it sleeps with just one eye & awakens the moment that you leave.

[chuisle]

One would think that after three and a half weeks, Angel's mind would've been put at ease, but it hasn't. He's still worried, still afraid that if he looks away — even for a second — she'll be gone again. Vanished, just like she did in his office. He's gotten into the habit of opening doors they haven't been through yet first, peeking through them to ensure he isn't going to lose her to another world, before he lets her pass through them.

The man has something of an obsessive personality, whether he feels like admitting it or not, and keeping a constant watch on Cordelia has become his latest obsession.

It's not that Cordelia isn't sympathetic to his worries -- she is. She gets it. Considering what happened she gets why he needs to keep an eye on her. But there's keeping an eye on her and there's following her constantly like a little puppy. Kind of adorable at first but at some point? After a few weeks? It looses some of the shine.

So after what has to be the 100th time he's paranoidly watched her go through a door Cordelia whirls around to face him, her lips pressing in annoyance.

"You don't have to keep doing that, you know? The whole following me around, making sure I don't go poof into thin air thing."

He comes to an awkward, abrupt halt, bracing his hands on the wall by the door frame to avoid crashing into her.

"I'm not doing that," he tells her, but they both know that he's doing exactly that. It's like their initial training sessions all over again; Angel trying really hard to be chivalrous without coming off as insulting or suffocating, but doing so in spite of his best attempt not to. (His Old World upbringing clashes sometimes with his New World existence — and his paranoia.)

Only this time, he won't quit following her instead of teaching her to do nothing but stave.

She gives him a look at first. One of her patented 'I don't believe a word you're saying, who are you trying to kid?' looks. "That's exactly what you're doing." It's not the first time he's been a little overbearing for the sake of trying to keep her safe. And again, it's not like she doesn't appreciate the sentiment.

( But it's still frustrating. )

ooc | Cut for length. BLACK = Angel, PINK = Cordelia (visiongirl). Open for run-ins with either one of them!

an apple a day

[thefinalsolution]

In a looming and grand hotel filled with a myriad of doors that lead to disastrous worlds, to human ones with ordinary people with extraordinary things, and some even leading back to home, Moriarty has kept himself busy. His web has grown, slowly and surely, and he begins to trust that whether he finds himself in ancient Rome or on a ship, there will be someone there who requires a man of his skillset.

What he doesn't expect is to one day walk through a door and find himself in the very same place, but something different is charged in his fingertips.

It's power.

Of course, it's apparently the most minor power he could ever conceive because all he's been able to do is ripen apples and bananas, freshen the taste of fruit salad, and twist and turn designs into various peels of various fruits. There's a mystery for you, Sherlock Holmes. What exactly can give the man the power to compel fruits of all types and varieties and what good could it possibly be?

Maybe it's because he's hiding in plain sight. Maybe this is something more befitting blogger John Holmes instead of Jim Moriarty, who is a spider in a dozen worlds, whose criminal industry has began to leap past one simple world in one simple galaxy and he has become so very much more.

Not that you could tell.

Not when his great and grand power is manifesting now at the gift shop while the apple in his hand spins without a flick of his fingers, a carved image of a goldfish in the peel. "This is, frankly, very disappointing," he informs the apple in his palm, vindictively imagining little dead x's on the eyes of the fish which quickly carve themselves into being.

Wonderful. He can manipulate fruit. If only he had that ability a decade and a half ago. Imagine all the damage a banana peel could do, if applied in the correct pressure point.