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"Uh, Nina?"

This wasn't right. He knew the hotel — his hotel — like the back of his hand. He could walk the corridors blindfolded, even those in parts of the building that they had barely inhabited before the great move to the Law Offices of Wolfram & Hart. And while the Hyperion had managed to avoid sustaining heavy damage or infestation like a majority of the buildings in Los Angeles, hell wasn't nearly this well-kempt. Especially not where his former mailing address was concerned. The carpets were vacuumed, the floors had carpets, mirrors and glass polished to a glare-free shine...

Not only did he appear to be in the wrong hotel, but the wrong dimension, and that was a problem. A big one.

This was the last thing he needed, whether it be an actual case of dimensional displacement or some trick the Senior Partners were pulling on him in retaliation for overthrowing the Lords. Not that they needed an excuse to meddle in his life. They were the masterminds behind his newfound liveliness in spite of what the heavy glamour that hid his humanity from everyone had to say about him. Angel was alive, but it was important that everyone still believed he was a vampire.

It's like he told Wes; there's only one way to get out of hell. Act like nothing's changed.

Which was why he stared at what he could see of the buffet table across the way, but made no move to approach it. Eating actual food in public? Dead giveaway. (No pun intended.)

He should probably find shoes. Somehow, walking out of his room in nothing but a t-shirt and sweatpants had topped his list of poorly thought out life choices this morning.

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Okay, so there are definitely benefits to being corporeal and to having opposable thumbs. She isn't a professional, but she's got that going for her.

The emergence of that accent has her stifling a smile. It's not so thick ~~yet~~ that she can't understand him. "Ooooooh permission to cause pain. If I were any other girl you might be in trouble."

She uses the lighter to heat the needle up and puts it to the side so it can cool. She sprays the wound with antiseptic spray one more time then threads the needle with fishing twine.

"Talk to me while I do this," she tells him, hoping to provide him with a distraction more than anything. The first stitch is the hardest. She holds her breath, wincing as she does it, muttering 'sorry' under her breath.

He grunts, gritting his teeth as the needle pierces his skin. It hurts more than he thought it would, though considerably less than it would of if he didn't have all that whiskey in his system. His fingers curl into the pillow, giving him something to grip that isn't the imaginary throat of the demon that did this to him.

"About what, how I ended up mortal and falling apart in the first place? Messed up, like I said—" A grunt, a hiss between clenched teeth. Doesn't hurt nearly as bad as the time his father had to reset his shoulder after he fell from a horse shortly after his thirteenth birthday. "Stopped a worldwide apocalypse, but damned the entire city of LA in the process. HelLA's more like it these days."

Hopefully, she'll get a rhythm going and it will be easier on him somehow. She's going to try not to apologize every time she makes a stitch. She keeps sewing as she talks.

"Sometimes we don't have good choices. We just have bad and a little bit better." She knew about that. Shoving a sword through his heart had been one of those bad or a little better choices.

"I was sort of talking about human you though. I mean...before. In Ireland." She figures that'll hurt him less and distract him just as easily.

Oh. She wants him to talk about that. Before. His first time as a human. Not too many people ask him questions about that. Perhaps it's because they feel the topic is off limits, or maybe they just assume he's forgotten. A lot of them do forget, after a while. Maybe he would've, had he not been cursed with his soul, but being in possession of it meant that it was hard to forget about what he'd been before he was a soulless, re-ensouled monster.

Darla had forgotten. He didn't even know her name, never thought to ask. By the time he did, she could barely recall being that girl who was dying of a sexually transmitted disease.

"Wasn't drunk all the time, if that's what you're wondering." He laughs at his own bad joke, perhaps a little longer than needed. It's the alcohol, makes it seem funnier than it actually is. "I could've been a lot of things, but I liked to drink. A lot. Not all the time, but drinking was easier than dealing with... other things. My father, the family business, the soldiers. It was fun and that... not so fun."

She hits a spot that's more sensitive than the others and he flinches, his body instinctively jerking away from her fingers. Hopefully he didn't rip out any of the stitches she's already made. Apologizing, he settles back down into the comforter, reaching out to grab the bottle and take another awkward, sideways drink of the whiskey.

It burns less.

