Caffeine Highs And The Shopping Impaired: Caffeine Highs And The Shopping Impaired
by Wravyn

Disclaimer: Same old, same old. Joss owns, I don't. The songs are from Madonna's 'Immaculate Collection' album


It had been a long day and she was tired. As if going after someone else’s freaky stalker boyfriend wasn’t bad enough, she had run around being attacked by it’s even freakier chopped-off body parts. And this was only her first month of working for Angel.

thought Cordy, stifling a yawn,

All Cordelia wanted to do was to make take a long, hot shower, – it would be her second that day – make herself a nice, hot cup of coffee, and curl up on her bed with a magazine. Fortunately Angel had insisted she stay at his place for the night -- he didn’t want her going back to her apartment alone this late – so she actually HAD a possibility of taking a hot shower and making coffee. Her apartment ...well ... her apartment sucked. Strictly ice-cold water – ice-cold brown water – and flickering electricity. Angel’s bathroom, while not as big as the one she used to have back in Sunnydale, was plenty large enough to suit her needs. And while Angel may not need to make some java too often, since his drinking needs were a little ... different ... from most folks’, but she had to hand him some credit. He sure could make some mean coffee. He had left some in a pot for her before he had left for wherever it was he had gone off to. All she had to do was pop in some of that stuff into his microwave and voila, instant caffeine. Her mouth watered just at the thought.

But first things first. That shower, for instance.

She padded into Angel’s room – succumbing to an impish curiosity and peeking a little here and there in the meanwhile (she had known he would be a boxers man – and no cheesy Power Rangers for him, either! Silk, ba-by!) – and grabbed a large black towel from behind the door. On her way out, she noticed a (black) bathrobe tossed casually over the back of a chair and grabbed that too.

Then she took her shower.


* * *
Tying the bathrobe’s belt securely around her slim waist, Cordy walked out of the steam-filled bathroom and into the guest room (definition – Angel’s bedroom, as he had kindly offered to take the couch) her host had so thoughtfully set up for her. Rubbing her hair vigorously with the towel in one hand, she picked up her purse with the other and walked over to the queen-sized bed in the center of the room and collapsed upon it, relishing in its delightful springiness after that rock-hard thing she’d been sleeping in for weeks.

God, she was tired. But there was no way she was going to bed with wet hair so she’d have to keep herself awake till it dried. That’s where Angel’s caffeine-high coffee came in.

Now where did she put that ... oh. She had to get it first.

She sighed the long-suffering sigh of one who had the weight of the world on their shoulders (or at least one who had been pampered all her life by a dozen servants), and got up reluctantly. Walked over to the kitchen and poured herself a mugful of the (ick) room-temperature concoction and popped it in the microwave for a quick nuking. Tapped her foot impatiently until the microwave signaled that her drink was ready. Grabbed the mug and walked back to the room with it, taking care not to spill its contents.



She plopped back onto the bed after setting the mug down at the nightstand. Reaching for her purse, she pulled out a back issue of Cosmo and settled down to read.

She scanned an article, then flipped the page. Then flipped it again. And again.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

After a moment, she tossed the mag aside with impatience. She didn’t buy frivolous little things like magazines at all these days. It simply wasn’t in her budget. And in the course of the two or so months she’d been in LA, she’d read that particular one over and over and over again. It was one of the few things she’d managed to salvage from her past life ...

[She dug through her purse again, taking a big swig of her coffee at the same time. Angel could sure make some good coffee! Damn good coffee!]

... besides her Discman.

Looking around suspiciously, as if she expected Angel or Doyle to jump out of the shadows at any moment, Cordelia popped in her ‘Madonna: The Immaculate Collection’ CD. She pushed play and leaned back against the headboard with a guilty little smile of pleasure.

She had a fetish with some of Madonna’s older stuff.

No one knew, no one was supposed to know, and no one ever would know. She double-checked the parameters just to make sure.

She was alone.

Cordelia permitted herself a crooked smile.

Taking a drink from the mug next to her to smooth her vocal cords, she launched into a heartfelt rendition of one of her favorite songs on the album: “Papa don’t preach, I’m in trouble deep,” she began to sing slightly off-key, drumming her fingers on the coverlet along with the beat. “Papa don’t preach, I’ve been losing sleep ... but I made up my mind, I’m keeping my baby ...”

She laughed at herself. Then cheerfully sang some more.

How Cordelia got her groove back.

By listening to an old Madonna CD?

But she sure was enjoying herself. She had gotten up off the bed now, and was prancing around Angel’s room, Discman in one hand.

