taxonomites | xvii [ visual ] / [ location: hyperion hotel ].

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xvii [ visual ] / [ location: hyperion hotel ].

Good at talking about his feelings, Angel is not. He's bad with words as it is and that, coupled with his penchant for bottling, means that talking isn't so much not good as it's non-existent. He's more of a man of action and boy do his actions give away hints towards all that he's keeping inside under lock and key. Especially to those who know him well. There are three things Angel does when stress is starting to get the better of him: cook, tai-chi and draw. The former seems to be the most preferred, as people get free food out of it and the man's a damn good cook for someone who doesn't have the taste buds for the things he knows how to make. Right now, however, he's indulging the latter.

Angel sits on one of the red couches in the lobby of the hotel which, while still sporting signs of the damage he and Spike did to it during their duet earlier that month (namely the body-shaped holes through two walls as the desk wreckage had been cleaned up and cleared out), is actually pretty spotless. This may or may not be due to a certain brunette Slayer having not been around lately to trash it. His feet are propped up and there's a sketch book on his lap and a pencil in his hand.

He's good. He's really good, as is shown by the dragon he's currently sketching as he alternates between moving the pencil against the page and blending lines together with his thumb and fingers that are already covered in graphite in a telltale sign that he's been at this for a while now.

Several things are eating away at him and this is his way of trying to ignore that gnawing and focus on something else.

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"You just never... what?" she prompts him, especially when she notices that he was frowning. People usually beam over praises - lord knows she does, always - but Angel has always been... well, special. In many ways, including the 'kinda retarded' way, too.

As for Cordelia the dragon... seeing him on paper is freaky enough as it is. Him appearing in Taxon? Definitely not something she wants to witness.

"Never indulged it, that's all," is his answer, accompanied with a shrug. That frown's still in place, though. "Wasn't ever a viable option."

Again with that little voice in the back of his head telling him that he could've done something with this particular skill of his if he hadn't been turned into a vampire.

"Well, it is now," she says. Cordelia reaches over the counter to slap his arm. "Hey, maybe we can even earn something from this. You know, have a sign out front that says, 'Handsome Vampire Willing to Draw You, For a Price!' Might prove to be more profitable than the detective agency, don't you think?"

...she's mostly kidding. Or not, if Angel will agree to the idea.

"No," he says firmly and emphatically, pushing off against the counter as he turns around and walks over to the weapon's cabinet.

It's not you, Cordy, it's issues that have been a brewing since the 1700s. Angel's father is one of the touchiest subjects of all and being good at drawing is one of those ties that binds one thing to another.

She blinks at him in confusion, before moving around the counter and following him to the weapon's cabinet.

"Why not?" Cordelia insists. "I mean... okay, so it was a pretty lameass joke, but my point is that we could use your talent for something, Angel! I mean, what's the point of having a talent if you're not gonna use it?"

The point of having a talent if you're not going to use it? That, he found very bitterly amusing - something he would've held back, if not for the already touchy mood he's been in since the kidnappings. Angel laughed and shook his head. "You know, I asked myself that a lot growing up. Why not try? Why not just go for it, despite what he says? I didn't--"

He waves it off. He doesn't want to talk about this. ...too bad, Angel, for you already pretty much spelled out this is a Liam thing.

Really too bad for you, Angel. You've already spilled the beans and she won't stop until she's gotten to the very bottom of things.

"...he," Cordelia repeats, raising a brow at him. "Who's he?" And, softly now, "Your father?"

Angel turns around and rests his back against the weapon's cabinet, crossing his arms over his chest. "Yeah. My father. I've always been at the whole...drawing thing - always as in before I was turned. He didn't like me doing it. An artist among my family was laughable. That's the profession of a lower class citizen or a younger son, not a first born son from a higher class. I was forbidden from trying to do anything useful with it."

They never get to talk about his life as Liam all that much. He touched on the topic once when the aliens glitched him to his pre-vampire days, but after than that? There were too many 'other stuff' that happened that it was almost impossible to make Angel open up about his past. Not that Cordelia spent a great number of days asking him to, of course.

She steps closer to him and places a hand over his arm. "Oh, honey. That must have been hard for you."

"It's just the way the world worked back then. Father's word was law. Not that I listened to it much, later on. You saw me when I was glitched. I wasn't that great of a person. I drank all the time, slept with any girl who was up for a romp in the hay or two..." He sighed. "Sometimes, I wonder if I could've done something with that--" Angel gestures over at the drawing on the counter. "--if I hadn't traded in breathing for fangs. Too later for that now. Doesn't feel right."

"Why not?" she asks. "Angel - your drawing and your skills with it are still a part of you. I mean... you seem like you're enjoying it. Why deny yourself that?"

