•••

A single hazy blue eye opened in response to the strident ringing of Angel's cell phone. Wil promised himself, not for the first time, that he was going to change the ring to anything besides 'The William Tell Overture.' Angel had absolutely no taste. Wil's open eye saw Angel's hand creep out from under the bedcovers toward the phone.

"Don't you dare answer that," Wil growled.

"It's probably important," Angel said groggily, reaching for the phone. Wil shot his hand out and grabbed it before Angel could.

"Remember what happened the last time you answered the phone? We won a no-expenses paid trip down painful memories lane," Wil spat, covering the phone up so that the ring was muffled. Shouldn't the phone have stopped ringing by now? After a moment, he realized that it was stopping—but that whoever was calling was just hitting redial very quickly.

Angel sat up and reached for the phone. "As I recall, you told me to answer that phone call. Now give me the phone."

Wil sat up as well, but didn't hand over the offending item. Instead, he answered it himself. "Hello. No, His Dark Broodiness is not available. He is currently with his therapist. May I take a message?" Angel winced as he heard shouted expletives coming through the phone. "Oh, Gunn. How's Sunnydale?" Wil asked lightly, holding the earpiece of the phone away from his head.

Angel got out of bed and pulled on some clothes. He gestured to Wil, who waved him off. Wil had been the one to decide to send Gunn and Fred to Sunnydale, so he should be the one to deal with the aftermath. It didn't matter to Angel that he would have done the same thing. If you take authority upon yourself, you get the responsibilities too.

Wil turned his attention to the phone call once Angel was gone. "Gunn, I know you aren't happy about this. But serious, how is Sunnydale?"

"How's Sunnydale? Let's just say 'Hellmouth' is a compliment for this place. Tell me again how you and Angel stood it here for so long? Masochism?" Gunn spat over the phone.

Wil winced at the loud voice, holding the phone several inches from his sensitive ear. "It grows on you."

"Like jock itch?" Gunn replied. "And you're going to pay big time for not telling us about Slayerbitch."

Wil grimaced. It sounded like Buffy had made quite a first impression. "She's going through a lot right now—"

"Yeah, and she's about to go through a lot more, like a plate glass window. You know what she said when we got here? She told us that 'she didn't need a couple of Angel's second-rate lackeys hanging around and getting in her way.' Then she told me and Fred to go help Dawn clean the living room up," Gunn shouted. "I did not leave Delia in L.A. and drive my ass up here to play domestic for some stuck up, self-absorbed cheerleader!"

"Why would you? You can do that here," Wil muttered away from the phone.

"What did you say? Never mind. Look, the little girl doesn't want our help, even though she needs it. The redhead still won't do much but cry and Rupert's already making noises about leaving. What is it you want us to do here?" Gunn asked.

Wil sighed. "Help Buffy. Train Dawn, especially Fred. Make sure Willow's on the road to recovery."

The outburst from Gunn was so loud that Wil set the phone down on the bed. After a moment, he realized that the man wasn't going to shut up any time soon, so he dragged himself out of bed and went to the bathroom. He could still hear the phone when he turned the water on, so Wil climbed into the shower. He shivered a little when he saw the shower massager, but tried to ignore it in favor of keeping up with Gunn's phone conversation, one-sided as it was.

Once he was bathed, Wil went back into the bedroom to pick out something to wear. He'd promised to take Cordelia and Wesley out tonight, to apologize for sending their partners away. At least he had a few things in the closet here, so he didn't have to leave to go to his own place. He was about halfway dressed, and Gunn was partway through his second diatribe on Buffy's pretentiousness, when Angel returned bearing two large, steaming mugs. Wil took one gratefully, sipping at what turned out to be a nice blend of fresh cow, human and sheep's blood. "Very good," He said as a compliment.

Angel nodded. "Gunn still?" He mouthed. Wil rolled his eyes. Angel started listening in on the conversation while Wil peered through the closet. He pulled out a charcoal gray shirt, but Angel shook his head. "Too dark."

Wil faked shock. "Angel says 'too dark?'" He mouthed. He hung the shirt up and pulled out a camel sweater. "Better?" Angel nodded, so Wil set the sweater aside and chose a cream turtleneck to wear under it. It was nice being a vampire; heat didn't bother him so he could wear layers even in the summer.

While Wil finished dressing, Angel retrieved a pair of the blonde's dress shoes and began to polish them, all the while listening to Gunn go off about Buffy. Meanwhile, Wil fixed his hair and finished off his blood. Once he'd brushed his teeth and gargled, the blonde put on his freshly polished shoes and picked up the phone.

"Why don't you invite her to go to the Bronze? It should relax her; get her mind off Willow and slaying for a little while. She's much nicer when she doesn't feel like the world is out to get her," Wil said. "Fred might want to take Dawn to a movie. There's a new comic-book flick out that she should love, and teenage girls are good at bonding over popcorn. I'd love to chat, but I have an appointment that is in my best interests not to miss." Wil ended the phone call and tossed the phone back on Angel's night stand.

"Well?" Angel asked as he followed Wil down the stairs. Cordelia and Wesley were waiting in the lobby, looking as well made-up as Wil was.

"They're getting along famously," Wil said as he escorted the seer out the door.

•••

"What did Wil say?" Fred asked when Gunn hung up the phone. She was sitting across from him on the second of two beds that dominated the seedy hotel room they'd acquired in Sunnydale. Finding out that Angel's old place had neither electricity nor water had made the ruined mansion unusable, so they were relegated to the Hellmouth's finest roach motel.

Gunn flopped back on the bed, staring at the stained ceiling. "Go clubbing with the Slayer and take her sister to a movie."