"Why is it the only questions you ever had about my life in Ireland were about the sort of girls that lived in my time?"

She's always assumed that he remembers. It's the little things that he has said that made her think that. The mostly failed history tutoring sessions they'd had when she'd been in high school had confirmed for her that his memory was good.

"I should hope not. Alcoholism isn't a good look for anyone." She's teasing him mostly, bantering with him, giving him something to respond to while she sews up the wound. "What sort of family business? And why were there soldiers?" They hadn't gotten that far in history. Obviously.

She apologizes as well when he flinches, examining the stitches carefully. He hasn't torn any of them. She lets him get a couple of drinks in, lets him rest for the moment.

"Because I wanted to impress you. I wanted you to like me and think...I was sexy, I guess. I was also a little jealous and afraid I wouldn't measure up to girls in your time."

Which is why she'd put on that ridiculous dress.

"I found a picture in one of Giles' journals of a girl from when you were human. She was wearing a dress kind of like the one I wore that Halloween. I just wanted...I don't know. It seems silly now."

No, it doesn't, but it's easier to say that.

"I didn't like the girls in my time. Not the ones I was supposed to be courting, anyway. Simpering fools, the lot of them. Too interested in their dresses and the beads woven into their hair to care about much else. Always hated when Darla insisted we to go to court." He's also glad he wasn't born noble, else he would've had to deal with courtiers more often than when his sire wanted to sink her fangs into a well-powdered neck.

A hand snakes out, leaving its resting place beneath his head. His finger tips graze the edge of her jaw, curling in against her cheek. "You didn't need corsets and crinolines to do that. I liked you just fine without them."

His hand falls away, dangling off the side of the bed.

"My father was a silk merchant. The soldiers have— had, had been there since Cromwell stormed in and started slaughtering us by the thousands in the century before. They pushed off our land, denied us our faith."

Edited 2014-03-11 05:15 (UTC)

Her eyes cast down, presumedly to look at the half-stitched wound on his side, but mostly so she's not having to look him in the eye. It's amazing how close things can cut after all these years. Her attention is back on his eyes, expression startled when he touches her face. It's not a bad thing; it's just a surprising thing. In any case, he did offer a blanket apology for anything he might say or do so she pushes it out of her mind, not making anything more of it than the whiskey's affect.

"Well that was fortunate. They were a little difficult to fight in." Although, some slayers had done it. She'd read Giles' journals about them.

"Oh! We talked about him in history. I don't think they mentioned that though."

"Of course they didn't. Your textbooks are an-claonta." Very biased. Don't tell him he didn't say that in English. His drunken mind thinks he did.

That hand that's dangling off the side catches her sleeve, and he toys with the fabric between his fingers. It's not so much an affectionate gesture as much as he's momentarily fascinated by the feel of the smooth cloth against his calloused skin, by how the heat radiating off her skin just below it matches his own. She used to feel like a sauna compared to him, like he was a block of ice left out in the sun whenever he touched her.

"There were a few rebellions. I wanted to fight in some of them, but my father— Oh, my father, he didn't want any of that. He bowed to the English oppression, told me I was a fool. 'You're a fool, Liam,' he used to say. Among other things. We didn't have the best of relationships."

He's not sure if his relationship with his own son is any better. Likely worse, considering he's damned his kid to hell twice. He's certainly not going to be winning father of the year any time soon.

Honestly, she assumes it's a curse word in Irish, so she doesn't comment on it. She'll tell him he's not speaking English if he continues.

It's almost distracting the way he toys with her sleeve. However, she picks the needle back up and starts in again.

"I think all kids fight with their parents, even today. My mom and I fought too." She smirks a little. "Liam, huh? Was that your name? I mean, before Angel."

"I remember." He's drunk, but not blitzed enough to comment further on Buffy's dead mother. Angel might not have gotten along terribly well with Joyce, but her understood her motherly concerns for her daughter and her daughter's future. Even more so now that he had a kid of his own. Connor dating Gwen is a significant step up from his cradle-robbing ways when Buffy was younger than his son is now. Physically, Angel was a good ten years older than Buffy when they started dating, nevermind the couple centuries he'd gained since his death.

Odd to think they're probably about the same age now.

