Title: Through Invisible Eyes
Author: Angelalias
Posted: 03-26-2002
Rating: G
Email: Andrea denis.hebert5@simpatico.ca
Spoilers: None that I can think of
Genre: As non-dramatic as I’ll ever get LOL You guys know me…not good with the fluffy.
Summary: The simplest of moments can mean so much more through invisible eyes.
Note: in this fic, Connor has come and gone I guess....and never came back. And life went on...
Sometimes, I can just stand here and look at them for hours. I can stay like this, in this position, admiring the now daily scene.
It’s not like I’m intruding; the door is already slightly opened. It’s never closed. Not anymore.
It’s funny the small things that nobody else will ever see. The soft words nobody else will ever hear. Yet, here I stand, a quiet witness to such simplicity.
I can see her, Cordelia, sneaking into bed and pulling the comforter around herself. She’s wearing those very old worn-out boxers and that white tank top she loves so much she can’t bring herself to throw out. She once said if her mother saw her in such comfortable clothes, she’d have her committed. I repress the urge to laugh to myself. Not that they would hear. Not in moments like these. In these moments, it’s like the world around them has disappeared.
I shift my eyes and look at him, lying down beside her, with an arm wrapped around her waist with such tenderness. I had never imagined Angel as the pyjamas vampire kind. But ever since nights like these have begun to occur, I’ve seen him in all kinds of sweat pants and t-shirts.
Cordelia must have shopped for him. They are light colors.
Slowly, I lean against the wall and sit down on the floor, looking over at the two bodies entwined in bed.
At one point, I was tempted to compare them to an old married couple: the complete love without the passion, the deep and intense love affair without the pressure of sex. But I have since refrained from that comparison. The passion is there. It’s in all the little things they do or say. From every whisper and every caress comes a passion that most never find in this life…or unlife.
No one will ever see the things I see. No one will ever get to notice the little things I have noticed in the past month.
The way she curls into him at night without any inhibitions, or how he wraps his arm around her, as if instinctively, every time she stirs. The way his face becomes so soft one could mistake him with a child when he is sleeping beside her. How she giggles every time his cold hand rests on her stomach, or when he kisses that special spot behind her right shoulder. The way they just hold one another, like this, now, every night, and feel so complete with what they have that not a thought is wasted on what they don’t.
I watch their ritual every night with a lingering smile on my lips, for no one will ever get the chance to see such beauty in such simplicity.
No one will ever hear the sweet sleep-induced nothings they whisper to one another moments before falling asleep. Like now.
I rest my head on the wall behind me and listen.
“I don’t.” Angel mumbles, his face buried in that spot between her neck and shoulder.
“You do.” She mumbles back, half asleep.
“Cordy…”
“I can hear you.”
Her voice is soft, hiding the glimpse of a smile that is too tired to show itself.
“I don’t breathe.” He speaks, his eyes closed as he feels her fingers wrap around his hand and hold it around her body.
“Whatever…if that’s what you think…” she yawns as the words leave her mouth.
“It’s not possible, Cordy.”
His voice is muffled into her hair and she turns her head around just enough so she can speak more clearly.
“Maybe if you don’t sleep on your back.”
“I don’t sleep on my back.”
“I’m just saying…” she yawns again.
Angel wraps his arm more tightly around her and cuddles up to her, placing tiny soft kisses on her shoulder and cheek. I can hear her let out a small chuckle as he brings his face close to her ear.
“I don’t sleep on my back, I sleep like this.” He smiles with his eyes closed, half-asleep himself.
I can see that lovely and genuine smile that only he can bring out of her, even when she’s minutes away from drifting into peaceful sleep. She curls up into him and takes a deep breath before mumbling away some more.
“You turn in your sleep…you hog the sheets…” she mumbles with a glint of amusement in her voice.
“I do not.”
“You do…and probably on purpose since it’s not like you need the body heat or anything…” she sighs, looking perfectly comfortable lying like that in his cool arms.
“I’m a vampire.” He sighs back, contentment filling his voice.
“The cuddly kind.” Cordy smiles in her sleepy state. “Like my own teddy bear…Polar teddy bear.”
“Polar?”
“Have to be ‘cause body heat does not equal you mister…”
She feels him chuckle against her shoulder and feels his breath on her skin. I think I saw her smile again.
“You just breathed.”
“So?” Angel yawns, letting his fingers intertwine with hers.
“You said you didn’t breathe.”
“I don’t.” he whispers as they lay like that, holding each other in the darkened room. “Usually.”
“Maybe it’s something you eat.”
“I don’t eat.”
“I noticed the missing cookies mister.” Cordy teases him, even in her sleepiness.
“Maybe you just sleep walk. Humans do that.” Angel mumbles back.
There is a long pause between the two and just when I think the two have slipped into the lands of hopes and dreams, where they can do more than just cuddle, I hear his raspy, sleepy voice once more.
“You can just hit me if I do it again.” He whispers with a smile. “I mean, if it’s disturbing you…or Dennis.”
“Okay.” She replies, sounding farther and farther away from the real world.
“Not that you’ll have to…since you dreamed it all up…”
“I didn’t.”
“Cordy, I don’t…” Angel mumbles before placing another kiss on her shoulder.
“You so do snore Angel.” She smiles, amused, their eyes still closed.
Angel sighs and a tiny, barely audible chuckle escapes her throat.
“It’s cute.” She admits after a moment. “Annoying and loud, and you could wake the whole neighbourhood, not to mention Dennis, but it’s cute…” she whispers with a contended sigh. “My own snoring Polar bear with fangs…” she mumbles, turning her head slightly enough so that she could feel his lips on hers, softly, before the two of them drift off into slumber.
It’s moments like these that no one will ever witness but I. The way they pick the silliest subject and turn it into the sweetest thing you’ve ever heard. Most of the time, their mumblings don’t even make sense…but most of the time it’s not the mumbling that matters.
It’s the pauses between the words. The small kisses between the pauses. The loving touches between the kisses.
I wrap my arms around my legs as I set on the floor and smile to myself. A smile no one will ever notice. An invisible smile.
Sometimes I can see it in the way they touch, or look at one another, how tempting desire can be. How tempting love can be. But they know that what matters is motionless. What matters is what I see and nobody else ever will. Passion is a tricky thing, but at its purest, I have come to learn in the last month just how beautiful it can be. Simple, sometimes silly, but beautiful.
No, they don’t close the door anymore. There’s nothing to hide.
I see her brush her teeth before bed while he makes sure the curtains are drawn. Some nights they’re here, some nights they’re at the hotel. I don’t invade their privacy. I know when to butt out. But sometimes, like tonight, it’s hard not to just sit here and watch them. It’s hard not to envy what they have come to have and accept as enough…for now.
Someday, they’ll get more. The day his soul is anchored, I know the door will be closed again. And rightly so. They’ll have deserved it.
I get up and quietly close the door behind me.
Years from now, I’ll remember this night, like so many others. A night where mumblings about polar bears and snoring vampires seemed like the most perfect kind of love…and made a friendly apartment ghost smile in the dark.
A night where the beauty of love – the beauty of simplicity – was seen through invisible eyes.
End.