“You’d give us our blessing right now ... cause we are in love ...” Her voice became dangerously loud: “Cause we are in love ... so please ... Papa don’t preach ...”

She mimed the actions of the song, pretending to be begging an imaginary figure in front of her for his permission to wed her skanky boyfriend. She kept giggling, but gamely acted the song through.

“I’m gonna keep my baby ... mmm ... oh ... Papa don’t preach!”

As the song ended, she shook her head in amusement and picked up the coffee mug on the nightstand to take another sip. Taking another cursory glance around the room – oh, wouldn’t Doyle have laughed long and hard had he seen her little number! – she decided to take a breather from her dancing and sat on the edge of the bed, still drinking her coffee. She hummed along to the music blasting from the tinny earphones she had stuffed on underneath the towel on her head.

Good stuff, that coffee. Pretty soon, it was refill time.

Cordelia, by now, wasn’t feeling sleepy at all.

< A cup or so more of this, and I’ll be up all night! > she thought, giggling as she took another sip of her newly-filled mug.

And the caffeine was getting to her head, too. She was ready to launch into another song ...

So she did.

“Life is a mys-te-ry, everyone must stand, alone ... I hear you call my name ... and it feels like ... home ...”

She started bouncing up and down on the soft bed, thoroughly enjoying herself. One gets a sense of how strong Angel makes his coffee while watching Cordelia bobbing up and down like a three-year old singing loudly with one hand supporting the towel on her head and the other with a cup of coffee that looked dangerously close to spilling. And she had only drank half the mug.

Oh, look, there goes some of the coffee now, over the edge and onto the bed.

Cordelia, eyes closed and tossing her head in time with the music, didn’t notice.

Imagine Angel’s surprise when he walked into his room to see a caffeine-overloaded Cordelia Chase bouncing on his bed and swaying from side to side like a human possessed with a coffee sloshing all over the place and singing ‘Material Girl’ at the top of her voice.

How very un-Cordylike. But then again, who was to know?

Well, now he did.

His eyes widened.

“Some boys try and some boys lie but I don’t let them play ... no way, no way ... only boys that save their pennies make my rainy da-yay.”

Angel put the packages he was carrying down on the ground and leaned against the door, arms crossed, to watch her little performance.

“Cause everybody’s living in a material world and I am a material girl, you know that we are living, in a material world and I am a material girl ...”

He tried not to laugh as Cordelia began wiggling her shoulders, and wondered what she thought she was doing.

Dancing, of course. Eighties style.

“A material ... a material ... a material ... world. Living in a material world. Te-rial, Te-rial. Te-rial Te-rial ... Living in a material world ... Te-ria-ah-al. Living in a material world ... ”

Caffeine-high or no caffeine-high, sometime during her act, Cordy instinctively became aware of an audience.

She opened her eyes.

And saw Angel in the room, a smile playing on his lips.

Her jaw dropped. “Oh. My. God.” She scrambled off the bed, spilling more coffee in the process. Ripping off the earphones, she stood staring at him with wide eyes, aware that she was blushing furiously.

Angel prolonged the silence for good effect. “Good singing, Cordy,” he finally drawled.

“Ummmm ...” she squeaked.

Angel gave a discreet nod towards the Discman, which was still belting out Madonna’s “greatest hits”. Cordelia gladly pulled her eyes away from his and bent down to turn off that ... stupid ... machine ...

But before she even touched it, it gave a loud beep and shut down.

She stared at it, aware that Angel’s eyes were still on her. Picked it up. Examined it. Let loose a mild expletive.

“Oh, and the batteries couldn’t have died before he came in?” she muttered to herself, shaking the Discman in an attempt to quell her frustration somewhat and maybe ease her embarrassment a little.

It didn’t work.

“Damn.”

Angel, with his superior sense of hearing, grinned.

He stared at the spectacle she made, dressed only in a bathrobe, a towel sliding down her shoulders, cursing at an appliance even as her cheeks blushed rosy red.

To his surprise, he found that he liked it.

Cordelia, apparently, was not so pleased with her performance. She looked up, saw him still standing there, and glared. “Out.”

He raised an eyebrow. “But this is my room,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, and you asked me to stay in it, so tonight it’s MY room, not yours. And I said out.”

“But Cordy ...”

She flopped onto the bed, paying no heed to the still-damp coffee staining the sheets. “Oh God, just leave me alone. I want to sulk.”

Angel sighed at her stubbornness. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be kicked out of his own room – though he did admit to himself that she was staying there at his insistence – when he had something important to ask her about.

