DORCHESTER, BOSTON MAY 2004
Bob, and Carol and Ted and Alice - not that Faith and her indignant partner would be familiar with the late sixties movie and its group bed scene. But the movie's set-up resembled how Angel found his first shot at being a human again since being infected with Mohra demon blood.
Angel would have felt more at ease if the only clothing on offer in Faith's apartment hadn't been a red satin kimono that only came up to mid thigh on him. Robin was too narrow in the waist for his spare clothing to be of any good to Angel. The kimono didn't fit well and Angel's appearance mattered to him.
"Can I just ask what the hell are you doin' here, in my apartment, naked as a jay-bird and with a freakin' pulse?" Faith clad in quickly pulled on clothes lying on the floor from the night before, automatically searched for a cigarette inside the Morley's packet she'd left on the dining table in her tiny living room.
Angel reached across for one too. He always did smoke on and off under stress. "I don't know. One minute an overgrown lizard's breathing fire over me - the next I'm in your bed alive."
"Well shit, yah human. Let's hear it for the good guys – you Sanshued." Faith tolerantly let Angel light her cigarette for her. His manners were so old fashioned sometimes.
"He Shan what?" A hastily dressed unshaven Robin needed to be filled in on the prophecy. "What about that peroxide killer that murdered my mother, don't tell me he got rewarded too?"
"Spike?" Angel sincerely hoped not. So Robin couldn't stand Spike, Faith's tastes in guys must have improved since Sunnydale.
Being clothed in fashionable attire once more thanks to Faith's credit card getting a quick Saturday mid-morning work out didn't console Angel in the slightest after Faith got off the phone to Giles that evening.
It was easy for Faith to fake concern over the message Angel left on her answer phone the previous night - urging Faith never to give up her quest for redemption. She inquired what the hell happened in L.A. Giles didn't need to know Angel became human yet, if ever.
Angel didn't want Giles to know anything about him after the man's refusal to help Fred and Buffy could go jump in a lake for the same reason. Buffy could go jump in a lake for another reason too.
"Well that's great; Spike wakes up in bed with Buffy. I was over her." Angel announced pettily to a skeptical Robin and Faith. "I was dating someone else anyway."
Robin couldn't believe how socially immature the guy was, "In that case why didn't you wake up between Nina's sheets - is Faith a slayer consolation prize?" Robin still didn't get why the hell Angel woke up in bed in his birthday suit with Robin's ex-girlfriend and dear God – him.
Faith realized again why she and Robin were over. She felt kind of bummed about hearing how Wesley died; she didn't ever need to hear dumb (or maybe true) shit like she came second best to B. on top of sad news.
Faith honestly didn't think she qualified to be part of Angel's human prize package. Apart from being her moral savior Angel was sort of her friend after his prison visits to her, one of the few true friends she'd ever had. There was an attraction between them more on her side than his sadly but they'd never seen each other naked until this morning. She admired his gryphon tattoo come to think of it, considering he'd got it done in the eighteenth century the ink held up well.
Angel always appreciated Faith's breasts when they were on display and her mean right hook but he preferred blondes. He omitted to tell Buffy the full truth about a lot of things in Sunnydale. Firstly and foremost as a young man in Ireland, Liam liked whores for bedding and ladies for courting. Buffy fell into the modern category of a lady, that's why Angel fell in love with her and later Cordelia. Secondly he knew his love for part demon Cordelia had been far healthier than his obsession with Buffy.
The way Buffy kept harping on about their past relationship irritated him when he came to Sunnydale twelve months ago to drop off the amulet to her. Angel was far more interested in hearing about how Spike achieved soul status, and far more worried he'd done the right thing with Connor, than rehashing some sick love affair between a three hundred year old vampire and a teenage slayer. Ironic seeing how helping Buffy fight an apocalypse was the reason he refused his chance at being human the first time around.
Angel only went on his wild goose chase to Rome because he hated The Immortal, not because he still loved Buffy. Well that's what he better start telling himself because Spike landed Buffy. Spike! Fine then.
Angel couldn't work out why the hell he was in Boston either. He'd signed his shot at being human away to bring down The Circle of the Black Thorn so why was he back as well as Spike and why with Faith?
"Maybe I'm meant to protect you not screw you." Faith decided in the end impulsively, stubbing out a cigarette firmly in the ash-tray in platonic emphasis. "Wolfram and Hart must still want you dead and yah helpless as a kitten up a tree like all human males against vamps."
Robin spluttered in his coffee indignantly, how pray tell did one account for the numerous vampires he took out independently? Robin realized anew why he and the tactless Faith were definitely over.
Angel got his first big clue as to the reason behind his newly acquired breather status as he traveled on a Massachusetts Bay Transport Authority train to a job interview as a dish washer. Cash flow problems were already presenting themselves, there were things he needed as a human in the twenty-first century that hadn't been a problem for him as a vampire - deodorant for example. He couldn't sponge off Faith indefinitely; he was developing a crick in his neck from sleeping on her sofa for the past two days.