"Yeah," he nods against the pillow, still absentmindedly playing with her sleeve. "Didn't think I was born Angelus, did you? We used to change our names, back in the day. Sometimes. The Master gave Darla hers, I picked mine. Dru..."

He makes a noncommittal noise. Drusilla kept her name, but that's a whole other can of worms of his own twisted construction.

Edited 2014-03-11 06:05 (UTC)

Buffy appreciates that. That she talked Angel into leaving is one of the secrets Joyce took to her grave. Honestly, the fight that Buffy is remembering most acutely is the one the night she sent Angel to hell. Joyce hadn't known that she was a slayer. They'd fought about Buffy going out and Joyce had told her that if she walked through that door not to come back. Buffy had stepped through the door and gone to send Angel to hell. It remains one of the single most horrible nights of her life for many reasons, that fight being one of them.

She'd never looked at Angel that way. It wasn't as if Buffy had a normal teenage life or as if a normal boy would have fit into that life. She knows. She tried. It didn't work and maybe some of those reasons were because she'd had her heart broken so thoroughly by Angel, had her idea of a relationship so incredibly twisted by her first love, but it had also been because she could kick normal guy's ass, even when normal guy wasn't exactly normal. It was because Normal Guy had issues with Buffy being stronger, faster, better. She had to hide things like her kill count and her strength from him in order to make peace. Riley had loved the girl she was and he'd been excited by the idea of the slayer. The reality of it had been something else entirely.

She's twenty-five, so yes, they're about the same age now and it is odd. Angel has always been so much older than Buffy that (in her eyes) it'd ceased to matter.

"Hey, maybe people named their kids Angel back then," she says with a bit of a shrug. Her eyes narrow as she focuses on stitching up the wound. It's about three fourths the way done right now.

"So are you going by Liam again? Or is it still Angel?"

And she can't help but think how weird it would be to call him anything but Angel. It's a name that's been on her lips for so long in some way or another that she can't imagine changing.

"We named our children after saints, not religious beings or concepts."

He could've named his son after a saint and honestly, he'd thought about it, but in the end he'd settled on Connor, a more modern form of the Old Irish name Conchobar. It was a name bore by some of the old, great kings of Ireland. Fitting, he felt, in addition to the ties it's meaning had to wolves. His parents were both vampires; he and Darla were the wolves.

"No, still Angel."

He hadn't even thought about circulating his name back into usage if this humanity took, if he ever shanshued properly. He'd been to guilt-ridden after the gypsies cursed him to go back to it, and now Angel was just... It was him. It was the name everyone knew him by, the name that struck fear into those who dared to cross his path. He was feared as Angel. Liam was nothing more than an echo, a man he still was but nobody remembered. The only person who had knew that lost Irishman in any way shape or form staked herself to dust in order to give life to their child.

"Nobody around anymore who uses it." Wait, no. That's not true. He rolls his eyes. "Well, except for Spike. But that's more... He's a brat."

Uncle Spike says a lot of things.

Spike had better be keeping a good eye on Connor or he was going to trick the bleached blonde into throwing himself into the nearest lava pit. (Which happened to be just down the street from the Hyperion, he knew for a fact.)

She doesn't want to ask about the baby she'd met only once because if something has happened to him, that's a wound that Buffy doesn't want to poke, not right now. She nods, at his words, tugging a little at the wound and whispering an apology.

"Good. I'm not sure I could get used to anything else."

Besides, she'd always thought his name fit him. Her and his little sister, apparently which is another sore point she won't bring up.

"I'm not—"

But whatever he had to say is cut off by the cry of pain that manages to escape before he can clamp down on it, Buffy hitting a spot that's more sensitive than the rest. He was hit there first — hard — then sliced at. The bruised skin doesn't appreciate having a needle threaded through it, necessary or not.

Buffy winces as well. "Sorry. I'm sorry." Hurting him when he was a vampire had been painful enough (and sometimes incredibly satisfying ~~sorry~~) but now that he's human, she really hates hurting him. She's very aware of the fragility of humans.

"The good news is, we're almost done? Maybe three more stitches."

The fingers of the hand that have been toying with her sleeve turn in, circling her wrist. He squeezes, knowing, somehow, through the haze of the alcohol in his system, that he's not hurting her. That it would take a hell of a lot more than a human's grip to hurt her.

