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You are currently spending extermination day with Angel Dust in the hotel. You’ve only been down in hell for a couple years, and it will be your first extermination around someone else. You were hoping that because you’ll be with him that it will go slightly better. Plus you are at the hotel with Charlie the princess of hell. She’ll probably make sure nothing happens, and that everything will be locked. You’ll be safe, you hope.
Angel is currently leaning against your bed flicking through the channels on the TV and smoking…something. You are on the floor holding your legs to your chest, with your ankles crossed gazing up at him. He catches your gaze and you evert your eyes away from him. You turned to look at the pile of snacks, and the various varieties of liquors laying in the middle of your floor. You had picked the stuff up prior to asking Angel to stay in your room, as a way of coaxing him to do it. Some extra cash might’ve been thrown in there too. You were glad he didn’t ask questions as to why you were asking him to stay with you. You’re both guests whom Charlie thinks of as redeemable, so it sort of makes sense you would just want to hang, right?
You peek back at him and try your best not to flinch when you find he is still looking at you.
“ why the fuck are you so tense?“ his voice cuts through your thoughts, but you don’t know how to answer. You just hold yourself closer and blink up at him. Angels gays gos back over to the TV, you breathe out a sigh of relief.
“ It’d be nice to know why you paid me to be here sugar, I could be anywhere else right now,” he reminds you.
“Didn’t want to be alone,” was all you could get out of your dry throat. You hadn’t even noticed it was dry until you spoke. He gives you a look of confusion, but doesn’t question it. Before silence can hash over the room to allow the TV’s gargled sound to be the only thing passing through, the siren goes off. A loud piercing sound muffled by the glass of the windows and the walls around you. It alerts you the purge has started and to get to safety if you haven’t already. You immediately crawl under your bed like you’ve done every year previous. “Fucking shit,” it’s dark, but you can hear Angel swear from your right as he closes the curtains to your window. You assume he’s probably turned off the TV when The sliver of light from in front of you vanishes. Panic wheels up inside you when it’s suddenly completely dark with only the sounds of the siren to alert you of what’s happening. You really thought that this would be different somehow. That even though you bribed Angel to be by your side, he’d treat you as a friend. You thought after a month of trying to be rehabilitated you’d be friends. Instead you hear one of your bottles that was laying in the pile opening. You start shaking and rocking back-and-forth anxious about what is to come.
Even with him a few feet away you feel like you’re alone. It starts to feel extremely hard to breathe and you think about calling someone on your mobile device. That’s when you realize that it’s on your bedside table charging. It also occurs to you that even if you did want to call someone what if you unknowingly put them in danger by doing so? But it’s not like you could bring yourself to get out from under the bed anyway.
Rocking back-and-forth, shaking, and the fact that it was getting harder to breathe made it pretty hard to ignore the oncoming panic attack. The darkness, blaring sound, and the lack of friends was not doing you any favors. Neither were your dark thoughts of being disliked and people you knew possibly dying.
You figure either your tears, or the fact that you are gasping for air alerted Angel that you weren’t okay when a light got your attention. The light was coming from Angel's phone brightly illuminating his worried facial features as he lifted up your bed skirt.
“Fucking hell toots, what’s wrong with yous?” Angel questions as he scoots towards you. You back away from him trying to get some distance. “What d’ ya suddenly not want me here?” Angel asks, his voice carrying a slightly annoyed tone, probably partly from your lack of response. All four of his arms are crossed and his phone continues to sit between the two of you as the only light source. The light, thank God, was at least enough to call me down a little. you take a few do you shaky breath‘s to try and compose yourself before attempting to speak.
“Could you get my phone?” You say pointing in its general direction, however your voice comes out broken and hushed. Angel wordlessly ducks out from under your bed to retrieve your phone. You hear things being shoved around and usually you yell at him to not be so rough, but you physically can’t.
Thankfully he comes back with your phone a few moments later. He tosses it to you and you attempt to catch it, but it lands in your lap. With shaking hands you unlock your phone and send Angel a text.
“Panic attack”
Angel read it over before giving you another look of confusion. You start to panic again realizing he doesn’t understand what the fuck that means. He types something else into his phone and for a moment you think he’s texting someone else until he looks back at you. You can’t place it but somethings definitely different.