The train carriage Angel boarded in Dorchester didn't have many passengers thankfully. So there weren't many witnesses to what happened to him. One minute he was staring at the subway map on the wall, hoping Connor was safe wherever his son disappeared to ground, the next moment Angel cradled his head in his hands yelping like a dog with the pain of his blinding vision.
God, how did Doyle and Cordelia stand them? Angel fell to his knees with the unexpected pain, the disorientating scene before his eyes turned his stomach.
"You alright, son?" An elderly man was helping him up to his feet.
"I need a public phone." Angel lurched out the sliding doors as the train stopped at the next station and called Faith at her job as a life guard in the Dorchester YMCA.
"I've had a vision, that werewolf you're planning to track tonight; he bites you on the right arm. You'll turn into a werewolf too if that happens. Not that being a werewolf is bad necessarily." Angel soothed, panting slightly from the shock of his vision. "Yeah, it looks like I've been touched with the sight." Angel mistakenly thought Cordelia only passed him on a one off vision to bring down the Circle of the Black Thorn but might have he received the whole deluxe deal - including his brain exploding from the inside out in three years time?
Faith happily dragged Angel along with her to capture the feral werewolf, Angel possessed mad fighting skills she was sure. She first intended to kill dog boy and have done with it but Angel pricked her conscience about the lunar furry guy deserving a chance to get himself a cage installed in his Cambridge condo.
Angel almost landed up getting mauled in the struggle to sedate the werewolf. Faith told him immediately not to trouble himself accompanying her anymore, the visions were help enough – really, dude.
Angel felt very emasculated. He could tell Faith made a token effort not to hurt his feelings about banning him from her supernatural seek and destroy hunts. She failed.
Angel struggled to look on the bright side - with the visions he could still fight the good fight.
Except Angel didn't get any more visions' for weeks, not a one, not even the vision that would have prevented him staying out of a hospital.
JUNE, BOSTON 2004
Christina Aguilera played over the loud speakers in the coffee house kitchen where Angel submerged his reddened hands in warm soapy water and scrubbed at the dirty pots. Angel didn't have a social security number, Angel didn't have a G.E.D., Angel didn't have a passport to return to Ireland where he thought he might quite like to go to see the sea off the Galway Coast sparkling in the sunlight. Angel couldn't use magic to get identification in case Wolfram and Hart found out about him. He was an unqualified twenty-six year old human male in a world where ID ruled and had been extremely fortunate to get hold of this cash under the table job.
There was no way he could afford to move out of Faith's apartment just yet. Angel couldn't see short of robbing a bank how he could afford his own place in months. Faith suggested akwardly the previous night maybe they should look for a two bedroom apartment together.
Angel brooded over being a charity case, he was meant to be a champion.
"To be sure yah a champion at dish-washin', sport." The middle aged woman who ran the coffee house patted him approvingly on the shoulder as she came in to place an order with the cook out the back.
Oh god.
Maybe the desire to be a hero ran too strong in him, Angel still didn't understand why he finally got to be a human. He had a lot to atone for – the responsibility for Fred's, Wesley and presumably Gunn's deaths lay at his door. And Lindsay too, although who gave a crap about that Texan bastard? Not Angel. But Angel should not have engineered Lorne murdering him. Should Angel feel guilty over Lorne's drinking problem? Yes, Angel should take that on board his burdened shoulders as well.
As Angel trudged home depressed that early evening from the train station, fretting over the evil he endorsed over the past twelve months, he spotted a young man struggling with a teenage girl trying to push her into a small blue Honda. She was blonde.
"Help!" the girl screamed out to the twilight sky imploringly. "Somebody help!"
Angel raced over to the struggling couple preparing to be a Good Samaritan.
"Driving a Japanese import making you act out your pain on others?" Angel pulled the heavy-set guy off the girl roughly.
"Mind your own frickin' business, dick." The young man spat at Angel incensed. "She's my kid sister and she's run away from home!"
There was a certain family resemblance now Angel could see them both closely.
"Maybe she doesn't want to go home." Angel pronounced sternly to the youth pulling his arm back.
"She's on drugs! She don't know what she wants. Fuck off!" The young man twisted around, landing a dazing blow on Angel's jutting forehead.
Angel always liked a good brawl both as a vampire and as a human. But crap, the girl did indeed seem high on something. In fact now she was sitting voluntarily in the front seat of the car, singing the theme tune to Friends and giggling to herself. Whoops.
"I was… trying to help." Angel held his hands up in appeasement, backing away feeling a complete moron.
"Like I said, just buzz off." The guy repeated in exasperation, calming down.
Angel took a further step backwards off the side walk and got bowled over by a passing car. Wearing black all the time made him hard to see in the fading light.
The hit and run driver of the car didn't stop and the big brother of the teen runaway ended up calling for an ambulance.
Angel sat in the wheelchair discharged and waiting patiently for Faith to collect him after she finished paying for his treatment at the reception desk. He apparently interrupted a big date for her, because Faith's outfit suggested seduction was on the menu as well as soup of the day.