"What?!?" Fred yelped. It was one of the few times Gunn could remember hearing her yell. "How is that supposed to solve anything?"

Gunn shrugged. "I have no idea, Fred. There aren't enough clubs on the west coast to mellow out the Slayer and her sister doesn't need any more candy. The kid's hyper enough as it is."

"That vampire is going to pay when we get back," Fred vowed. She didn't mind coming up here to help out, but she wasn't going to tolerate being treated like garbage. Buffy had no right to question their abilities—look at the messes the oh-so-important Slayer kept getting herself into!

"Wanna grab a bite before hitting the cemeteries?" Gunn asked as he got up off the bed.

"Sure, why not?"

•••

Angel paced back and forth in his apartment, bored out of his mind. Wil was off gallivanting with Cordy and Wes, to make up not only for sending Gunn and Fred off, but for being so loud the night before that the other investigators had felt it necessary to get hotel rooms elsewhere. Angel was still wincing at the cost of those rooms. Cordelia would pick the nicest place she could find.

Xander and Oz were also gone, to wherever it was they went to in Oz's van every couple of days. Angel knew it had something to do with sex, but he didn't know where they went. As long as they had a phone with them, he didn't care—and he was grateful they left. Yes, he and Wil could get noisy occasionally, as did the others. But Xander was a bit much.

So Angel was alone, there was nothing to do in terms of work since they'd hit a lull, and no one was around to play with him. Of course, he could always go downstairs to Caritas, where Lorne was sure to have something at least mildly interesting going on. Giving up on entertaining himself, Angel went back downstairs.

Sure enough, Caritas was packed with its usual, mostly demonic clientele. The green seer was playing the gracious host, wincing through atrocious renditions of the Pointer Sisters, and generally being a great guy. Angel ordered a whiskey and found a stool near the end of the bar.

It was more than an hour before Lorne worked his way back to the vampire. "Bored, hmm?"

Angel jerked up from where he'd been staring at his half-consumed drink. "Yeah, a little."

"Blondie leave you here by your lonesome?"

Angel snorted. "He promised Cordelia a bunch of stuff so that Gunn could go help Buffy."

Lorne laughed. "I'm sure it was a lot, then. You know, it's generally not done to convince people to help out your exes, especially when they don't like them."

"It's Buffy, Lorne," Angel said warningly. "She's the Slayer. Do you really want us moving up there when she gets herself killed?"

Lorne backed off immediately. "Nope, I'm liking you right here. By the way, don't think you're getting out of singing. I've been keeping track, and you're behind the others upstairs—by almost three songs. That's not a good example for the boss to set."

"Wesley's the boss," Angel whined.

Lorne rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right. You know what I mean, and you'll sing before I close in the morning."

Angel knew he'd have to sing, but he was going to put it off as long as he could. Right now there were just too many people in the room for him to get up there and humiliate himself with his voice…unless he drank a lot more whiskey than he'd had so far.

Hours later, the place was shutting down, the sun was beginning to rise, and Angel still hadn't sung. He'd been holding out to see if Wil came home, so that he could sneak out unnoticed. It wasn't to be, though, because Lorne gave him a glare and pointed at the stage. "Sing or else, lover boy."

Angel grimaced but went to the stage. The quicker he got this over with the quicker he could go warm up some blood and go to bed. Maybe Wil would show up before he was too deeply asleep to appreciate it. Lorne had already programmed in a song, so Angel just hit play. Of course it would be Manilow, since Lorne knew he actually knew the words to the man's work and wouldn't bungle them too badly.

"Her name is Lola, she was a showgirl…"4

•••

Wil crept up the stairs as quietly as he could, hoping not to wake Angel, wherever he was sleeping. What had begun as a simple dinner date with Cordelia and Wesley had turned into an extended evening of clubbing, barhopping and other sorts of revelry. By the time they'd finished, it was daylight and Cordelia had had to hold a blanket over Wil to get him into the hotel. Now they were trudging up to their rooms, exhausted and woozy. Well, Cordelia and Wes were woozy. Wil hadn't had anything to drink. The evening out had been fun, but he had missed Angel's company.

He figured that Angel had stayed in his room again as they had last night, so he headed for his own quarters. He didn't want to disturb the vampire's sleep at this time of day. So when he found Angel in his own bed, curled up under the covers, he was understandably surprised. He paused in the middle of toeing off his shoes and pulling off his sweater to look at the innocent-looking vampire sleeping there. When the world wasn't pressing down on him, Angel looked heartbreakingly young.

Wil shucked off the rest of his clothes and crawled into bed on his side, careful not to bump into Angel. The dark vampire probably wouldn't even wake up. That notion was disabused when Angel reached over and pulled Wil to him, turning so that they were wrapped around each other. Wil buried his head in Angel's shoulder and sighed. "Long night?" Angel asked.

"I'm getting too old for that kind of thing," Wil replied. Angel laughed.

"Nah. I missed you."

Wil rubbed his nose against Angel's collarbone. "Missed you too. Cordelia dances too fast."

Angel rubbed a hand down Wil's spine, resting on the small of his back. "Don't dance with her, then."

Wil snorted. "Have you ever tried turning Cordelia Chase down in a dance club?"

"Yes. It wasn't pretty," Angel replied. "I think I lost, too."

"Of course you lost. It's Cordelia," Wil said. "Sorry I woke you up."

"I wasn't asleep yet," Angel lied. He had been asleep, but he'd been waiting up for Wil before succumbing. "Besides, this is nice," He said, yawning.

Wil murmured his agreement. "Yeah."

4 'Copacabana', Barry Manilow