Looking at his friend, lying flat on her back with her eyes scrunched closed and her mouth in an exaggerated pout, he almost forgot what that important thing was. The urge to laugh was too strong.

To save himself from her wrath, however, he decided (wisely) against it.

He had something important to say. What was it?

He glanced down. Ah, yes, the packages.

“Cordy,” he began.

Her eyes flew open. She stared at the ceiling and groaned. “You’re still here? Aaaan-gel!” she whined. “Can’t I even wallow in my own misery without being interrupted?” She groped around the general vicinity of the nightstand and grabbed the coffee. Raising her head slightly, she downed the rest of the liquid. Then she dropped her head back onto the mattress and resumed her semi-comatose state, complete with fierce grimace and unreasoning pout.

This time he did laugh. This whole situation was ridiculous. She was being ridiculous! “Jesus, Cordy, what did you put in that coffee?”

Eyes still closed, she retorted, “Nothing. It’s the stuff you left in the pot.”

“How many cups have you had?” he asked, still not believing her strange actions could be attributed to his coffee-making skills (or lack thereof).

“Just two.”

Shaking his head, he replied. “You can’t seem to hold your coffee too well. That’s the same stuff I make every day, and you never usually get like this!” She grunted in response. His eyes narrowed suspiciously as he realized the implications of his own words. “Cordy ... did you put anything else in your drink?”

She made a face. “Of course not! I thought YOU added something to it.” She hiccuped. “It tasted better than usual, anyway.”

He stared at her prone figure for a while, then, shaking his head, he headed over to the kitchen, where he picked up the pot and sniffed it suspiciously.

Bailey’s. It was loaded with Bailey’s. He tasted it to make sure.

There was more “Genuine Irish Cream” in it than there was coffee, though somewhere in the midst of the stuff, he could still make out his special blend ...

He looked around. Noted the empty bottle of Bailey’s in the trash. Sighed.

Then he walked back to the bedroom with the pot in his hand.


* * *
She had apparently found some fresh batteries somewhere and replaced the dead ones in her Discman with them, because she was again listening to Madonna.

Singing, too.

“... a burning love is the way it’s got to be ...”

“Cordelia.”

“Romeo and Juliet, they never felt this way, I bet . .”

“Cordelia,” he repeated patiently, and a little more loudly.

“Shhhh! ... so don’t underestimate my point of view!”

Angel walked over to the bed and reached down, turning off the CD player.

As she opened her eyes indignantly, he told her what he had to say.

“You’re drunk.

She sat up then, quite suddenly, and issued him a frosty stare. “How can you say that? WHY would you say that? Because I’m singing? Because you’ve never heard me sing before? Look, I know my singing isn’t the greatest, but when I’m happy, I sing, okay? And I’m happy. It’s a caffeine high, that’s all.” She sniffed primly. “And that would be your fault, anyway, for making that coffee. You must’ve ... put too many scoops of the stuff in ... or something.”

“I didn’t empty the bottle of Bailey’s into the coffee pot, Cordy. And wither you did it, or ...” he groaned as he realized who the culprit most probably was. “Doyle did.”

She bristled at his words. “Stop blaming us for your shortcomings, Angel. I am NOT drunk, and even Dill ...” She blinked. “Dan ... Dyle ... wouldn’t do something that dumb. That Bailey’s was FULL yesterday. I saw it.”

“I know.”

“Then Dyle must have drunken it or something. Him, not me. Don’t look at me, I don’t drunk.” She reached for the Discman again and pressed Play, then stuck her tongue out at him.

He sighed. Then, just for good measure, he sighed yet again. He did that a lot when it came to Cordelia.

“I made it through the wilderness ...” She began singing, loudly, to grate on his nerves. She got off the bed and began dancing, too, just to annoy him further. “... somehow I made it through ...”

Angel gave up. He picked up the shopping bags he had left by the door and went out of the room.

“I just wanted to show you the clothes I bought,” he said to himself, almost sulkily. “You said I should ease up on the black-on-black ...”

He sat down on the sofa – his bed for the night – and reached into one of the bags. He carefully examined the dark gray shirt he pulled out. Then he opened the other packages and took out the other items – also in dark gray. His shoulders slumped.

“I think I need help.”

In the background, he heard a thump and an ever-louder voice: “Like a virgin! Touched for the very first time! Like a vi-i-i-irgin, with your heartbeat ... next to mine ...”

He groaned, and collapsed on the sofa with a cushion pressed over his ears.

“Gonna give you all my love boy! My fear is fading fa-a-ast!”

He needed help, all right, and it wasn’t just because he was shopping impaired ...



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