If you knew, Peggy Sue... --- Angston

[ANGEL DIHANIE]

OUTFIT||Same as the one in her last thread. xD It will probably change when she raids Wes's wardrobe.

She had insisted to Sykes that she wanted to do this on her own. But, quite honestly, she really didn't want to do this at all. No, that wasn't true. Angel wanted to see Weston. She missed her Jack terribly. But she didn't want to do it like this. Sick, dirty, drained of any natural glow, and sad looking. Angel saw how other people she passed in the corridor looked at her. She was pathetic to the eye, and Wes was bound to fret over her, and she was bound to indulge him for a while as she owed him that at least. Leaving in the middle of the night wasn't the best way to go about things, but it was the only way she could see it being feasible. Had she warned him, her clever Jack would have convinced her not to.

It really didn't seem like a valid argument to bring to him though.

Due to this cold she had- or at least she hoped was a cold, and not the flu or something of the like- Angel had to stop a few times. Her breath was short and occasional bouts of woozy brain syndrome. More frequently known as becoming lightheaded. What have you. Just down the hall from Wes' door, Angel tried to straighten out her haggard appearance in the reflection of the window. Her hair looked shaggy- not in the way that she artfully kept it looking bedheadish, but in an unruly way. Like overgrown shrubbery. Tapping her cheeks, she tried to bring some colour to them, though it seemed to be a fruitless endeavor. Her usually warm, coppery, was washed out and sickly. Her full lips were chapped, below her eyes were shadows. Angel Dihanie looked like hell.

A shower would be good. And clean clothes. Would he be too mad to see her right now? Would he ever forgive her for this? Any other time, any other thing, Angel would have said absolutely. The only thing he had ever held against her was ruining his sugar cookies when he was five... And he ended up forgiving her in a week and a half. But this was bigger. Much bigger than sugar cookies, or him spraining his wrist that one time, or his ven diagram being smashed in a skateboard accident. He might think Angel had played with his feelings. And, though that might be the case, it certainly wasn't the intention.

The anticipation made her want to throw up.

When Angel was sure she wasn't going to do that, she hoisted herself back up and continued down the hall. It was still his same old door, to his same old room. The familiarity touched her like a warm blanket out of the dryer. Slowly, she turned the knob, a little surprised that it wasn't locked, but also relieved. Saying that it was her seemed like it might be a bit much... Quickly, she stepped in, seeing the lump on the bed, and feeling her heart lurch.

There he was.

Here she was.

So here they go.

"J-jack?"

[WESTON BRODERICK]

He had, despite everything Ripley liked to say to the contrary, gotten out of bed more than three times this past week. And it wasn’t always just to go to the bathroom. He’d eaten at least a meal a day for the past three days. He’d changed his clothes. He’d tried to sleep—though, really, when hadn’t he been trying that? And he’d tried, most importantly, to pick up his guitar and play some music. That particular endeavor hadn’t gone anywhere. It was too heavy all of a sudden, too much effort to rest the thing in his lap and set his fingers just right and oh God, it hurt his wrist to strum. It hurt most everything, really. His knees, holding the instrument up. His back, no matter if he slouched or sat up straight. His lungs, though whether that was from the cigarette dangling from his lips or the effort of concentrating on breathing, he had no idea. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think at all. What he did want was to curl up in bed, to tuck his knees high up to his chest like he had when he was a child, to pull the blanket up to his chin, and to disappear. Or maybe dissolve.

He liked to wonder if people would miss him. Not that he was thinking of doing anything—Weston Broderick was in no way disillusioned to the fact that he would not and could not ever end his own life. He had people to watch out for, and he wasn’t nearly that selfish or selfless. Besides, what was there to end? This, whatever this was, the blurry seeping of one day into the next, shifted this way and that like a half clogged rain stick, made much more sense given his present situation.

And too, he figured Death probably didn’t promote music.

Melodramatic, maybe. And then, maybe not. Again, he wasn’t about to think about it. Too much effort. Too much throat-scratching, and besides, it only made the scars on his chest—faint, now, faded to what he assumed they’d look like for the rest of his natural life—twinge with a sort of prickling guilt that made him want to roll over, plant his face into his pillow, and breathe in deeply until he couldn’t any more.