“Sorry there toots, I can be a little thick sometimes, ya know,” he laughs and you give a weak smile through your shaking and tears.
“Ok hon, where are we right now?” You look at him confused.
“ Um, the hotel?” You say unsure of if it was a trick question.
“ Good, where in the hotel sweetums?” You take a deep breath still shaking.
“ My room,“ you answer. Your voice is still cutting in and out.
“Ok, what snacks did you buy?” You’re starting to get the sense of what he’s trying to do. You smile, wiping away some tears with a shaking hand.
“I ended up getting a huge shit load,“ you sniff, “ just cause I thought you’d probably be high off your ass if you had to hang with me for the next 24 hours,” you laugh at your own self deprecating joke, “I got a lot of the stuff I know you like to.”
“Are ya surprised I’m not “high off my ass”?” He asks using two of his four arms to signify quotation marks.
You shrug, “Kinda, but also not really cuz Vaggie and Charlie would chew ya out if you were.” You’re starting to gradually feel better as you talk to Angel. You figure he must have done some kind of a quick search of what a panic attack is in order to try to help you.
“Why are you helping me?“ You decide to ask, feeling a bit bolder.
“Well you’re paying me to be here,” he shrugs, “ although when you asked me to join you, I can’t say helping you not have a … whatever the fuck, was the reason.” You shift uncomfortably.
“Well yeah, I guess I imagined this going differently too,” you sigh. You thought you and him would hit off and you would end up getting intoxicated and goofing off. But you seem to have gotten fantasy and reality mixed up. What really ended up happening was Angel waited for you to make the first move, but you ended up getting really anxious and completely shutting down.
“Ya? An’ how did ya see this night go’in sugar?” He watches you shift uncomfortably under his gaze.
“I thought… I had this stupid idea that we were friends and that we’d I don’t know, have some fun? Somehow forget what’s happening out there?”
“Well we ain’t friends sweetheart. I don’t even know fuck shit about yous…” He trails off.
“Yeah I know… I guess I thought that could change. We live in the same place. We’ve spent hours together at Husk’s bar...not that you consider anyone at the hotel to be your friend. I just… after talking with Charlie…” You got cut off.
“Well a’course Charlie thinks we are all friends. Sorry kid, but I don’t fuck with friendship I have Cherri and she’s enough,” You feel yourself cave in and as he assures you your hope for friendship would never happen.
“Why’d you want me as a friend anyway?” You feel your face flush at his question and are certainly glad you can hide in the shadows.
“I just find you interesting, want to know more about you. Charlie is probably my only real friend and that’s a little sad, yeah?“
“That’s sad as fuck… In what way am I “interesting”? Is it my lifestyle? The porn? How many drugs I’m able to do in one take? My collection of dildos?”
“No, none of that. I want to know about why you own guns, about your family, if Italian food really is your favorite, how do you look so gorgeous every day, and your pet pig?” Angel Dust laughs at your enthusiasm.
“ Nobody has ever asked ‘bout any of that before, not all at once anyway.”
“ Well, you asked,“ you say frustrated as your face he’s up.
“ I did, yet I seriously thought it was going to be sexual.”
“Well surprise,” you say pushing your hands up a little in an attempt at unenthusiastic jazz hands. “Oh, and you can get out now,” you say, not even bothering to cover how wrecked you feel inside. Angel looks at you as you pull all your limbs as close to yourself as possible.
“What?”
“ You asked me a question, if you answer it it means you care, which you’ve shown ya don’t, so you can get back to drinking or whatever,” you reply turning your head to see The occasional explosion. They light up the floor to the right of you orange hues before disappearing into nothingness. Angel moves out from under the bed, but doesn’t go very far. He is sitting against your bedpost, but you’re not paying attention.
“ I own guns because I was born into a family that’s part of the mafia. Some of them are down here. We are Italian so maybe, but I like mostly any food. Fat Nuggets is great, I bet he’d like you, and I’m naturally this gorgeous sweetheart.”
It takes you a minute to realize he was answering your questions. You turn your head towards where he is resting.
“Um...but why?”
“Why? Why did I answer you, or why am I gorgeous?” You give his back side a playful nudge. “Okay okay, I cares a little more for ya than I’d like to admit, happy?” You crawl half way out from under the bed rolling over on your back to look up at him.
