Chapter Two: Narcolepsy.
Angel woke slowly, as he usually did. Something felt funny; he noticed when he was awake enough. Something tingled and prickled all along the skin of his chest and belly and legs, a very strange but not really unpleasant sensation. Wondering how long he'd been asleep- couldn't have been more than two hours- he slowly pried his lids open, and when he did he noticed something that almost gave him a heart attack.
Doyle was stretched out over his chest, chin propped on his hands and staring down at him with a smile in his beautiful green eyes. He wasn't really there, though, Angel knew that much at once- instead of the heat and weight of his body, all Angel could feel was that odd tingling prickle wherever Doyle was touching him.
Shock wore off and he lurched to a sitting position, and then off the bed onto the cold hardwood floors. He immediately cursed and started hopping from foot to foot, swearing for the thousandth time that he was going to get some carpets installed… and then looked at Doyle, who was sitting cross-legged in midair an inch above the bed covers and staring at him with great interest. Angel was immediately aware of how very naked he was, and his cheeks flamed in a blush a second before he grabbed for a pair of boxers lying next to the bed.
"Nothing new there, boyo, and certainly nothing to be embarrassed about, that's for a surety… Why bother covering it up?" When Angel just shook his head mutely and stared at him, Doyle looked down at himself in bemusement. "What, you'd think a fellow was dead and back to haunt you, the way you're staring so."
"Very funny," Angel said, his voice dry and a little choked. "How… how are you back here?"
"Well, I had some unresolved issues over the state of my death…" Seeing the beginning of a tortured looking forming on Angel's face, Doyle sighed and rolled his eyes. "I'm lying, ya nit. I just got bored without the whole fighting evil gig. I asked to come back."
Angel's eyes widened to comical proportions. "You asked to come back? Why? You finally got your freedom from this plane. Why would you want to return?"
"It has something I couldn't live without," Doyle replied obliquely, then sprang lightly onto the floor with a grace he hadn't had in life. "I'm heading down so I can scare the life out of the Princess. Might want to wait for Wes, though. He'll want to see the show."
"You know Wes?" Angel asked, but he was speaking to empty air. Doyle had grinned lopsidedly and then sunk straight through the floor. At Angel's words, however, just his head appeared, looking absurd sitting on the polished hardwood floor as it was.
"Met him early this morning. Charming fellow. Knows his books."
"Why don't you just use the stairs?" Angel demanded, a little unnerved by talking to Doyle's disembodied head.
"Easier this way," Doyle explains. "Faster, too. See you down there," he added, and disappeared through the floorboards again.
Angel stared at the spot where he had vanished, rubbing one hand over his chest and trying to marshal his thoughts into some semblance of order. Doyle… Doyle was back. He tried to turn that one, simple fact around in his head, make it make sense in the version of reality that he knew. But it was like trying to jam a cube into a circular hole: it just wouldn't fit. He couldn't make it fit.
God, the man he'd loved… he was back. In this world once again. And he had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do with him.
His back stiffened. He could do this. He could handle it. He'd handled enough shocks in his extraordinarily long life; he should be able to handle this one too. He'd just… adjust. Somehow.
He looked at the door, and then down at himself. He should probably put some clothes on first, right?
Cordelia walked into the lobby of Angel's hotel, muttering to herself about underappreciated employees who were sent on errands to get really disgusting ingredients from magic shops, and saw Doyle sprawled out on the couch. She stopped, and stared, and he waved a little, cheerily. "Been a while, Princess," he said, and with a smothered shriek she stalked across the tiled floor and slapped him as hard as she could.
Or tried to, rather. Her hand passed through his face like it was empty air, without so much as a chill or a tingle to show that she'd just passed through Doyle's very solid-seeming body. Seeming being the operative word. He grinned at her, stood up, and stretched until his body was drawn into a long, lean line before relaxing back into a more normal pose.
"You seem to have developed a habit of doing that, Princess," he told her, pale green eyes twinkling cheerfully. "Not more'n a few minutes before I kicked away the mortal coil, and now this. I have to say, I'm wounded. Seems you didn't miss me as you ought. Hurts less now, though."
"Because you're dead," Cordelia snapped. "Why're you back?"
"So friendly, so welcoming, so…" His hands sketched helpless curves in the air as he searched for the word. "So not."
