i can't help but wonder, what would jimmy buffet do?

[undoing.livejournal.com]

Who: undoing & quippable
What: More drinking shenanigans.
When: November 19th, early evening.
Where: CH6 R38, and then to some bar later on.
Summary: Said shenanigans are Cordy's bad idea this time around.
Rating: PGish to start off with, I assume?

Only a few hours until sunset. Normally, this would be about the time he was rolling out of bed and starting to go through his morning routine, but there was nothing normal about Angel right now. Not that there ever was, and there's something to be said for him considering his vampirism to be normal while the humanity the Malnosso has bestowed upon him is regarded as an unwanted affliction rather than a return to a state that he was robbed of when Darla killed and turned him all those years ago. Days are spent mostly indoors, partly out of habit, and partly because there's nothing he wants to engage in beyond the sanctity of the apartment walls; so, unless there's some errand to be ran, the former vampire can be found indoors, either with a book, some sketch he's working on, or going through some training exercise.

The latter usually requires all the furniture be pushed back to one corner of the room to give him enough space to do so without breaking something, but this evening, everything's where it should be. Training's off the table, and the man's instead stretched out on the couch with a book in hand - something Machiavellian - content to be lost in its pages before he needs to pick up a sword and see to his nightly patrol. While the patrolling isn't necessarily needed, what with other parties taking up that mantle as well, it's routine at this point. Gives him something to do and contributes to some sense of structure where there otherwise is none.

Comments

[quip]

"Give me a raise and I might consider taking them in the first place." She was, quite possibly, the worst secretary in L.A. She wasn't particularly fond of the job - taking messages and phone calls - and was kind of glad that everyone seemed to take on that role, somewhat, once they moved over to the Hyperion.

"I thought I was promoted to Seer. And Seers don't take memos." She'd stick her tongue out at him, but took a drink instead. She was slowly getting used to the taste.

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"There's no currency system here," Angel pointed out. Nevermind that while Angel Investigations was back on it's feet and operating again, money was something of a laughable matter. Whatever funds he'd acquired while running Wolfram & Hart were gone. They were all pretty much broke and running off favors. A team comprised of no-one who started this journey with him and only one person on it was Cordelia even familiar with.

He wasn't sure how she'd feel about Kate being part of the team, should that spoiler ever be spoiled.

"You were. Are. You are my seer. And I guess the Powers never got the no memos notice." The visions were like memos, kind of.

[quip]

She kept forgetting about that. She felt as though she was adjusting well to not having money at her disposal like she did as a teenager. It didn't mean her focus wasn't completely off of it. All she wanted was for Angel Investigations to succeed, and she saw that in the lives they saved and the money they made to keep the business up and running. And it didn't hurt that it helped them make a living. "I guess we'll just have to find a substitute," she said, jokingly.

The Powers That Be. She wondered what those guys must be up to - or if they even noticed that their champion was stuck in some wing hell with her. "No, they were definitely pro-memo." She'd lost count of how many visions she'd had over the last three years. It felt as though every time she got her head back on track and in the game, they threw another curveball into her skull. "That is one thing I do not miss, by the way. Having my head to myself. Kind of forgot what that was like."

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He pressed his lips into a tight line. Substitute. Angel feared what she would demand from him in the place of money. Probably lots of home-cooked meals and tidying up that he would do anyway.

"No visions." Honestly, Angel wasn't sure how to feel about that. Part of him wished she'd have one, even with him stuck as a human, just so he could have something to do. Like the good ol' days. Get up and run after receiving word on the who, what, and where of someone in dire need of saving. "What will you do if you have one?"

[quip]

"Besides the usual shrieking?" Cordelia looked down at the table. She'd do the usual; deal with the hangover, dig a little deeper, and help the team figure out all the w's and kick some ass. "Act on it," she looked up at him. "Unless it's at home ... then we'll just sit on our hands." She didn't even want to think on that possibility. If she did get a vision, she'd at least want it to be Luceti-relevant, that way, they could do something about it. If it was based in L.A., she didn't know what would happen. Would the hangover last longer? How would the team know? She didn't like dangling the carrot in front of Angel's face knowing he couldn't do anything to help whoever she saw in her vision.

"There's no way you can just ignore something like that. Mind-numbing pain aside, I'd never forgive myself if something did happen."

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He hadn't even thought of the possibility of her seeing something from home. The Powers wouldn't dare be that cruel, would they? He hoped, at least, if they did show her something, it was from something around her point in time rather than his. She wouldn't understand what she saw if it was from his point in time. Los Angeles didn't look the same, and he was surrounded by people she would only half recognize.

Angel reached out and took one of her hands in his. "We'll deal with it, if and when the time comes."

[quip]

Cordelia gripped his hard without even thinking about it. She loved helping people - after feeling their pain inside her own skull for hours on end, all she wanted to do was end that suffering - and she liked that she was an asset to the team, but there didn't seem to be any danger here, besides the Malnosso, that needed to be stopped. But she was liking the break she was getting from the visions; it had started to feel like she was getting one every week and she just wanted her head to belong to her instead of the Powers for a little while.