What was worse, he knew it was pointless. Idiotic, even. Ripley and Xander—they still cared. Or, well, he assumed they did. No one really came by anymore, and when they did it was all very forced half smiles and a bit of conversation and Wes standing, just for a little bit, to grab something to eat and look like he’d been busy reading and God, how he hated faking. With Angel, he’d never faked anything. With Angel, no one could.

Wes was still floating somewhere between half asleep and half awake when the door creaked open, and so he didn’t bother moving. If it was Xander, he’d announce himself or not—it didn’t really matter. And if it wasn’t…well, Ripley would drag him out of bed whether he pretended to be asleep or not.

And if it was someone else…well, that just meant he’d finally, after weeks of trying, managed to fall asleep. Even more impressive, it meant he’d finally managed to have a dream. So he smiled a bit at the thought and shifted in his blankets, pulling them tighter underneath his chin, and he didn’t look away from the wall where he was staring because surely, that only meant he’d wake up. “Hmm?”

[ANGEL DIHANIE]

OUTFIT||Same as the one in her last thread. xD It will probably change when she raids Wes's wardrobe.

Was he sleeping? Wes had always been one of those painfully light sleepers who could quite frankly have a conversation in his sleep. She'd be able to walk into his room, and talk to him, not even realizing he was still sleeping until she touched him and he jumped out of his bed like a spooked cat. Usually they laughed when that happened. Usually it was funny. Why wasn't it funny right now? Couldn't she just slide into his bed and pretend that nothing awful had happened at all. No, she can't. Of course she can't. Because she something awful had happened.

So, for now, she'd let him be. "It's okay Jack... Don't get up. I'm just... gonna get cleaned up, okay? You just sleep..." And with that she made her way to his bathroom. Instantly, something was amiss. Xander had to of been maintaining it. Wes really couldn't care about his room being untidy so long as no funky smells were coming from anywhere. But the bathroom was always something that was kept fastidiously neat. It smelled of their shampoos mingled together, but also of dirty laundry in the basket. There was a ring in the toilet, and toothpaste in the sink. It wasn't Weston's bathroom standards. A rush of guilt hit her, because the fault was clearly placed. Hers.

Still, what was done was done, and she smelled like a mixture of dirt and sweat and gasoline. As if the world around her was made out of cracked glass, she moved into the shower and turned it on to start running hot. Angel then undressed, trying not to think. But how couldn't she? Already the weight of her choice was weighing heavy on her, and she was hardly even sure it was still the wrong one. She had been protecting the people she loved, not going on vacation. It was bad enough to think about the big bad Boogie coming after Ripley or Sykes. But Wes- for Boogie to come at Weston as hard or harder than that one time! For Boogie to come at Wes again was too much for Angel.

Somehow she found herself under the shower spout. The heat burned her skin, but Angel didn't move from it. Her nose didn't even cringe when she started soaping down with the Old Spice body wash, partially because she knew it would tone down as it spun down the drain. It would be familiar and comfortable to her, it would be one of the few things that could be as it was. The suds at Angel's feet were nearly brown with the filth she accumulated, and she felt even lighter. As if the dirt had been weighing her down.

And then she was out. Time was moving like it was made of a choppy old real. Blocky stop motion or something. Part of it was that she was sick, maybe. The fever had to be something fierce, and the shower couldn't have helped. The next thing she knew was in Wes's drawer, pulling out a tee shirt and a pair of boxers. There was no shyness in her dressing. Wes had seen her naked- or near so- more times than she can count; Xander was keeping his distance. That Sykes was good people, as her Dad would say. They had never had a bond beyond him being mates with Wes and him dating Ripley. Sure, he was a nice guy and all. Funny to boot and a bit of a shameless dancer. But he came through for her, she supposed. Even if Angel wasn't sure this was the place to be, he came through for her.

Carefully she slid into Wes's bed, and everything was just... okay, for the moment. Something about being in a bed just made a crawling feeling in her chest fade away. Then she looked at Wes. Beautiful Wes, her Jack. It was the moment of truth, time to know if he still wanted her. Reaching out under the cover, Angel touched his arm, her voice hoarse and thick. "I'm sorry..."