"Funny," she said flatly. "You're just the funniest dead guy I've ever met. Of course, my standard for comparison is a big, broody vampire with disturbing fashion sense and no sense of humor, so that's not saying much."
"I heard that," Angel said from the steps, and Cordelia briefly focused her ire on him. "You always hear it," she snaps, just as Doyle whips around and grins at the vampire, speaking loudly enough that he overrides her less-than-delicate voice.
"Angel man, come join our touching reunion. Cordy here seems to be less than grateful that she's seeing me handsome face again."
"I'm sure she's just in shock," Angel said dryly. "Your return is a little surprising, you know. Be grateful," he told Cordelia, "that he merely waited for you on the couch. I woke up this morning to find him lying on top of me."
"You didn't," she told Doyle disbelievingly, but then she shook her head. "Of course you did. Who did I think I was talking to anyway?"
Doyle shrugged, a pleased little smile dancing across his lips. "All that muscle makes for a very nice pillow where I can lay to rest my ghostly head. And he's warm."
"Of course he's not warm," Cordelia snapped. "He's dead. He has no body heat."
"He does to a ghost," Doyle pointed out with irrefutable logic. Irrefutable because Cordelia didn't know enough about ghosts to argue, so she just scowled and moved on to her next bone of contention.
"You kissed me," she snarled, and Doyle clapped a dramatic hand over his chest and fixed a hurt expression on his face.
"My heart, my heart. You wound me, Princess. As kisses go, that one was off the scale."
"The visions that you passed on to me are pretty off the scale, yeah. If your scale measures pain!"
Angel had been watching their little spat with no small amount of interest, and upon her last sally he saw genuine regret cross Doyle's face for a moment before it vanished. It lurked in his eyes, though, as he said, "I didn't know it was going to happen, Cordy. I swear to you that I didn't. I can't say that I would have done things differently if I'd known, but I didn't. I wouldn't have willingly inflicted a burden like that upon you."
Her expression softened, and she said reluctantly, "I know. You're taking them back now, though, right?"
He sighed and shook his head at her hopeful expression. "Sorry, Cordy. I can't. I'm not alive, darlin'- I can't carry the visions without life. No one can."
She glared at him briefly before giving up and flopping onto the couch beside him. "It was worth a try, I guess."
"It usually is," he agreed, then looked up at Angel. "Any reason you're still standin', chief?"
Before Angel could come up with an appropriately snarly answer, Wesley strode into the room. He stopped and smiled at Doyle, then frowned at Angel and Cordelia. "I could have sworn you said you were going to play with them for a while first," he said mildly. When Doyle said nothing, Wesley just sighed. "You could have at least waited for me, so that I could see the show."
"I'm an impatient fellow," Doyle said with a shrug, and Angel glanced back and forth between them with confusion written all over his face.
"You two know each other?"
"I told you we did," Doyle said, just as Wesley affirmed, "Last night. Technically, this morning." Doyle shot a grin at him, one that contained the sort of easy mischief that it was difficult to resist. Wesley suddenly realized exactly why Angel and Cordelia had missed him so much while he was gone, and why he had felt that he needed to work so hard to fill the man's spot without ever succeeding. It was clear that no one could ever fill this man's shoes, especially not him, but he'd made his own place nonetheless. And now that Doyle was back, Wesley suddenly thought that maybe he wouldn't be discarded. Maybe they could work together. Maybe they could be friends.
"Speaking of last night," Doyle said to Cordelia, breaking through Wesley's musings, "the imaginary demon trick was a nice one. Well, not nice for Wes here, but right vicious, none th'less. I'm proud of you."
"What did you do?" Angel asked Cordelia with ominous curiosity, and her gaze shifted frantically back and forth as she tried to figure out a way out if the situation. Wes took pity on her- Doyle decided that he'd have to train the man out of that- and held up a hand in a pacifying gesture to Angel.
"She didn't do anything," he said, and Cordelia shot him a grateful look. "Doyle just making trouble."
"I am not!" Doyle protested, right on cue, with an appropriately childish tone. Angel shifted his dark gaze to the ghost and lifted an eyebrow in inquiry. Wes and Doyle exchanged a glance of shared triumph before Doyle starting talking, spilling his perfectly Irish bullshit with a speed that would have been astonishing on anyone else.