"A broken leg and arm, shit." Faith frowned at his collateral bodily damage then cheered up. "Want me to write somethin' dirty on the plaster?"
"Bite me." Angel scowled at her suspiciously. "How did you manage to wrangle my ID?" Thank god she had in the nick of time, otherwise the Boston Medical Center seemed on the verge of contacting Homeland Security about his identificationless state. And he didn't have health insurance. Hell, he now owed Faith even more money.
"I told you I was workin' on it." She lowered her voice and began to wheel him over to the elevators. "No magic. I finally got in contact with one of my Mom's ex-boyfriends. He's I.R.A. The commie bastard came out here twenty years ago on the run and specializes in fake identities to finance his drinkin' habit now, seeing how the Glorious Struggle sorta ended in '97."
"You know about Irish history?" Angel blinked, surprised. Faith's general knowledge was appalling in most areas. He wouldn't have been surprised if she couldn't locate Ireland on a map of the world.
"Who the hell doesn't in this city?" Faith sighed resignedly, pushing Angel carefully through the elevator doors. "We're in luck, this guy I was havin' dinner with is gonna drive us home."
"Who is he?" Angel tried to make small talk with customary effort.
"Uh he's called Sean Dignam. He's a Statie." Faith didn't seem to believe her date's occupation herself. "He's not exactly nice or nothin'. But who am I to turn down an opportunity for a free steak dinner? He's hot, I mean I have standards."
The elevator doors parted onto the garage level of the hospital. Faith wheeled Angel through parked cars.
Sitting in the front seat of his dark green Mercury, Dignam was going over paper work on his lap top. His first fucking formal date in two months brought short by Faith's room-mate or something getting hit by a car. Apparently the guy was called Angel what kind of fucking homo name was that? Was the guy Italian or something? He looked like he could be.
"You a fuckin' Guinea?" Dignam asked Angel once he helped Faith seat Angel carefully in the back seat and stow the foldable wheel-chair on lease from the hospital in the trunk of his car.
"I'm Irish-American - like you in that one respect only." Angel could claim to be an American war hero in a way after his submarine escapades against Nazis. If only he could get a veterans allowance. What an asshole this Dignam guy was. If Angel was still a vampire he could be freaking this bastard out by not having his reflection show up in the driving mirror. Angel quickly checked his appearance. Oh he did not look good, and he didn't have vampire fast healing anymore, he'd be out of action for weeks.
Dignam drove Faith and Angel home. He checked out the sleeping arrangements with interest. From the blanket and pillow folded tidily on the sofa it seemed Faith told the truth, this Angel guy wasn't sleeping with her. Didn't mean she wasn't screwing him.
"You have my bed." Faith ordered Angel helping him into her bedroom. "You can't sleep on the sofa with a broken leg and arm, bud."
Angel was too groggy with pain medication to put up a feeble protest about it. He went to bed gratefully.
Faith was left alone in her living room with Dignam. They shared milky coffee and a brief sarcastic conversation before Dignam got paged to go back into his office for some development on a case he was working on. Dignam was convinced by this stage Faith wasn't banging her house guest.
"I can swing you a camp stretcher from my folks place and a comfy mattress. If yah going to be crashin' on yah sofa the next month." Dignam plunged his hands in his pants pockets ready to make his departure.
"Thanks." Faith guessed his unexpected generous offer came into the 'being surprised by a decent guy category', this kind of crap Robin always sprung on her while they were together. She saw Dignam to her front door.
"You get paged like that all the time?" Faith leaned on her doorframe, in a position that guaranteed to stick her breasts out further against the clinging black dress she wore.
"I'm incredibly fuckin' important and my input is needed into every major decision." Dignam confessed modestly. "You gonna kiss me good night or save it until I bone you?"
"What makes you think I'm gonna kiss you when we screw?" Faith threatened, slipping her arms around his neck and kissing him thoroughly.
Shit, it was all so fucking romantic.
God, it was all so damn depressing. Angel drank his beer with his uninjured left hand and watched Judge Judy on the television. He was mortal, anything could kill him - cars, Asian Bird flu, AIDS, he'd have to start using rubbers if he ever managed to have sex again. God he missed Nina and Cordelia today too. Not that he ever got to make love to Cordy.
Why was he human? This big thing he'd been working towards seemed pointless somehow. The fruits of victory bitter.
Faith came out of the bathroom with damp hair and make up applied, preparing to go off to a local cemetery and stake any emerging vampires. "You know drinkin' by yahself isn't healthy, and yah reminding me of 'Mommy'? And you now hafta worry about cirrhosis of the liver, pal."
"I don't want to talk about it." Angel sulked; he couldn't believe she was bringing up his solo drinking and depression. What else could he do or be, stuck inside the house, unemployed and crippled? He couldn't even draw.
"Well, maybe you should, yah all blue the whole time. I don't mean talk to me. I'm not a good listener to others woes." Faith admitted frankly. She was worried about him, she knew he brooded but this was ridiculous. "Look, you got that victim support group letter that offered free shrink visits because you were the bowlin' pin of a hit and run. Why not take 'em up?"