"Because that's not who I am anymore, Cordy!" Angel steps away from the weapons cabinet and around her as he goes back over to the counter.

He picks up the sketchpad and holds it up...albeit upside down, but he doesn't seem notice. "Yes, I enjoy this! But it's more something that helps me take my mind off other things than anything I'd consider worth pursuing. I'm good, but that doesn't mean I should."

Cordelia sighs, and then raises her hands up as if surrendering. "All right, all right. Jeez," she says. "Sorry. I didn't know it was such a touchy subject with you. It's just that--"

And then she bites her lip, swallowing the rest of her argument. "Forget it."

Angel realizes then that he was letting his centuries old irritation with his father and how much he was not in control of his life when he was actually alive seep out and had been directing that frustration at Cordelia. She had no way of knowing - since when did he actually talk about these things? Angel sets the drawing down and goes over to her, placing his hands on her upper arms.

"I'm sorry," he says, sincerely. "It's just... It's not the drawing thing. It's more of my father thing. He and I never really got along and I guess there's some linger issues I haven't dealt with yet."

"Don't really have to be Vision Girl to see that," Cordelia says, moving her right hand to cover one of his and squeezing it. "Hey, it's okay - yell at me all you want. If it'll help you release some of that centuries-old issues you have bottled inside you, then go ahead. God knows you, of all people, have a lot of pent-up feelings just waiting to explode. Like a vampire version of Mount St. Helens, or something."

"I don't want you to see that," he says, emphatically. "Me, back then... It's bad enough I glitched, but the setting here threw me off. Back in Ireland--" On that word, as always, the accent he hides shines through the most. "--that was my element and it was not a good element to be in."

Angel hangs his head, looking down at the space on the ground between their feet. "My father rightly disapproved of my drunken antics. The angrier he got, the more I drank. It was this neverending cycle that didn't come to an end until...well, I met mine."

He really was a different person when he was glitched into Liam before. It was like looking at a whole new individual - which in a way, was the case.

"Darla," she says softly, when Angel said about meeting his end.

"Yeah." Angel keeps his eyes firmly glued to the floor as he details this next part. "I was twenty-six. It'd been a bad day - fight with my father, as per usual. There was this one pub that I went to a lot, usually with a friend or two. Sometimes a group. The friend I was drinking with that night was far more gone than I, passed out right there in the street."

The memory almost makes him smile. Almost. It's very much not a happy one, after all.

"Darla, she... She'd been watching me. Picked me, lured me into an alley with whispers, promises of showing me the world. I was drunk enough and foolish enough to believe there was truth in that, to listen when she told me to close my eyes. I wanted so badly to get out of Galway. I let that desire blind me. ...or maybe that was the ale."

It's always easy to pick Angel out from a crowd, anyway. Darla, vampire bitch that she is, probably has been eying him for a long while.

Cordelia moves her hand up to cup his cheek. "Please tell me you're not blaming yourself for that," she says quietly. "Because... I think I may have to slap you, if you do."

"No," he answers. "I don't. I came to terms with my death, with my turning, decades ago. I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. An innocent victim."

They'd all been, initially. Sure, there were the odd some who chose to get a pair of fangs sunk into their necks, but for the most part, vampires didn't chose to become vampires. There was no asking, not waiting list - it just happened, started before you could stop it. Half the time, you weren't even sure what was going on. Angel sure hadn't been - of course, that could've been the ale, too.

"Good," Cordelia tells him, removing her hand and crossing her arms in front of her.

It's her turn to look at the space between their feet, then. "You know... it's funny," she starts. "I feel like I know so much about you, Angel - but then some stuff like this pop up and... well. Only then do I realize that there's still some parts of you that I'm not familiar with." Cordelia pauses, then looks up at him again and smiles. "And I'm really, really glad you're giving me first-hand info on these things. Even if... even if some of them must be painful for you to recall."

"A good portion of my life, living and non, is painful, Cordelia. But, that doesn't mean I can't talk about it. A lot of it, this... It's not necessarily that I don't want to talk about it, especially to you, but that...it never comes up. If you want to know things, ask. Chances are, I'll answer. There's not much I'm not willing to talk about."

Which wasn't really a matter of not willing so much as it was knowing that people wouldn't like what he had to say, especially when it came to detailing points in life when he'd been soulless. His brutality as Angelus, the things that he did...there were things that made him nauseous when he thought of them, even with the demon in him who relished the screams and the sounds broken and breaking bodies made.

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xvii [ visual ] / [ location: hyperion hotel ].

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

Re: [ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]

[ location: hyperion hotel ]