And of course, Angel fell for it hook, line, and sinker, "just like the big, brooding sucker he is," as Cordelia remarked in an undertone to Wesley as she watched in disgust. Wesley wasn't paying attention, because Gunn had just walked in, and the skittering heat that always tickled down his spine whenever the other man was around had already started doing a tap-dance at the small of his back. He nodded a friendly greeting to Gunn and then turned his focus back to Doyle and Angel, who was well on his way to being wrapped around the Irishman's slender fingers.
If he wasn't already there.
Wes decided that he would save that thought for another time. The way that Angel looked at Doyle whenever he thought the ghost couldn't see him was painfully obvious, especially to someone who had experience at pining for someone you couldn't touch. Of course, Wesley had never pined for someone he couldn't literally touch, so he imagined it had to be worse for Angel. But again, he'd think about it later.
"Who's the little guy?" Gunn asked softly from directly behind Wes, who managed not to jump, despite the fact that the hairs on his neck had all stood straight up when he'd felt the whisper of Gun's breath on his skin.
"That's Doyle," he explained, keeping his voice equally low.
"Hey, wasn't he the dude that…"
"Died?" Cordelia finished acerbically. "Yeah, that's our boy. He's a ghost now, and somehow even more annoying than ever."
"Looks pretty solid for a ghost," Gunn observed.
"Try hitting him," Cordelia suggested. "He's a lot less solid than he looks."
"I'll take your word for it," Gunn said amiably, and turned his attention back to the pair on the couch.
Angel was actually starting to look dizzy, Wesley noticed with some interest, and so with a shrug he picked up a pillow from his end of the couch and threw it through Doyle's head.
"Hey!" the ghost complained. "That actually tickles, you know."
"Put that silver tongue of yours to better use and explain to three of us in this room that are not me what you told me last night. Er, this morning."
Doyle sighed, and made a face at having his game interrupted, but immediately launched into the tale of his death and what happened after. Angel held up a hand to stop the flow of words when Doyle got to the part about the dreams, and he said, "You were actually in all of our dreams? As in, you could see them?"
"And participate, if I wanted a bit o' fun," Doyle added. "At first it was just to soothe Cordy's nightmares, and yours, but later I just messed around."
Wes, Gunn, and Cordelia all watched with fascination as Angel blushed. They'd never seen him blush before- didn't even know he could blush- and they all started to wonder just what Doyle was doing in his dreams that was making him blush quite that shade of red. Gunn and Cordelia still looked clueless, but Wesley, knowing exactly what Angel was blushing about, sent a scorching glare towards Doyle and did his best to slam the door shut on the images parading through his mind.
"Wait," Cordelia said suddenly. "You could get into dreams?"
"That's what I said, princess."
"Can you still?"
"Sure," Doyle said with some surprise. "Easier here, if anything. Better range."
"Did you, perhaps, sneak into my dream while I was taking a nap in Angel's car this morning on the way here?"
He offered a sheepish grin. "Maybe?" She threw another pillow through his head, prompting another yelp of "Tickles, dammit!"
"Just finish your story," she said, and he gave an abused sigh before rolling his eyes and getting back to the tale.
Later that day Angel sat on the couch and watched Doyle. The smaller man- ghost- was behind the counter with Cordelia, winking in and out of visibility and stealing her pens every time she looked around in an effort to spot him. Her threats were starting to become creative enough to make even Angel wince. But he could see the twinkle of humor his here eyes and knew that she was just glad to have Doyle back.
Doyle was… different. Angel couldn't entirely put his finger on the change, but he could see it in the mischief, the bantering. There'd always been some of that in him, sure, but he'd rarely tweaked everyone's tails so fearlessly, just to get everyone stirred up so he could have a good laugh about it. A bit like Spike, Angel thought, only much less vicious and wasn't that a comparison he would rather have never made.
The truth was, the Doyle he'd known had always been too hesitant. Oh sure, he's blustered and made jokes and talked his ways out of things with his skilled Irish tongue (oh god images) but the truth was, some part of Doyle has always been afraid of something. Of himself. That was gone now, and all that was left was a man-ghost-whatever that was relentlessly full of himself and ready to play.
He wondered when, exactly, the change had taken place. He had a few suspicions- he's seen the slightly wistful smile on Doyle's face when he spoke of the "halfway place," and he suspected that the ghost was really lying. He'd been in Heaven. Angel was almost sure of it. He'd obviously found some sort of peace, even with himself. And yet he'd come back. For what?
