[OPEN] Sometimes your friends bring out the best in you.

[vampdetective]

Who: Angel & you!
Where: Angel Investigations & the kitchen.
When: 4/19 (for Faith) & 4/26
Rating: R? Blood, severed hands and potential for violence.
Summary: Faith offers Angel a Slayer-flavored protein shake with potentially disastrous results.
The Story:

4/19, CLOSED to Faith

He's lost track of how many hours it's been since he asked Faith to lock him in, leaning heavily against the bars of the cage he'd made sure Wonderland's replica of the Angel Investigations office held for situations just like this. It had started to prick at him the night before, the hunger he knew would come when all his supplies were exhausted-- the Infected posed as much a threat to him as anyone else, but he was just as fast as they were, maybe faster, and it made getting bitten easy enough to avoidable. The spores weren't a concern for someone who didn't breed, but the lack of supplies and the fact that the closets were giving out less and less?

That was a problem. He'd thought that it might be, when the additional stock he'd grabbed for himself after the announcement had disappeared. There had been enough blood stored in the fridge in his office to last him through most events, provided Wonderland didn't take it away, but this one seemed to be longer than most, and he wasn't willing to risk what could happen if he decided to let himself roam free and just hope it ended sooner rather than later-- not when he was this hungry.

The request for Faith to lock him in and make sure he stayed there had come paired with a gas mask. Physically, she could handle more than her share of assailants just like he could, but he wasn't going to risk her getting infected by inhaling something she shouldn't on his account. He'd been grateful when she'd agreed, but that had been hours ago-- it felt like days, the way hunger was beginning to gnaw at him, and he irately pushes himself away from the bars of the cage so that he can pace along its length, hands clasped behind his back.

He'd planned for alternatives in the event that Wonderland came up with an event that kept him from being able to eat, but the current method was equal parts exhausting and maddening. He sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck as he paces.

"We should, I don't know, play charades or something. Poker?" No need to be dying of both hunger and boredom. "Maybe Uno."

4/26, OPEN

A full week after the event, and Angel was still feeling the effects of the favor Faith had done him. A part of him had hoped that they would have burned themselves out of his system by now, that they would have vanished without a trace and he would be able to go back to his usual routine, but that had been wishful thinking, almost painfully optimistic.

He knew better. He had been through this enough times to know that it wouldn't work that way-- it never did, whether because of a slip he'd made all of his own accord or because someone else had intended to sabotage him. However human blood got into his system, it didn't matter. The results were always the same, except he worried that this time might actually be worse. A Slayer's blood was a different story entirely, more potent.

It had been a difficult habit to kick the first time he'd tasted it, too.

He spends most of the morning in his office on the fourth floor, thumbing through research without really reading what's on the page in front of him, reorganizing the weapons cabinet twice before he decides it's all wrong and leaves it unfinished, unsatisfied with anything he puts his hands on, restless. For a short stretch, he only paces back and forth near the front desk, unable to focus himself on anything at all-- until he gives up and decides he needs a change of scene. There are only so many places he can go, at least during the day, but the insistent hunger that's been nagging at him for days now makes the decision easy enough. The replenished stock in his office hasn't been doing him any good, cold and unappealing, but he privately hopes that the kitchen will treat him a little bit better, that maybe something fresher will help to quell his appetite.

He's both uneasy and impatient as he waits for the microwave to finish, leaning against the counter with both hands, tapping his fingers unevenly against the surface. He only gets halfway through his first mug before he feels his own body reject it-- as if it's tired of him trying to force down pig's blood instead of human, and the reaction is almost entirely involuntary as he spits out what he hasn't managed to swallow and inadvertently throws the mug against the nearest wall, causing it to break and splatter blood across the tiling.

He grimaces. Well, crap.

Comments

Kitchen

[littledhampir]

There was a good way for a half-vampire who had spent her life training to kill bad vampires, to meet the latter. Especially one with a spotty history of good and bad and that was probably not her walking into the kitchen at the very moment he happened to send a mug of warm pigs blood, flying at the wall.

