•••

“Come on!” Xander shouted from the kitchen. “We’re gonna be late!”

Wesley smirked. “I seriously doubt we can be late to something that is open all day, Xander.”

The Raphe grinned. “But I want to get there as soon as it opens. Cordy!” He yelled. “You look perfect, great, and generally wonderful! Get out here!”

Five minutes later, Cordelia exited her and Gunn’s bedroom. “Xander, when was the last time you successfully rushed me?”

Xander thought for a moment. “Er…”

“Exactly. Now, if you’re still serious about this little torture-excursion, let’s go,” She replied. Fred, Gunn and Oz joined them from the computer room and the six investigators left, with Xander calling out one last farewell to Wil and Angel.

“See ya later, guys. We’ll pick up a t-shirt!”

•••

“They’re gone?” Angel murmured from under the covers.

Wil stared at the door. “I think so. I heard the front door lock.”

The dark vampire sighed unnecessarily. “How did Xander convince them to go to the Children’s Museum?”

Wil shrugged. “I’d go with extortion.”

“Pessimist. Maybe they actually wanted to go,” Angel commented.

“Fred? Of course, which means Wes would tag along. Oz would go just because Xander wanted to. Gunn and Cordelia? Explain that one,” Wil remarked. “Hells, you and I are more likely to want to go than they are.”

Angel shook his head. “I do wish we could go, but it’s only open in the daytime. Too many windows. And I think that maybe Cordelia was the most excited about the trip.”

Wil looked skeptical. “What on earth gave you that idea?”

Angel sat up, pushing the covers back. “You haven’t been her as much as I have lately, Wil. She’s…”

“She’s what?” Wil pressed.

The brunette struggled to find a good way to word it. “She’s a healthy, female werewolf with a mate. What do you think?”

Wil’s eyes widened comically. “You… you think Cordelia is getting maternal?” He squeaked. He couldn’t picture her as a moth—actually, now that he thought about it, he could definitely see it. “How did I miss that? Yes, I’ve been busy, but not that busy.”

“Yes, but you haven’t been the one going out with her to the grocery. She stares at babies,” Angel murmured. “Fred too, but not as much.”

Wil slumped down on the bed. “Gods, that makes me feel horrible. And old.”

Angel looked over at Wil curiously. “Why?”

“Why horrible, or why old?”

“Both,” Angel replied.

Wil fiddled with the sheets. “Horrible because we’re in no position to accommodate children, and I can’t help but…”

Angel growled. “Wil, we’ve discussed this before. This is not your fault. None of it is.” The blonde was getting better, but he still went through periods of depression and angst over their difficult lives.

“Maybe,” Wil hedged. “Regardless of blame, it still makes me feel bad.”

“I know,” Angel agreed. He’d like nothing more than to see Cordelia with a family, but now was the worst possible time for it. “And what about the other?”

“Other?” Wil murmured. “Oh, the old?” He fidgeted some more. “I’m older than all of them, and I don’t have any children—never have, of any kind.”

Angel heard what Wil didn’t say—that he would have loved to have had children of his own. Unfortunately he’d been turned before he’d ever married and had human children, and hadn’t turned any childer before getting chipped and ensouled. Now Wil wouldn’t turn anyone, which pretty much ruled out having offspring, even of the demonic sort. “I’m sorry for that,” Angel said after a few minutes.

“What is it like?” Wil asked softly.

“Having children?” Angel asked. “They’re the most glorious suffering in the world.” That was his conclusion, after having sired several childer and living through Connor’s birth and death. “And I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.”

“Oh,” Wil whispered. He didn’t press the issue further. “We should get some sleep.”

Angel nodded. “You’re right. I’ll go turn off the lights Xander left on.” The dark vampire rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of sleep pants before heading upstairs. As he was walking across the room, something brushed against his hair. He stopped when he felt the sensation. There was nothing in the unfinished basement ceiling low enough to hit him in the head.

When Angel looked up, he found the source of his confusion. One of the insulated, soft sided air conditioning shafts was drooping down into the room. He studied it curiously, wondering why it had fallen down from the ceiling proper. He and Wil had anchored them up when they’d first moved down into the basement, so he hadn’t given them much thought after that. “Wil?”

“Yeah?” Wil answered groggily from the bed.

“Did you mess with these things?” Angel said pointing to the metallic tubing.

“What things?” Wil inquired, peering over the bedclothes. “No, I haven’t touched them,” He replied when he saw what Angel was pointing to. “Why is it down like that?”

“I don’t know,” Angel said. He reached up to poke the thing out of the way, only to find considerably more resistance than he’d expected. The tube felt heavy and…swollen? “Wil, could you come look at this?”

Wil grumbled and got out of bed. “What now?” He strode over to where Angel was and reached for the tube. “Bloody hell, what is that?” He squeezed the tube experimentally. “Angel, it’s full of water.”