He stewed over it the whole evening, through a mundane-patrol-and-kill through a couple of vamp bars, through the short drive home and the much longer shower afterwards. But by the time he crawled into bed a short while after midnight, he was no closer to an answer.
Doyle said he'd come back for something. But what was so precious that he'd give up Heaven to have it by his side?
Soft mouth with a sharp hint of teeth and evil tongue, drifting over his chest while lean poet's hands, strong and callused despite their apparent frailty, explored busily. One moved southward, causing his eyes to roll into the back of his head and-
He was awake, panting for the air he didn't need and staring with wide eyes into Doyle's own. The ghost was lying on top of him again, and that heated tingle-prickle spark that felt almost like electricity was buzzing over his entire body. He caught his lower lip between his teeth, wanting that tingle to be rubbing over his cock where it would do the most good, but he kept his hips still against the bed.
Doyle seemed to read his mind, though, because he scooted a few inches lower and started rubbing his hips over Angel's in sinuous circles. A groan welled up in the vampire's chest and rumbled in the back of his throat, and his hips snapped off the bed as his head arched back blindly. The sight of Doyle's lust-filled eyes combined with the tingle-prickle over his cock was enough to make him start coming.
Doyle made little soothing rumbling noises in his throat and waited for Angel's eyes to unglaze and focus on his own. When they did he gave a little encouraging smile, and said, "Was it as good for you as it was for me?"
Angel snorted a tired laugh and let his head flop back onto the pillows. "Cute." He was silent for a minuet, just looking at Doyle's face pillowed on the curve of his biceps, and then said hesitantly, almost in a whisper, "Doyle, what's going on here? Not just what you told us downstairs this morning, but… this." One hand waved, indicating the bed and its two occupants. "Us."
Doyle didn't answer for a minute, just stared off into space with this quiet look on his face that was causing little jagged pains to ripple over Angel's unbeating heart. "Do you know," Doyle mused, still with that faraway look on his face, "that I was dead about nine months? The first week," he continued, not giving Angel a chance to answer, "I just sorta… wandered around. It was green, and vivid and alive and beautiful, and a few days after arriving I found a pub and went in, sat down. It was… bliss. Amazing. For the first week I was in a daze of happiness.
"The second week I finally learned I was in Heaven, or at least the closest thing to it. S'not the place where the heroes go when they die, not the Elysian fields of eternal bliss, but it was pretty perfect by my standards. The third week I discovered I could see into dreams of anyone I focused on. You and Cordy had the most appalling nightmares… I would say you wouldn't believe them, except I'm sure you remember them well enough, having dreamed them yourself.
"The fourth week I realized I could step into the dreams, start playing with the outcomes. I did my damnedest to stop the nightmares for you two. Cordy because she was my friend, and you because… I'll get to that later.
"Wes came into your lives, and I started watching his dreams too, because he was close to you and even from afar, I was protective. He's such a confused young man… far less than when you found him, Angel, but his nightmares break my heart.
"Right around then you started to dream of me… differently. I'd finally cleared the last of the nightmares away, I think, and when they were gone your dreams of me reverted to what I can only assume was your usual style. I… was stunned. I mean, here was this tall, gorgeous guy with the whole Dark Avenger thing going for him, and I'd certainly been lusting after him for weeks before my death, and I looked in one night and there I was, naked on your bed with your lips wrapped around my cock. You can believe me when I say I jumped into the dream just as fast as you please that night, and every night after.
"But it wasn't just the sex, Angel. Sometimes you didn't wake up before you came, and if you came in your sleep, you always curled around me in your dreams just as I know you would have in real life. And you always told me you loved me. Every single time.
"I'm not going to allow you to pretend it didn't happen, or that it wasn't the truth," Doyle told him, regarding him with steady eyes. "Because I know the truth. I was there. You're not allowed to say that you don't love me, because… because I love you."
Angel stared at him for a long, heartbreaking moment before trying to wrap Doyle in his arms. They just sank through his skin with a slow-burning tingle, and Doyle looked at him with sad eyes. "We can't touch, Angel. Not while you're awake. We can't ever truly touch. Not unless you're dreaming. Do you understand that?" When Angel just nodded mutely, Doyle traced one finger in the air a breath above his lips. "Can you accept it?"
"I can," Angel said hoarsely, speaking for the first time in a long time. "I can accept anything if it means I'm with you."
