Unlocking Doors

Unlocking Doors

Snuggling against Angel, Fred carefully tucked the blankets around them, trying to make certain there were no spaces for cold air to get in.  As far as she could see, the one and only drawback to having Angel as a bedmate was the lack of body heat.

On the other hand the too-cold-to-sleep period of the night, before Angel absorbed her warmth, was always the best time to talk.

Laying in the dark, her cheek pillowed against his chest, the feel of his fingers gently playing with the ends of her hair, Fred felt utterly and completely safe and at home.  And it seemed like Angel felt the same.  During that quietness he could be more open, as if he didn't feel the need for the walls he habitually kept around himself.

"Where are you from?" Fred murmured.

She automatically interpreted the slight ripple of his muscles under her head as a shrug.  "Everywhere, I suppose," he said softly.

A faint puff of breath expressed Fred's lack of satisfaction with his answer.  "Everywhere may be where you've been, but everyone's from somewhere.  I grew up in Kentucky; for example."

"Ireland," Angel sighed.  "A long time ago."

"Was it pretty there?" Fred asked.

"Beautiful," Angel said.  "I didn't appreciate it then, but I remember it.  The colors were so vivid in the day.  Even the brightest moonlight shows everything in shades of gray."

"Were you a farm kid or a town kid?" Fred asked, nudging the conversation away from the negatives of being a vampire.

"It doesn't matter," Angel replied.

"Course it matters," Fred objected with an increasing level of animation.  "That shapes how you look at everything."

"Becoming a vampire changes how see anything," Angel informed her.

"Angel isn't a traditional Irish name," Fred said, struggling for a safe topic.  "How did you're parents come up with it?"

Fred felt Angel go rigid beside her, "They didn't," he said.

With a sigh Fred pulled away from him.  Mostly things were relaxed between them, but sometimes, like tonight, no topic was safe.  Apparently his human life was one of those things she was completely locked out of…

"My name was Liam," Angel said hesitantly.  "I'm not him anymore, too much changed, but that was what my parents named me."

Fred relaxed back against Angel.  "I was a farm kid," she began.  "An only child.  I used to follow my dad around and watch him fix things.  I wanted to know how everything worked; that's why I majored in physics I guess…"

As he listened to her ramble on about her childhood, Angel slowly relaxed.  Every now and then he reciprocated with an innocuous detail from his own childhood.