#𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 ‒ angel ║ IN CHARACTER

[vullcanica]

Robert smushing himself against Angel when falling asleep. Maybe he almost smothers himself while falling asleep but at least Angel gets to soak up his body heat.

It's always the quiet and mysterious ones... He might be a sore thumb on the quaint little cul-de-sac, but Robert is a whole splinter. Not immediatelly noticeable, until it sneaks up on you. A nose presses into Angel's sternum a little too hard and he frowns, taken out of his light reading.

He raises the charmingly beat up Psychopathology Vol 1 tome and reveals a tuft of dark hair, with little else below it visible of Robert's smooshed face. Who'd have thought Small'd taken such a liking to his personal space; certainly not Angel, until he'd found himself with a chestful of heavy, tired brunette some weeks back. The warm weight had been welcomed back then; the intrusion.. perhaps shoudn't have been. Still, he regards the display with the fondness of a man welcoming back a wayward stray - setting the book aside accomodatingly; making room. His fingers thread through Robert's quiff slowly, nails reaching down to scalp to languidly comb his hair back. It's.. cute.

"Comfortable?" The small smile is evident in his voice. "You'll suffocate yourself."

[vullcanica]

@cryptidsdad : you're sorry we're alone in the house?

"Fuck no." Oh it's said with feeling, the corner of his lips curling in a sneer from it. Here's the tone of a man who's never had to apologize in his entire life and doesn't intend to make a habit of it anytime soon. He's not sorry about anything, least of all the peace and quiet. Beyond a pleasant microdose of shedding the ill-fitting good samaritan facáde, his little talks with a certain blond neighbour's brought Robert some respite from looking at his face too long. It's been a nice spectacle to watch Christiansen pivot a full 180 every time he sees him. Until now.

They've suddenly found themselves insultingly excluded from the monthly barbecue at the Christiansens. Everyone else has been diligently invited.

"Not my fault Joseph can't resist being a twit." It's a nice late evening in Robert's place, result of a habitual, audacious self-invite, and he knows he's souring the camaraderial mood of shared beers on the balcony, but he can't help it. Annoyance makes him chatty. In Rob's arms, Pissy lofts his little nose in faux-solidarity, intoning with a drawling mrow. He'd done his due diligence in this war by quietly marking Joseph's shoes some weeks ago. "Shouldn't have expected decorum from a mongrel cheater, though, I'll give you that. At least he's heeding my advice."

He takes a swig of his bud light with the haughty determination and lip purse of a slighted pensioner. "Next barbecue's at mine. It's settled." As if.

[vullcanica]

Robert is trying to get his jacket back from lizard man. Get your own for the cold 🔪

From a single glance at low stormy brows and that particular stress crease at the very middle of his forehead it's clear already - it's survival of the fittest now, and Angel is in no mood to negotiate in freezing cold temperatures. (— about 50°F, give or take.) His arms cross over the jacket as if to further protect it from its very owner's hands - and, in part, to secure some of the bagginess against a bout of whipping wind threatening to crawl up his back. Petulant.

"Reimbursement for the company." It's what Robert gets for making a habit of requesting his titillating presence on impromptu forest rendezvous - the sparkling personality comes with. As does the cold sensitivity. Still, there's a note of serene resignation in Angel's voice that suggests the complaining's more performative than anything. They've been walking for an hour through the thick underbrush, he's not going back alone now.

His boot flattens a bush branch with a bit too much emphasis for it not to be an ideation, and he grunts, pulling his weight up over a hillside ridge. Seems like a good enough waypoint to stop at. "Let's head back. You'll be a lot warmer in the car." He doesn't mention the inconscpicuous cairn nearby denoting a foreign presence and a message that reads something like 'don't go any further'.

[vullcanica]

@mvnces : staring at them. red hues unblinking and tracking their every movement — a low growl building in his throat every time the other moves the slightest bit in his direction. / silas to whoever might try adopting him

"Леко.. леко, момче." Easy, boy. Angel mutters quietly under his breath.

Face to face with the beast at last, he extends a slow, halting hand to smooth the air between them - gesture meant to signify truce. He's trekked a long and arduous journey to track the poor creature down again. Unarmed this time and bare-knuckle human in form, parlay clear as day in his body language, to amend their terrible first meeting. He's sure the werewolf remembers him - imposing and loud and startled mean from a few days ago when they'd still been monster and pursuer. But that'd been before Angel had seen the camp. The freakshow site. The cages. Silas the Dog Boy.