“Yes… does this mean we can’t get wasted and forget the god awful chaos?” He looks down at you, both phones still open to produce it in blue light across both your faces. You watch him sigh,
“Ugh, sure why not,” it sounds forced but he purposefully lets a small grin wonder across his lips. Your own smile widens.
You and Angel go sit around the pile in the center of your room. Angel gets up and is about to pour you a glass of whatever he was drinking straight from the bottle. You were about to reach for a bag in the snack pile when a loud crash strikes close by. It was enough to shake the entire hotel and send the glass Angel had placed on your dresser, as well as a lot of your other belongings crashing to the ground. The noise produced was enough to shut out the siren for a moment, and your room was now dimly lit from the explosion's flames outside. Angel looks over at your crumpled form on the floor and leaves the liquor forgotten on your dresser. You’re shaking, paranoid, and fearful about what happened and what might follow. You wonder if anyone you know was hurt. Angel sits beside you and uses all four of his arms to pull you into his lap.
“It’s ok toots, our people aren’t that stupid,” he says trying to ease any fears you might have. He holds you close, brushing one hand through your hair as you cry into his fluff. Your eyes close as you let the scent of him clog your senses and his soft fur to tickle your nose. You realize you could probably fall asleep like this if the siren weren’t so loud.
“You know something, even if you are a giant walking pillow, I don’t think anything can drown out that good awful sound,” you say lazily through a few sniffs.
“Oh really, what if I keep pouring ya shots?” You shrug and readjust yourself in his lap.
“Fine, hit me,” you say ducking back into his fluffy chest.
“You’re such a brat,” he says gritting his teeth in annoyance, but there is no menace behind it. He just lets you cling to him like a spider monkey as he picks another bottle from your pile.
You space out until a small glass is shoved against your head, “Drink!” Angel insists, nudging you with the glass until you take it into your hand and drink it. The alcohol burns your throat going down which wakes you up a little. You’re awake enough to notice how your body is completely wrapped against him. Your legs are wrapped around his hips, and your arms around his middle, you flush and immediately ask for another shot.
Angel keeps pouring you shots as you call them until he’s pretty sure you’re too out of it to remember where you are or what you’re doing. “Hey hon, ya good?” He asks since your face is firmly pressed into his chest floof and he can’t see your face. You peek up at him, your face flushed and smiley. He lets out a small sigh glad that you weren’t feeling ill or stressed, or some crap like that. “Hey Angel,” you sigh, your voice muffled by his fluff, “ya know, you’re like really pretty,” you hum dunkinly letting your arms drop by your sides lazily.
“You said that earlier, and yeah I know,” he says confidently.
“I did? Oh yeah,” you laugh, “I did. It’s sooooo true though. I think you’re hot...and I like your fur,” you say both things as if they’re fact.
“Didn’t ya ask me here to help with somethin’ else? Ya didn’t seem to want me for sex,” he says, not knowing if he should believe you when you’re in front of him drunk off your ass. But you can bet your ass he’ll tell you everything you said when you wake up.
Your drunk self just laughs.“Why would I want you just for sex when I actually have feelings for you?” You ask as if it’s common knowledge he should know.
“Oh really, is this the real reason you asked me here out of anyone else?”
“Yes,” you say bluntly, “but Charlie also wanted to be with Vaggie, Alastor has his radio broadcast, Husk wants to be alone and Nifty...well she’s Nifty,” you say shrugging your shoulders, Angel nods in understanding as you let out a yawn. He holds you and plays with your hair until you fall asleep.
The next morning you wake up with a pounding headache wrapped in Angel’s limbs on the floor. “Angel? Are you awake? I totally blacked out last night,” you say trying to blink yourself awake. When you’re finally able to look at his face you realize he’s awake already.
“Oh really?” He says smugly, “I bet ya wanna know all the really embarrassin’ shit ya said last night. “Oh Angel I love you,” he mocks laughing.
“I did not say that! Wait, did I...actually say that?” You ask not sure what to believe, even so your face goes pink.
“I don’ know, you’ll have to confirm it sugar. So, do you love me?” He asks in a flirtatious manner.