Rose stood there, feet rooted to the spot and stared at the scene before her. Something in her brain trying to warn her about what she was seeing but the brunette, was at present, too surprised to really process it. Rather than fight or flight, her body opted for dumb silence. Rose blinking rapidly as her gaze shifted from Angel, to the wall, then back again.

"I just... wanted a fork?" Those words sounding ridiculous, even to her own ears.

[vampdetective]

He freezes just for a moment; some part of him had probably heard her coming, sharp as his senses were, but everything else paled in comparison to the hunger that had been nagging at him for days now, forcing him to lose some of his edge. He swallows as he composes himself, shaking his head and rubbing a hand against the back of his neck-- he's very, very aware of how bad his outburst has to have looked.

"Sorry, just--" Just what? "Bad allergic reaction. Forks are-- they're that way," he tacks on, gesturing vaguely towards the drawer in question before raking his hand through his hair, rumpling the front of it further.

[littledhampir]

Tension radiates through her body as she continues to throw a wary gaze in Angel's direction, his explanation, or lack there of doing little to reassure her as she stands there awkwardly. Awkward and Rose wasn't generally something that went hand in hand but this place had done little to make her feel at ease, between all the crap that kept happening since she'd landed here.

"Right..." Taking a step towards the drawer but stopping short of crossing to it.

Her eyes narrow infinitesimally, Rose's head slowly turning so she can look at the dark red splatters against the tile and she can feel her heart start to beat faster in her chest before her brain can confirm that is what she thinks it is. It's not like she hasn't seen her fair share of blood before, even people drinking blood but it was usually straight from the vein of a feeder. Not animal blood assaulting her enhanced senses.

"That..." Gaping as she waves a finger in the direction of the mess. "Just what, exactly?"

[vampdetective]

"It's not human," he says quickly, collecting the nearest pieces of the broken mug, and he resists the urge to point out that neither is she despite the fact that his own senses are telling him exactly that. She's not quite vampire either, but something similar or in-between, though he can't give her scent a name, not like any of the countless beings back home.

"Pig's blood."

ai office

[rosswood]

Okay.

He's doing this.

It's just something to give himself something to do. Something to look forward to. He's been keeping his distance from Max since the Attempted-Stabbing Incident, which means he's had nothing to distract him from the fact that he almost stabbed a friend of his, and then survived the zombie apocalypse by killing a lot of dead things that would have killed him given the chance. And he needs to not think about how many of those dead things were once people. Ugh.

So he takes up Angel's offer. Office is open. He walks up to the door and knocks, and waits, and almost changes his mind and turns away before it can open. He fidgets on the spot uncertainly. It's goddamn awkward just walking in like this.

[krmvgivv]

Dipper is hanging out in the lobby when he hears the knock. Actual business?? This is unexpected.

"I'll get it!" he calls out. He walks over and opens the door. Sees who it is. Closes the door.

sorry guys it's been the worst week

[vampdetective]

Angel looks up from his perch behind the front corner as he marks his place in his book with one finger, not having caught a glimpse of who might have been waiting on the other side, but the scent of someone human and the fact that Dipper clearly isn't happy about whoever he saw are impossible to deny.

"Who is it?" He arches a single brow, questioning. "Not really in the habit of slamming doors around here."

Breaking them down with an unnecessarily dramatic kick, sure, but slamming seemed like a bit much.

office.

[interpersonal]

Elena is totally not checking up on Angel, except where she is. She finds him pacing back and forth in his office, and doesn't immediately alert him of her presence because of it. She hesitates to say anything at all, really, but discretion is no match for her curiosity and concern. Angel protected her during the latest event, and she is grateful for that. More importantly, she just cares.

"Angel?"

[vampdetective]

He should have heard her approach, should have felt the presence of another person, and it speaks to just how distracted he is that even his senses don't catch notice of her-- not until she speaks, when he stops himself short and turns towards the door, fingers curling into a loose fist at his side.

"Elena."