She kept her gaze on the table when she said, "Does it make me a bad person if I don't want that time to come while we're here?" She looked up at him. "You know I love helping people, and if we can do that here, let's do it. But it'd just be nice if we were given the head's up in a different way for once."

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The grip she had on his hands kind of hurt, and he found it momentarily fascinating. If he were still dead, it wouldn't have felt like much of anything. Human, it elicited a response and he found himself squeezing her fingers back, though not as harshly as she did his own. As always, Angel treated Cordelia with nothing short of gentleness, keeping himself in check even when there wasn't a need to.

"No. It doesn't," he assured her. "Needing a break from lives we lead doesn't make us bad people. It makes us more human, if anything." Ironic coming from someone who's supposed to be a member of the undead, he was aware. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't grateful for how quiet things were when I first got here. As much as I didn't want to be here and wished I were still back home, helping--" Fix a previously hell-torn LA. "--the helpless, having some room to breathe was... nice. You should enjoy it. Don't feel bad about liking the silence in your head, Cordy."

[quip]

She smiled, grateful for his understanding. It meant way too much to her for him to just get it. And he did, which didn't really surprise her. He'd morphed from someone she worked for to someone she could tell anything to without the fear of being judged as harshly as Harmony and her fellow Cordettes would've.

She always felt bad every time she thought about wanting her mind to be hers and not belong to a thousand faceless people. She had felt grateful when she'd gone a month without a single hit. Despite the good feelings that came with being visionless, she felt as though something was missing. Couldn't live with them, couldn't live without them.

Cordelia lifted her ale up. "We should toast to it." She wasn't exactly sure what. The silence? The break? All she knew was that the idea behind this night was being deterred constantly by things she labelled Too Serious for a fun evening. "Hopefully this place isn't littered with helpless people waiting to be helped, because you kind of need hobbies, Angel," she said, teasing, giving him a lopsided grin.

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"I have hobbies," he protested, reaching for his glass all the same. "You just don't approve of any of them. And I won't let you keep my sketchbook."

That gave him an idea, though - her interest in his drawings. It was a skill he'd used back home, but mostly for case purposes. Interpreting visions and sketching likenesses of people, demons, places, and things based on her descriptions, and so on. He only used it for recreational purposes within the privacy of his own room, and those drawings were either kept in a place no-one would dare to look, or burned and thrown away once he'd gotten the urge to sketch whatever it was out of his system. Maybe in lieu of something more classy, or that bonus she constantly hounded him for, come the holidays he'd give her something he'd drawn to keep. An image from home. He made a mental note of it.

Angel held his glass up. "To much needed breaks for the overworked Champions of the Powers That Be."

[quip]

Cordelia's tapped her glass against his, grinning, "You could say that again." She took a drink of her ale, making less of a face as she did so, and placed the glass back down onto the table.

"Your hobbies aren't hobbies, for the record. Besides the sketching." She gestured to him, "I'll give you that one." She liked his sketches. Cordelia had plans of having another peak at his sketchbook when he wasn't around, despite anything he said otherwise. "I like that hobby of yours."

She didn't like it because it was what she classified as 'normal', but because it was him. One hundred percent Angel - or Liam, really.

"Tearing bad guys into tiny pieces isn't a hobby. Neither is brooding." It was, unofficially, Pick-On-Angel-Night.

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"My hobbies don't fit your definition of a hobby," he corrected. "Brooding is a habit - a bad one, I'll admit, and one I try to break when not brooding is more difficult than brooding. And tearing bad guys into tiny pieces is my job. My destiny. My purpose. Don't exactly have a choice in that matter."

He'd tried to fight it before and look what happened. Veering off his selected path was a bad idea and he knew it. The more he'd come to think in line with what the Powers wanted him to fight for, the easier it got to just go with it. Do what they wanted him to accomplish. It was sure a hell of a lot better doing their 'bidding' than it was following the supposed path Wolfram & Hart wanted him to be on. No, thank you. He'd take the Champion who beats the bad guys over that any day.

[quip]

"You always have a choice, Angel," Cordelia said. She chose to act on her visions and thereby pass them onto her Champion. As difficult as she imagined ignoring the searing pain would be, she could easily carry on with her day and not help the helpless. "It might not be a big choice, but everything is something we choose to do. You choose to fight and be a Champion. Just like you choose to brood as though it's a hobby." She gave him a smile. If he ever stopped brooding, she'd really believe the apocalypse was finally coming.

Cordelia knew that Angel got a bit touchy when people encroached on his territory. She liked that about him, how he was protective over his Champion title even if he absolutely hated it on most days. She was like that with her position as the seer. Despite it bleeding into her desire to be needed, she knew she wouldn't want anyone else to have it. But hearing that he thought he didn't have a choice made her wonder what exactly happens down the line in three years time.