“Water?” Angel murmured. “How the hell did it get full of water?”

Wil followed the tube from where it split from the main shaft to where it disappeared into the ceiling. “This one goes to the bathroom.”

Angel groaned. “Please tell me the bathroom’s not flooded.”

“The bathroom’s not flooded,” Wil said. “The air conditioning shaft is flooded.” He blonde looked around the basement. He spotted their laundry hamper and went to retrieve it, grabbing a knife on the way back. When Angel gave him a speculative glance, Wil explained. “We have to drain out the water, or the thing’s going to fall apart. The insulation in it isn’t made for holding water.”

Wil positioned the plastic bucket under the tube and used the knife to split the material. A heavy stream of straw-colored liquid poured out, splashing down into the hamper and dowsing both Wil and Angel in the process. “Angel,” Wil began, “Would you go upstairs and fetch the garbage can?”

“Why?” Angel asked, staring up at the ceiling.

“Because this hamper is almost full and if you don’t, the basement is going to flood.”

Angel immediately ran for the stairs. He was back with the kitchen garbage can, sans garbage, in seconds. He held the can under the flow of water while Wil moved the now-full hamper out of the way. “We’re gonna need another container,” He muttered, noting that the water flow hadn’t slowed.

“Ok,” Angel said, turning towards the stairs once again.

“And maybe you should turn the water off to the bathroom,” Wil suggested. “It might help.”

Angel nodded and went upstairs. First, he entered the bathroom. Sure enough, the floor was covered in an inch or so of water—not really that bad. Unfortunately the reason why there wasn’t more water on the floor was because it was all pouring through the floor-mounted air vents. A cursory glance showed Angel that the water was pouring out of a hole in the wall, right between the toilet and the shower. There was no way to shut off the water from here. He left the bathroom and fetched a couple of five-gallon buckets from the pantry before returning to the basement. When he got there he found Wil catching water in their rather small trash basket, looking quite worried.

“Hand me the buckets,” Wil ordered. “Didn’t you shut off the water?”

“Can’t. A pipe broke in the wall. I’ll have to go outside,” Angel muttered.

“Daylight,” Wil warned. Angel grimaced and pulled on a shirt and some shoes. “Take Xander’s raincoat.”

Angel went back upstairs again, this time fetching Xander’s lemon yellow rubber raincoat from the hall closet. It was better than a blanket, covering everything from head to toe in thick yellow material. The dark vampire also picked up a pair of gloves before going out the kitchen door. Once outside he didn’t waste any time in finding the correct valve and shutting off the water.

By the time Angel returned to the basement, Wil had started hauling water upstairs, dumping it into the kitchen sink. The flow of water through the air conditioning shaft had slowed to a trickle, so Angel helped Wil dispose of the waste water. It didn’t take very long, between the two of them.

“I suppose we should call a plumber,” Wil remarked as he and Angel studied the damaged wall and pipes in the bathroom. “We can’t fix this.”

“I’ll call the landlord first. We didn’t cause this break,” Angel replied. He sighed tiredly. So much for spending a quiet day alone in the house with Wil.

Will mopped up the bathroom while Angel called the landlord. He could tell from the tone of Angel’s voice that the discussion wasn’t going very well. The look on Angel’s face when he stormed into the bathroom confirmed it. “I take it he was not amenable to paying for the repairs?”

“No,” Angel grated. “Actually, he threatened to evict us for property damage. Said that he’d forgive us, if we fixed it ourselves and didn’t mention it again.”

Wil swore. “And how are we supposed to do that? I don’t recall any of us putting ‘plumber’ down as a skill we’d picked up through the years.”

“Me either,” Angel muttered. “But there isn’t much we can do about it now.” As long as the sun was up, they were very limited in terms of mobility. Besides, the others had both cars.

“We should get some rest,” Wil said. “There’s no reason to ruin the others’ day over this. We’ll tell them when they get back.”

Angel nodded and let Wil lead him back to the basement. Their room smelled damp and held the odor of wet insulation, but it wasn’t so bad they couldn’t stand it. Wil started a fan to circulate the air and climbed into bed with Angel. The dark vampire pulled Wil close, wrapping around the blonde like a second skin. The last thing he heard was Wil cursing the fickle gods of water pipes and promising retribution.

•••

“We have so got to do that again!” Xander said as he bounced out of the car, pulling Oz along with him. Cordelia smiled indulgently at the hyper young man. The six friends had spent the entire day at the Children’s museum, letting Xander drag them from exhibit to exhibit. Actually, they had all had a great time, even Cordelia. She didn’t say anything, of course, but it had been fun.

“I suppose we could,” Wesley replied sedately as he got out of the other car. “Although not right away.” He’d liked the place well enough, but having all those children crowded around him made the faun a bit uncomfortable, particularly when some of them took an interest in his hat. He really didn’t want to have to explain his horns to a bunch of screaming midgets.

