disbelieving.
“You’re jealous that you didn’t think of it.”
“Jealous,” he mused, “that I didn’t think of. . .kissing him?” His tense body relaxed, and as he slumped back into the chair, Cordelia realized that he was laughing. “No, Cordy,” he said after a moment. “I think I can safely say that I do not wish I had thought of that. After all," he said, taking a swig of his beer. "I would just have drooled all over his chin, and three years from now, he’d still be talking about it.”
“Is that why you’re so bent out of shape?” she demanded. “Me telling Gunn you were a bad kisser?”
“No,” he said, his expression suddenly grim again. “What I’m sore about, is that I can imagine the headlines. Starlet murdered by vampire cult; three held for questioning. Angel would disintegrate during the daytime perp walk. Me, they might just deport. Your new best friend Gunn would probably get the gas chamber.”
Cordy stared at him for a moment, then finally choked out, “Let? Did you just call me a star- LET?”
“Oh, I forgot,” he said, “You’re TV’s Cordy.”
“That’s right, buddy.”
“Yes, well. . .” A smile teased at his lips.
“What?”
“It’s not exactly Prime Suspect, is it?”
“Prime what?”
“Exactly,” he smirked.
“Gunn told me you tape it.”
Wesley’s dropped his head into his hands. It took Cordelia a moment to realize that he was actually trying to form words and couldn’t. Finally, he managed, “I may have overestimated the ‘not wanting him to go to the gas chamber’ part of our friendship.” Then he looked up slowly and said, “When did Gunn have a chance to tell you that?” He saw her smile, then lowered his face again and said, “Fuck.”
“Before I got Cordy? I read for a lot of cop shows.” She laughed with genuine delight. “I just tricked you into a confession, buddy.”
“Brilliant.” Wiping his brow, he finally looked up, and sounded almost plaintive. “What did you think? You’re the only TV star I ever met, much less snogged.”
“I don’t know what kind of enchanted revisionist memory spell you’re dealing with, but that never happened. Unless,” she stopped as that special knot of only-in-Sunnydale dread crept into her stomach, “I’m the one who’s had my memory wiped.”
Wesley pointed at his mouth. “Snog means, lips. Shameful as it might have been, even you owned up to that.”
“Oh,” she said, then after a moment’s pause, she said, feeling ridiculously shy. “Do you like it?”
His brow furrowed. “Snogging? I think. . .”
“The show,” she said. “Do you like the show?”
“I. . .I. . .” he stammered for a moment. Then frowned. “Does it matter?”
“It’s what I do,” she said softly. “It’s my life, and I guess it is dumb, but. . . I mean, you’re smart, and we were always – kind of friends. I’d hate for you to think what I do is no good at all.”
“No, I don’t think. . . obviously, it’s not the Royal Shakespeare Company, but you are, well. . .there are times when it’s very funny. Like well, last week, when your roommate’s cousin was visiting from Greece . . . and they found you kissing him and. . .”
“Wesley,” she stood and walked toward his chair, “Do you know why I kissed him?”
“I don’t remember for sure. Were you trying to make the roommate jealous?”
“Angel. The reason I kissed Angel, today.” He shook his head, keeping his eyes fixed on her. “I mean, I don’t exactly know myself.” She turned and walked back toward the kitchen, and he rose to follow her. “I’m not exactly sure of anything that’s happened today. It’s like I’m walking around in a trance.” Looking up hopefully, she said, “Weren’t we going to check the books on that?”
“I might be able to.”
“Kissing Angel, though, getting close to him, that was a choice. I wasn’t exactly sure why I made it, but I’m starting to understand.” She stopped, so that he almost bumped into her. “It was because you were there. Telling me not to.”
“Oh wonderful,” he said. “I see my authority is as effective as ever. But I’m quite sure that I never told you not to kiss him. Just like I never told you not to saw off your left foot and take it down to the Santa Monica Pier to fish for sea turtles. Because it simply never occurred to me that you would consider such a thing.”
“And just like that, Sarcastic Man is back.” Getting up in Wesley’s face, which was not too hard in the four inch heels, she said, “I was afraid we’d lost him, what with you being almost sweet for five whole seconds there.”
“Is it possible Sarcastic Man should die while he hath such meet food to feed him as Cordelia?”*
That was some kind of quotation, she thought, something she had to learn once for an audition. There was a play with a “Cordelia” in it, though she was pretty sure it wasn’t that one. But she wouldn’t let him distract her with all that British stuff. “Don’t get too close,” she said.