She looks well, and despite his mind being elsewhere, he's glad for that. He'd spent the last two days of the event locked in a cage, unable to protect anyone, and she'd been left to fend for herself as a result-- not that she wasn't entirely capable of doing so, but the part of him that always wanted to more remained quietly disappointed that he'd been unable to.

"You're okay?"

[interpersonal]

"I was about to ask you the same thing."

It seems more pertinent on her end, considering. Angel made sure that she was safe, and then she didn't see him for the rest of the event. It was difficult to check in on everyone, scattered as they were, but she's kept him in mind. Now she's glad that she did, even if her probing may be unwelcome. She can't really help herself, when it comes to interfering.

Even when she really should.

She steps forward, tentatively. "Is everything all right?"

kitchen

[monosaccharide]

[Bonnie is just walking into the kitchen to heat up some spaghetti when a cup of pig's blood smashes across the wall. She blinks, ducking back.]

...you know, there are trashcans and sinks if you don't like your meal. You don't have to throw it.

[vampdetective]

It, uh--

[There's not really any good excuse for it, but he forces himself to take a needless breath, letting it soothe his agitated nerves.]

Involuntary reaction.

[Not a tantrum, he'd like it to be known.]

Sorry. Are-- you okay?

[monosaccharide]

I'm fine. [She frowns and steps towards the mess.] That's... hemoglobin, isn't it? Are you drinking blood? You don't seem to have enjoyed it much.

[hypoxic]

The kitchen is where the food is, and as far as Fitz is concerned, doing the lighter parts of his work in a food-adjacent place is superior to having to take food into a lab environment and endure the ire of less-progressive minds and the sass contained therein. He hadn't even noticed someone else was in the room with him until the sound of glass breaking. His attention snaps away from his laptop all at once, eyes wide.

That's -- it looks like --

Oh bloody hell that looks like blood how did blood get on a wall? He's feeling faint just from the sight of it.

"Um. Are you -- do you need --?"

Absolutely nothing he could possibly need would involve a blood splatter on the wall. He wants nothing to do with this even while he asks about it.

[vampdetective]

A very large part of Angel wishes that his self-control had been just a little more up to par as he's reminded that he is, in fact, not the only person making use of the kitchen, and he grits his teeth for a moment before fumbling to collect the broken remains of the mug that had wound up on the counter, the wall itself covered in bright red that stands out too sharply against the decor.

"Sorry, I--"

Words aren't his forte when he's having a good day, and they're definitely not doing much to help him now. At least they have stammering in common, at least for the moment.

"I'm fine, it's just-- too hot, that's all." What he is, after all, is no longer a closely-guarded secret. He's long past the days of having to pretend he was drinking coffee around the clock.

[hypoxic]

It might not be a secret to Wonderland at large, but this kitchener is still new enough for people-who-drink-blood to be properly startling.

"Is -- temperature very often a concern for you?"

Are they just not going to talk about it being BLOOD?? He's not sure how to bring it up himself.

kitchen

[thesamurai]

Well, there's suddenly blood spatter next to her head, and she didn't cause it, so Michonne's only the slightest bit perturbed. The only reason she doesn't reach for her katana immediately is because it's one guy, and he's not...in a fighting stance.

And the blood came out of a coffee mug.

"All right," she says, flicking blood off of her cheek.

"That happened. Probably not the best thing that will all day."

[vampdetective]

It says a lot about his life, he thinks, that he's not even that surprised that someone happens to walk in at the worst possible moment. His grimace pulls tighter, and he quickly reaches for a towel that had been left out on the nearby counter, passing it from hand to hand for a moment before holding it out in offer-- as though that was the best way to handle this particular mis-step.

"Sorry," he says quickly, "I-- it wasn't intentional. Rough morning."

Rough week, more like.

[thesamurai]

“Well, I was givin’ you the benefit of the doubt anyway. Don’t figure you normally toss shit around in here.” She takes the towel and wipes off her cheek. “I’ve had worse thing splatter all over me.”