He's no longer an investigator on the hunt for a roaming abomination. There is none. The haunches are raised, the teeth bared and, though the creature has no fur to stand on end, Angel recognizes a scared animal when he sees one. Recognizes a hurt one all the same... Dog boy? Surely not. He looks at the poor thing and tries to think like a human would. A cruel, thoughtless one. What would amuse its ignorant little mind. Would it look at the deformed muzzle and warped frame and sate itself on the irony, the fittingness of dubbing it 'dog'. Angel hopes not.. but he tries the name on for size anyway.

"Silas?" The venture is quiet and gentle and he steps as close as the growled crescendo allows. Averts his gaze for a second, to evade looking like an animal poised to pounce while he slowly hunkers low to the grass and at last sits. Less large and threatening now, yet unyielding, he presents a commanding shape that seeks not to intimidate. Hands plainly placed on knees, Angel regards him.

"Silas? That your name?"

The voice gentles imploringly like a parent's. By unwitting habit alone. By virtue of facing the smaller figure and, in the terrified eyes, recognizing something raw and painful.

"...Did they keep you in a cage?"

[vullcanica]

Smash or Pass + Robert <3 / for angel (robert being like 👀)

"Taking the absolute piss at this point, Smalls..."

He has to laugh at the crassness, but that's nothing new from Robert. The man's asked odder questions yet. Angel still ventures to put him on the spot in turn. There's a show of leaning back and appraising him head to toe.

"I don't know..." he sucks his teeth. "Your biceps scream 'quick and dirty outback in a downtown alley', but your big brown eyes say 'take me home and cuddle me'."

A hand pillows his chin. "Mixed signals..."

[vullcanica]

@cryptidsdad : “Stop doing that with your face.” - for angel <3 robert’s weird lil way of flirting

It's not the first time Angel pauses to assess himself for error. Momentously aware of his body, of how the flesh rests in its unnatural skin - in ways disturbingly distancing of the self - he searches internally for minutiae the scrutinous human gaze always so aptly detects. There are none. His eyes are brown, the tongue not forked, the skin smooth. The dimensions of his mouth extend to where they should. He blinks to check the lids are there. They are.

All Robert sees is a wry glance in his direction as Angel takes another swig of beer. Brief confusion gives way to a verdict, visibly so, with a quirk of grin and brow and the drop of his briefly tense shoulders: it's just Smalls aimlessly running his mouth again. Par for the damn course. There's a beat of amused consideration where Angel wonders if he should even indulge him at all. After one too many ridiculous tirades, he's learned not to demand elaboration out of Robert if he can help it.

He can. He chooses not to.

"Can't wait to hear exactly what the hell you mean."

One foot lazily extends from its cramped bend, careful of the empty bottles beside it, and Angel sighs as knee and hip crack in relieved unison. His ass is getting stiff from the hard wooden steps, but the night is relatively young and warm and company is decent. Robert doesn't look as weary in the dim porch light. He hasn't mentioned how early he has to be at work tomorrow even as the hour grows small and so Angel won't either.

He shuffles instead to lean back languidly against the railing, facing Robert in full. His chin juts in expectancy.

"Well? Is it charming at least?"

[vullcanica]

Angel Dobrev. The folktale.

Here I am, introducing another bastard into my roster. Meet Ангел! A mythological serpent (zmey, a creature native to southern slavic folklore) living among humanity. He's had an almost 80 year run by now, got married, got widowed, raised a kid and has now settled into the job of solving the mundane and sometimes not so mundane legal problems of those who solicit his PI services. Come bother him 💕

His info can be found here.

[vullcanica]

@cryptidsdad : ❛ A few cocktails before I’m murdered. ❜

Angel slides into the barstool next to him silent as death and twice as baleful. Third bar he's searched for Robert at, following a half-drunk Mary's breadcrumb trail, and here he's sat, jolly and avoidant. They've only been apart a week.

The threat of comeuppance is palpable. Robert's not the only one picking up on it.

"He's legally entitled to one more bloody mary before I take him out back to the firing squad." the deadpan inadvertently helps believability. There's a pause of deep concern and a 'blink if you need help' glance the bartender throws Robert before Angel sighs, reaching in his jacket pocket. "And a brandy for me." Hundred dollar bill slid along the counter should cover everything. Privacy included. Angel waves him off with the change.

"Care to inform me which drink for the night I just paid for?"