Doyle smiled gently and rubbed his cheek against Angel's, leaving little sparks in his wake. "Then go to sleep. I'll be there when you arrive in the Dreaming, Angel," he said when the vampire made a complaining noise at the back of his throat. "I'll be waiting."
"Alright," Angel whispered, and then he closed his eyes. With the ease of long, forced practice, he slid smoothly into sleep, and when he stepped through the gateway of the Dreaming Doyle was waiting for him, a smile on his face and love in his eyes. Angel reached out and took his hand, and Doyle laced their fingers together before standing on tiptoe and molding his lips to Angel's.
And it was perfect.
Lindsey watched as Darla paced restlessly back and forth across his office, her bare feet sinking into the plush carpet with silent footsteps. Finally, tired of the waiting silence, he asked softly, "Darla, what went wrong? What happened?"
"I couldn't get in," she said, just as softly. "I couldn't get in."
"What do you mean?"
"Angel," she said listlessly, and suddenly dropped into a chair on the other side of the room. "I couldn't get into his dreams."
Lindsey sat very still for a moment, his agile mind racing. "Maybe there's some element of the magic that's not right," he suggested. "Maybe-"
"I know what's wrong," she told him. "There was already something there. There's already something living in his dreams."
"What?" he demanded quietly. "What's in his dreams?"
"I don't know," she said, and one tear seemed to trickle down her cheek, or was it just a trick of the light? "I don't know."
"You have no idea?" he said. "The more we know about this, the sooner we can take care of it."
"There is one thing," she said, and ducked her head. He could see her eyes, predator's eyes gleaming at him through the fall of blonde hair.
"What is it?"
"His head's all dead inside," she whispered.
The next couple weeks slowly developed into a pattern. Angel would wake up sometime around noon and join Cordelia in the lobby. Usually Wes was around too, reading- he'd decided that he wanted to go through Angel's private library, or what was left of it after the explosion. He said that he wanted to know where everything was so he could find things in a hurry, but Angel held a sneaking suspicion that he just wanted to find something useful to do.
Sometimes Gunn would show up, usually as the sun was starting to set, to see if there was anything interesting for him to kill. If nothing else had come up, Angel would head out to hit a couple of the vamp bars, and Gunn usually tagged along out of boredom. Doyle would go along, or not, depending on the mood in the office that evening- if Cordelia or Wes were in a bad mood, he's stay behind to tease circles around them until they were so mad at him they couldn't remember why they were upset before. If everything was roses and sunshine he'd follow after Angel, but usually just to watch. He'd discovered that he had some ability to move things around, like strangling someone or stabbing them, but he couldn't pick up anything heavy. Angel now kept a few spare daggers and stakes and a coil of reinforced titanium wire with him whenever he went out, just in case Doyle decided to tag along and felt like helping.
When they got back from whatever slaying needed to be done, Cordelia was usually long gone and Wes was usually curled up on the couch, still reading. Angel always went upstairs to take a shower, and Doyle hung around to talk to Wes until Angel was ready for bed. Then he'd zoom upstairs and curl up on top of Angel while the vampire went to sleep, and they'd stay locked in dreams the rest of the night and through the morning, when Angel would get up at noon and the pattern would repeat again.
There were breaks in the pattern, of course. Sometimes Cordelia would get a vision and they would all drop everything to battle evil and help the hopeless. Sometime Doyle would see something in someone's dreams and they do the same. Doyle, everyone soon found out, had almost a split brain when it came to the Dreaming. Half of him was always there, always scanning dreams from all of LA and farther, sorting them into logical sequences and storing information. And he did this at the same time that he did everything else, somehow keeping a simultaneous awareness of the real world and the world of the dreaming. He'd be teasing Cordelia, maybe tickling the back of Wesley's neck with a feather, and all of a sudden he'd stop everything and run off to grab Angel, saying only that there was trouble. Cordelia may have gotten the visions, but Doyle was still every bit a Messenger, no matter how dead he may have been.
And then there was the ever-present tension between Wesley and Gunn. Even though Doyle seemed to be the only one to pick up on it, sexual tension practically oozed between them every time they were in a room together. They were also constantly bickering over something or other, but Doyle figured that it was just another symptom of attraction.