His stomach flip-flops unpleasantly. Uh oh.

"Good, because I might throw up on you."

It doesn't hurt. In fact it's kind of a stabilizing pressure. He won't even bruise her, regardless of how hard he squeezes.

"Have I mentioned that I don't do well with vomit? Demon goo, blood and other gross, sure, but not vomit."

She's sort of going to very quickly try and finish this up, all the while hopefully not hurting him too much.

If talking didn't feel like a precursor to vomiting, he would've commented on how much vomit was a part of parenthood. Connor threw up on him daily, it felt like, in those early months before Holtz ripped him out of his life. Angel was used to waltzing around covered in demon good, other people's blood, and baby vomit. Cordelia even threw up on him a few times after an intense doozy of a vision ripped through her skull.

He's desensitized to a lot of things; vomit being one of them.

Angel lies still, waiting for her to finish. His grip on her arm remains firm, steadying for both of them.

It was probably best for both of them that he kept quiet. It let her focus anyway. She had been fortunate enough to skip all of that with Dawn. Sure, she had a few hazy memories of Dawn and sick days, but they lacked detail. Hospitals smelled like vomit underneath all the sanitizes and bleaches they used and she would never be comfortable in a hospital because of her experience there with her cousin when she was a little girl.

Buffy was careful tying off the fishing twine as tight as close as she could manage. She straightened up, twisting to grab a bandage with the hand that Angel didn't have a grip on, content to let him hang on because it was steadying for the both of them. It took a little bit of work and she did move the held arm a bit, holding it close with her fingertips while she taped the bandage down.

"Okay. I think you're good, but you need to be careful not to rip the stitches. Take it easy and I'll look at them...probably every day? The clinic might be able to give you some antibiotics, but they'll probably also pooh pooh you for not going to them to get stitched up in the first place. Do I need to get a trash can? Bolting up to the bathroom, probably not a good idea."

Every day? She made it sound like he was going to be here for a while and that was exactly the opposite of what Angel wanted. Still somewhat drunk, it made him even angrier to think of the possibility of being unable to get back to hell, to his son. He promised Connor they would talk and instead of heading downstairs to sit down with his kid and discuss the whole awkwardness of the Gwen situation, he wound up here.

"I'm not staying here," he declared stubbornly, letting go of her arm so he could plant both his hands on the mattress and push himself up into a sitting position. He waved off the offer of a trashcan. "I have to get back. I can't— I can't stay. I have things to do, a city to get out of hell. I don't deserve to not be there; to be here while they're still there."

Buffy put a hand on his chest, not literally holding him down but making the gesture of it. "First you rest, sober up and have something to eat then you can go running in the muck ~~amok~~ looking for a door back home. They're still going to be there, Angel. A few hours, some rest and some food will only make you more able to help them."

Look at that. Buffy knew how to be logical and use it to make a reasonable argument. It was kind of a new development.

To a sober mind, her words would've made sense. But to a drunk one, what Buffy's insisting is madness, something he cannot fall in line with.

"No."

Angel surges up anyway, moving a hand to swat hers away from him. If there was a door to get home, he was going to find it and he was going to find it now. He'd been through worse, lived through things no living or undead being ever should, and some hotel wasn't going to keep him away from LA or his son.

Oh. Really? They were going to do this? Buffy reached out, snagging his wrist with her hand, fingers curled around his wrist. She held on tight, but not tight enough to hurt him.

"Angel, I promised not to let you do anything stupid. This qualifies as stupid. I will tie you up and sit on you if I have to."

She'd let him find out whether there was an escape or not later when he was sober, but right now, she wants him to rest and eat and get sober. She's not sending him into hell with fresh stitches.

Sober Angel would've conceded her point and backed down. But that's the man when he's sober and capable of thinking rationally, and that man, this man was not. And the mind of this man dropped right down into the gutter, a smirk accompanying the descent.

"Kinky."

Edited 2014-03-13 04:06 (UTC)

Buffy rolls her eyes. Sixteen year old her would blush and get flustered. Twenty four year old her has been there and done that.

"Whatever. You were talking about throwing up on me ten minutes ago. Not so kinky. Lay down. Eat your sandwich."