[vullcanica]

@oakthcrn : POST - IT NOTE for snek boi

Post-it note // accepting

The wad of cash Nikolai was supposed to have already given to their squinty, weathered drunk of a host lays primly on the table. Alongside it a note of implied apology. Sorry still doesn't come easily to the serpent, but he usually makes it up to Lark. The cleanliness of their shared space speaks to that. It also puts into question how much of an accident it really had been...

[vullcanica]

@maramcna : ❛ please practice blinking as others can be unsettled by your inhuman ability to maintain an unbreakable stare during casual conversation. ❜- someone is tired of having Incidents when he's just trying to get food, angel

It's instantaneous. Already heavy brow drops lower still to shadow his eyes - half-lidded, unamused. Irony is a tiring sentiment, and with the company Angel's taken to keeping, he isn't in the business of getting scolded for misbehaviour. He's a man with decades of human co-habitation under his belt, after all. He's a man with manners and etiquette and decorum. Most impressively, he isn't a man at all.

"Snakes don't blink." he deadpans, matter-of-fact, in a tone that suggests arguments are off the table. "So I don't need to." And I won't, is likewise resolutely implied.

"I understand the very human urge to.. fix whatever and whoever doesn't behave like you." There's a brief pause to light his cigarette the moment he has his back to the market stalls shrinking behind them. He shoves his lighter back into a pocket and keeps his hand there for warmth. A plume of smoke dances into the air from his grimacing mouth with a heavy, chest-deep exhale.

"But do consider how some of you cretins act..."

[vullcanica]

@cryptidsdad cont. from x

Even he has to admit there's an irony to this. Something about glass houses and rocks, he who casts the first stone, so on, so forth. Pots and kettles and all. Like any man aware of his vices, though, the sting of hypocrisy eludes Angel. They both look like shit, he can say it with chest.

"Fuckin' pedantics." he scoffs instead - a low, tired noise. Stood in line behind Robert at the coffee shop, he palpably sulks in kind, devoid of the energy needed for genuine arguing. "'Good looking' and '6 am' rarely go hand in hand." Admittedly, Robert almost manages by a margin, strong-jawed, dark and brooding that he is, but the unfocused gaze knocks him down a peg. Angel tells him none of this.

It's far too early on a Wednesday and the poor shopkeep's just let them in off the street like dying strays. There's few of them, all in varying stages of zombification prostrated over the café furniture, quiet and regretful of whatever choice landed them there. For Angel it's work, as always. His head pounds and his eyes ache from the onslaught of morning sun after poring over a computer screen all night. He feels far worse than he looks. But certainly looks it. Fits right into the ambience of what seems like, by and large, a congregation of the undead. Robert still stands out, bleary eyed and unsteady. So that certainly means something.

"You, though, measure somewhere around 'dead on your feet'."

Sure enough, Robert's axis visibly tilts again and he sways a little. Not dangerously, granted, it's just a slight lean but Angel's instincts still kick in on automatic and an unnaturally strong hand steadies the man by the forearm.

"Night shifter?" he asks, sympathetic. He knows. He understands. To be fair, staying up to work on a case out of his own volition does make his suffering feel more self-imposed, but commiseration doesn't always require perfectly matching circumstances. He pats Robert's arm anyway, before relinquishing it. "Word to the wise, coffee won't help."

[vullcanica]

@maramcna : Nikolai is giving Angel a kiss as they're finishing up putting away all the groceries from this most recent run, since he was so kind to buy and bring them over (though he was repaid in full).

"Insatiable beastie." Angel's cooing to Цаца perched on the kitchen counter. Hand outstretched, he lets her gorge on a piece of already opened bacon which Nikolai's currently sequestering inside the fridge before more of it can be surrendered to entitled felines. She's spoilt, yes, what of it. By marginal fault of his. They're squeezed into in a cosy corner of the spatious kitchen between microwave and stove - something about Angel's inclination for curling up snug in tight nooks - when Niki boxes off the only exit and catches the edge of his mouth in a kiss.

It's a quick peck by design, easily recognized. Angel doesn't tolerate quick.

Whatever effort Nikolai makes to vacate his space, he finds it foiled by an iron claw grip on one beltloop - a single halting finger Angel's curled around the fabric. He isn't a sentimental man. Not anymore. But Nikolai fills the space just right to make him think about things as frivolous as indulgence.

He smiles, rare and reticent as always, a leisurely curl to the left. Thinking about something, unhurriedly.

"Ah ah." A soft tut. He bends his wrist and the mechanism holding Nikolai put tugs him in, gentle but unyielding - inescapable - speaking volumes of the great strenght Angel doesn't choose to exert. "I'll decide when you've paid in full."