Which is a statement she’ll let him hold onto for a while. But, she can tell when someone’s not intentionally an asshole, so she grabs a mini broom and squats down, sweeping up the broken mug. “You drink blood?”

She’s seen enough here already that she’s not immediately on guard, just waiting to hear what he says.

4/19

[sponsored]

A groan is her first response, drawn out in its drama.

"I spy with my little eye a slayer who'd rather go be a zombie buffet?" It seems Angel's not the only antsy one, though the source of Faith's discomfort is slightly different. Overall, this is Angel's call.

As she passes the closet however, Faith dips into it to produce a pack of cards. She's still pretty much the wardrobes' buttmonkey, but lately Faith suffers a little less. A ha, she even manages to pull out an actual deck of playing cards upon wishing. It's with the glimmer of a smug smirk that Faith makes her way back to the Angelus cage, and sits close, folding her legs atop one another before she shuffles them against the floor.

"What's the longest these things have lasted, anyway?" The flutter of cards slaps against tile, but Faith watches Angel-- you play a lot of board games in prison, man. A girl's gotta pick some cool skills up.

[vampdetective]

He lets out a brief snort of laughter. Funny, Faith-- very funny.

"Five days, maybe. Usually not much longer," he tells her, leaving the buffet comment untouched, feeling his stomach clench at the word itself as his own hunger seemed to ignore the context entirely. He lowers himself to the floor to sit opposite her, cross-legged, letting the bars act as a comfortable barrier. Even if Faith could take him, he felt better, knowing that he was locked away so that she wouldn't have to.

"Sometimes they go a week or more, but that's when the mansion alone is responsible. This is different-- from someone else's world," he goes on to clarify, though he knows she'd seen Ellie's announcement days earlier. "Do I have to worry about you counting cards, too?"

[sponsored]

Before she starts dealing, Faith shrugs and smiles an easy, unbothered thing. Each cards hits the floor lightly, and now it's obvious that the closet does still like to have its fun with Faith. So long as she doesn't want something worth anything, anyway...

"What, you never cheated at cards before?" She leans back after putting the rest of the deck between them, and scooping her hand up. "Besides, I gotta hold the fort down and look after you? Counting cards is the least of your worries."

Office

[powerofmabel]

Mabel is perched on the corner of Angel's desk, thumbing through her scrapbook, because this is acceptable use of her time as... whatever it is she actually does for Angel besides hang around him and her brother.

"I'm telling you, Mabel Juice cures all ills." She's been offering suggestions for his restlessness all morning, and most of them are absurd, but this one... This one really takes the cake. "I can just add blood to it."

She scrunches her nose. "Normally, I wouldn't compromise my recipe for anything, but for you, Angel? Anything."

[vampdetective]

He appreciates the effort, at the very least, even if none of her suggestions have sat well with him so far. He pauses mid-pace, frowning as he looks in her direction, catching a glimpse of her scrapbook in the process. Really, this probably is about what Mabel does in the office, but on his better days, Angel is more than happy to let both her and Dipper have access to the various books and knick-knacks he's turned up over the last couple of years.

"What's in it to begin with?" he asks, as though it might actually make a difference. "It's not that I don't appreciate the offer, but-- I'm not sure that's gonna do it."

[powerofmabel]

"Nuh-uh," she wags a finger at him without even looking up from the page she's decided to perfect- specifically, it seems to be a page about Angel's office, labeled "my first wonderland job" and she seems to be in the process of taping a half-gnawed on pencil (probably one Dipper got a hold of) onto the page, along with candids of herself and her brother. and a blank picture with lens flare that occurred when she tried to take a picture of Angel. Stupid vampires.

"It's a trade secret, but four out of five customers agree, it is very satisfying."

She won't point out that two of those four are Gompers and Waddles and the other two are herself and Grenda, who will drink anything. Candy politely declined because of food allergies, Dipper still won't touch it, and Stan still has nightmares about the time he choked it down because Mabel replaced the contents of his coffee pot with it.