“All right,” he backed away, shaking his head. “Whatever.”
“No, not you,” she said, and Wesley made up some of the distance between them. “That’s what you said to me. You kept telling me not to get too close to him.”
“Which, when dealing with delusional vampires, is generally sound advice.”
“But not always. Look at today. You may not want to admit it, but I helped. And if you’d had your way, I wouldn’t have gotten the chance.” She paused. “I was just thinking about our little dinnerdate in Sunnydale. Do you remember?”
“I remember you practically kidnapping me to help with your English homework at a nice restaurant. And the Council refusing to let me expense it, because ‘we don’t run a dating service, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce.’” To her glare he said, almost meekly. “Yes, of course I remember. It was quite pleasant.”
“The first thing we talked about, was how we were both only children. And you told me this story about the house where you grew up. The Border Groves, or whatever it was called. You described this English country home to me, in obscene detail. And I, shallow spoiled teenage princess that I was, I kept trying to get off on the House Beautiful porn. But what I kept coming back to was this vision of you, growing up in this enormous, empty house, full of beautiful things. And scared to death to touch any of them, because you just might break something. That’s still you, Wesley.”
“So you’ve got me, then? You have this profound insight into my psychology, based on what? A fantasy you concocted, three years ago, around a story I told when I was trying to impress a girl? It’s all about that, and not, I don’t know, getting my arm chewed off by a demon?”
“No,” she said. “That came after. You were scared to touch anything a long time before that happened.”
“And my left shoulder socket would like to suggest that I wasn’t wrong.” He narrowed his eyes. “You claim to know so much about me, Cordelia. Do you think I haven’t picked up any ideas about you? Let’s flash for a moment from my cold austere emotionally-scarring English boyhood – entirely hypothetical of course – to the home of the cutest little rich girl in Sunnydale. A home full of sunshine, blessed by warm ocean breezes, and the nursery, packed from floor to ceiling with soft, cuddly things that Daddy bought just for you.”
“You do remember Sunnydale, don’t you? With all the impaling and the things trying to eat me?”
“I’m not talking about Sunnydale. I’m talking about the four walls of the Chase home. The place where you could do no wrong, and you didn’t care what you broke, because everybody would pat your head, and tell you it was all right, and buy you fifteen more. You had the prettiest pony, and the darlingest dollhouses, and you probably had a yappy little dog that followed you everywhere and worshipped the ground you walked on. And when it died, your parents wisked away the evidence of mortality and bought you another exactly like it. So no wonder, when you went out in the world, you thought it revolved around you and you never believed, never really believed, that anything out there could hurt you.”
“I got impaled!”
“And missed a week of school. Break my heart.”
“Let me get this straight. My parents actually liked me, and I never had any limbs devoured by ravenous beasts. So, I had it too easy, and that’s what you hate about me.”
“Hate?” He repeated. “You think I hate -- No, it’s exactly the opposite. It’s what I . . .” He was so close, his breath almost in her face, and then he turned abruptly, and moved away from her. “It’s one of your more endearing qualities. And it will continue to be endearing, right up until the moment that it gets you killed.”
“That’s how everything ends for you, isn’t it?” Imitating his accent, she said, “Until it gets you killed.”
“Tends to be how it ends for everybody. Us with the bad luck to be human.”
“Fine,” she said. “We’re gonna die. We’re all gonna die someday. You can’t go through life refusing to touch anything because this might be the time you get burned.”
“Really?” He tilted his head and looked at her curiously.
Cordelia had sort of lost track of exactly what it was they were talking about. The discussion was becoming a little abstract, but she felt like she was making a point, and Wesley seemed to be interested in it. “Absolutely,” she said. “You have to try.”
“All right then. Here’s something I should have tried a long time ago.” He placed a hand on her shoulder, and moved quickly to pin her against the wall with his body. His fingers rose to her chin and tilted her mouth upward, and drew her into a long, deep kiss. Oh damn, she thought. I guess I should have seen that coming.
TBC
*Wesley's "Sarcastic Man" reference alludes to Beatrice's thoughts on "Lady Disdain" in Much Ado about Nothing. If Cordy had brushed up on her Shakespeare, she might have been a little quicker to pick up on what was on Wesley's mind. You don't quote Much Ado when you're arguing with someone you hate. You just don't.