After that first early morning talk with Wesley when he'd first reentered the mortal place, he'd been drawn to the man. He was such a welter of ambition and fear with an overwhelming desire to belong. He reminded Doyle of himself, in that at least. Doyle knew that he'd never been quite that uptight and British and booksmart, but a lot of the essential bits, the driving forces behind their wildly different personalities… oh yeah, underneath it all they were mostly the same. He'd found that as much as he enjoyed teasing the Princess and just lying on his stomach, invisible, in the air above Angel's desk just to watch him, during the day the time he enjoyed most was when he just sat with the Englishman, talking about whatever came to mind. Or when Angel was up in the shower, cleaning all the dust and/or demon gore off his body, when he would stretch out on the couch and talk to Wes about the important things in life, things he didn't even really discuss with Angel all that much. Angel was a wonderful person, loving and devoted, but he had a lot that he already brooded about. He didn't need to hear Doyle's agonies, and Wes did. Wes needed someone he could be close to with nothing between them but friendship, and it turned out that Doyle needed exactly the same thing.
They talked about their pasts, their dreams and worries and desires. Doyle told him about Harry and discovering his demon half. Wesley told him about his father. Doyle told him about their separation, quitting his job, getting lost in the bottle. Wes told him about becoming a Watcher and hating it, but still giving it his all and thinking he excelled at it until he came to Sunnydale. Doyle told him about the bone-crushing visions he was "gifted" with, the agony of seeing and feeling so much of everyone's pain. Wesley told him about his supreme failure as a Watcher, being fired, and making his way to LA as a "rogue demon hunter" and how laughable he was even at that. Doyle told him about meeting Angel and then Cordelia, finally facing up to his fear of himself, and his death. Wes told him about how he'd finally found his place there, at Angel Investigations.
They talked about Gunn.
Wes had it bad, Doyle knew. It wasn't just lust on his side of the table. Doyle hesitated to say that he was in love with Gunn, but it was close, whatever it was. And even though Gunn had a major case of the hots for the slender, quiet Englishman, Doyle couldn't tell if there was anything else there. His dreams were erotic, sure, but there didn't seem to be anything else there. He didn't mention that to Wes, though, when they were having their late-night talks, and Wes didn't ask. Maybe he didn't want to know. In any case, Doyle wasn't planning on telling him anything to discourage him even further if he could possibly help it.
Doyle was a calming influence on them all, that was certain. The ghost gave the office a sense of balance that four colliding personalities hadn't had before. When he was there Angel didn't brood as much, Cordelia wasn't as bitchy as usual, and Wes and Gunn didn't fight as much. Unfortunately, he wasn't always there. Sometimes he went off somewhere entirely his own, and wouldn't tell them where he'd gone off to. Those were the days where the primary peacemaker in the office was Cordelia, since Angel wasn't much use, and Cordelia wasn't very good at running interference between Wes and Gunn. They were bickering more than ever, and she was starting to go crazy listening to it constantly.
Doyle's disappearances were getting longer and longer, Cordelia noticed. He would go to that place that he wouldn't tell them about, and he'd be gone for hours when before he wasn't gone more than half an hour at a time. She was probably the only one who did notice, except for Angel, who would follow Doyle's every moment when he was actually in the office and visible. Doyle spent a lot of time invisible, just so that the vampire could actually get some work done.
So maybe Angel didn't really notice the full extent of how much more his lover was gone. Maybe Cordelia didn't see all of it either, but she still noticed that he was leaving more and more, and she wanted to know where he was going. And why, definitely why.
But she didn't have too much free time to worry about it, because the office was falling apart around her. Doyle helped, sure, but he couldn't work miracles, and it became increasingly clear that he had something on his mind to deal with. Finally, after one particularly nasty shouting match, Gunn started coming around less and less and Wesley just buried himself deeper into books, trying not to let it show that he was hurt. And Angel… Cordelia didn't know about Angel. Recently, he'd seemed both there and not-there. Not brooding, exactly, but… thoughtful. She wanted to know why, but wasn't quite brave enough to ask him directly. Normally yes, but he seemed sort of… fragile. Which was a weird description of Angel, she told herself, but it was the one that stayed in her head nonetheless. She wanted to know what was going on with everyone, but no one seemed willing to tell her.
She'd find out eventually, she knew. It was just hard to wait. But she'd waited before, and she could do it again. All it took was a little patience. Admittedly, she didn't have a lot of patience, but she could do it.
It would be worth it to get some peace around the office again. It was starting to disturb her sleep, and she was getting little smudges under her eyes that were becoming increasingly hard to cover up with makeup.
And that was just simply not acceptable.