“I just wish Angel and Wil could go,” Xander commented sadly. “They’d love it, I’m sure.”

Oz smirked and held out a brochure. Gunn took it before Xander could. “What’s this?” He asked, reading the front. “A benefit concert?”

“It’s at night,” Oz said quietly. “Well after dark.”

“And no one would think twice about a bunch of adults playing around the exhibits,” Wesley said brightly. He quite liked that possibility.

“When is it?” Fred asked.

“Not for a few months,” Gunn replied. “Come on, we should get inside.”

The others nodded and followed Gunn into the house. None of them were fond of being out in their neighborhood in the evening. When they got inside, they found Angel studying the phone book while heating up blood. “Oh, good. You’re back,” He muttered, glancing up from the yellow pages.

“And you seem so happy to see us,” Cordelia commented.

“Was the museum nice?” Angel asked as he set the phone book aside and retrieve his and Wil’s dinner.

“It was the best! And we’ve got great news for you and Wil,” Xander babbled excitedly.

“Maybe it will offset the bad news we’ve got for you,” Angel retorted.

“Bad news?” Fred asked. “As in ‘someone’s trying to kill you’?”

Angel shook his head. “No, more of the ‘a water pipe broke in the bathroom wall and almost flooded the basement, and the landlord won’t pay to fix it, so we have to do it ourselves,’ bad news.”

“Oh, shit,” Xander muttered.

“Actually, no,” Angel said. “We had to cut the water off to the entire house.”

“What?” Gunn squeaked. “You mean there’s no water at all?”

“Not a drop,” Angel confirmed. “Wil’s online now, trying to figure out the mechanics of fixing this mess.”

Xander nodded and headed for the bathroom, Fred following behind. “It shouldn’t be too bad, really. Just a matter of replacing the damaged pipes, then plastering over the hole in the wall.” Angel gaped for a moment before smacking his head. Why hadn’t he remembered Xander’s experience in construction? It figured that the young man would remember a thing or two about this kind of stuff. Fred, too, knew something about plumbing, from her college prank days.

The dark vampire ignored Cordelia’s scathing comments about just about everything and followed Xander into the bathroom. “So?”

Xander peered into the sodden wall. “Eargh. This is a mess—I think the pipes are the original ones. They’ve got to be a hundred years old.”

“Um…” Angel hummed worriedly. “That’s bad.”

“Yup,” Xander confirmed. “And the wall’s got lots of water damage. Lemme guess, the landlord blamed us?”

Angel nodded. “Yup. Threatened to evict us.”

“We don’t have the time or money to find a new place, do we?”

“We can’t afford to break the lease,” Angel confirmed. “So it’s fix it, or live without water.”

Xander frowned. “We can fix it, it just won’t be as easy as I’d first thought.” He studied the mess for a few more minutes before leaving to find Wil. The blonde could help him track down the best suppliers in town for what they’d need.

Cordelia eventually wound down and went to find those who were in charge of fixing this mess. “So, when’s it gonna be fixed?” She demanded, staring down at Xander.

“Tomorrow night, if we’re lucky. If we’re not lucky, it could take a week,” Xander replied. Cordelia almost fainted.

“A week without water? Without baths?” She screeched.

Xander shook his head. “Nah. We can try to cap off the pipes in the basement tonight. That way the other bathroom will still work. But it will take a few days to fix this problem.” Cordelia nodded, somewhat appeased. Sharing only one bathroom between the eight of them wouldn’t be fun, but it was better than no bathroom at all.

Xander left with Fred a few minutes after that to procure a few necessities, namely a spanner or two and some plumbing supplies. When they got back the Raphe went down into the basement and located the pipes running to the bathroom. They didn’t have shutoff valves on them, so he disconnected them and capped them off. Once he was done, Angel went back outside and turned the water back on so that at least some of their amenities returned.

Fred took advantage of the renewed water by cooking a very late dinner for everyone. They lounged around the table, consuming some sort of stir fry and grumbling about household maintenance.

“So, Angel,” Cordelia began, “Where in the saving-the-world-from-insurmountable-evil handbook does it explain how to repair broken water pipes?”

Angel frowned. “I think that’s the chapter immediately following the one on ‘how to alter sprinkler systems to distribute holy water into a vampire-infested dance club.”

“Ah, silly me. I knew I should’ve read the whole book and not just the Cliff’s Notes,” She replied.

“A lesson I would have thought you’d learned in high school,” Wesley murmured. “Particularly after your less than stellar performance in English class.”

Cordelia scowled. “Hey, no exhuming of old embarrassments, Mr. Lusts-after-students!”

“Children,” Wil growled warningly. He was really not in the mood for another Cordelia-enhanced catfight.

Xander grinned. “You know, you sound just like a parent when you do that.”