sicklymadscientist - Tumblr blog

sicklymadscientist · 3 months

Text

OKAY DUDE I gotta use the comment feature this time to fully express my thoughts cuz I FREAKIN love them and I FREAKIN love this fic. Angel and Cherri's friendship is one of my favorite dynamics in the show and you captured it FUH-KING perfectly. It's so clear how genuinely Cherri wants to make Angel feel better and how she's... well... not exactly /bad/ at it, but certainly doesn't have the best instincts for practical caretaking. She has the best intentions, but some of her tactics fall short of being helpful, and actually make things a bit worse. This is such a perfect reflection of how she behaves in episode 6, when her response to Angel sending her venting texts is to drag him out to a club to get blasted and get his mind off shitty things. She's trying to help, but what Angel needs in that moment is rest, just like in this fic. And I love how in both that episode and this fic, Cherri does eventually see that her methods aren't working, and she stops forcing them. And it's at that point that we see what Cherri is best at providing and what DOES help, which is simply her friendship, presence, and support. ALSO, I am absolutely weak for the touch intimacy of their friendship. We see it throughout the show, how they have a comfort with making physical contact with each other, which is often not-so-gentle and kind of rough-housey, but always affectionate. I love seeing that here in the way Cherri feels his forehead, and Angel leans into it, and then Cherri pulls away a little too soon and Angel almost falls. Not to mention the way Cherri launches off the bed to catch him before he /does/ fall when he might pass out (that part makes me think of the part in the pilot where Angel quickly pushes Cherri out of the way from the ropes that one of the egg boiz shouts at her, getting bound up himself instead. They react on instinct to have each other's back). And the end, with Angel laying his head in her lap and falling asleep, made me so happy.

Bad In(flu)ence

Did someone ask for sick An/gel Du/st with Che/rri being the best bud of all time?? (It's me, I asked for it, so I wrote it.) I really think Che/rri deserves WAY more love and their relationship is so important to me. <3

This is set before An/gel moves into the hotel, so I made my own guesses about his living situation based on the Ad/dict music video. Also, even though Che/rri's efforts aren't all...healthy...for An/gel, I wrote this in the context of her genuinely caring about him. They're both just doing their best, trying to support themselves and each other, and getting through it. They're both kind of a mess and I love them.

3.6k words

Summary: Che/rri Bo/mb brings An/gel a care package when he has the flu, but only some of her efforts actually make him feel better.

Loosely based on one of the old Haz/bin Ho/tel Vo/xta/gram posts where Che/rri made An/gel a care package after he had a hard day.

CW: drinking, drugs (they don't actually do them, but they are on page), mention of sex and An/gel's work

Cherri wasn’t about to let her hard work go to waste without a picture to prove it. She set the overflowing basket on the table beside her bed and snapped one with her phone, posting it to Voxtagram with a hastily typed caption—“Made somethin special for Angie <3 heard he’s not feelin good :(“.

The basket was filled to the brim with everything she could think of that would make Angel feel better—or, at least, that would make her feel better if she were laid up with the flu and had just pulled a twelve-hour shift at Vee Tower. It wasn’t the first time Angel had forced himself through a long shoot while he was sick, but today, as his texts dwindled from dressing room selfies to complaints about how shitty he felt to sparse, one-word replies, it became clear that things had gotten worse.

Cherri’s phone buzzed as she left her apartment with the basket hooked over one arm. She leapt from the railing across to the fire escape of the neighboring building and climbed up to the roof, all the while keeping the basket’s contents safe. Once she’d scaled the brick, she checked her notifications to find Angel’s comment: “fuck, you ain’t gotta do that” with a crying emoji to punctuate it.

Cherri tapped out “too late bitch omw” before she jogged across the roof of the building and jumped down to the next. She could’ve taken the streets, but this way got her there faster, and she got a better view of the city. She passed over flames licking out broken windows, bodies bleeding on the sidewalks, and the sound of shouted threats echoing through the air before the speaker made good on them. She managed to drop a few bombs along the way on unsuspecting recipients below—purely to watch the bright red explosion and grin when the smell of the pink smoke wafted skyward in her wake and blended with the pentagram overhead.

Angel’s apartment wasn’t far, and when she reached it, she hopped down, using the pole on the balcony to swing over the second floor railing and stick the landing on his doorstep. She fished for the key in her pocket and let herself in to find the room dark, only briefly illuminated by the light from the door before it closed behind her.

“Angie?”

As her eye adjusted to the reddish light filtering through the one window across the room, she followed it to the bed, kicking used tissues out of the way as she got closer to where a lump of blankets sat piled in the center of the mattress. It took a moment for her to realize that it was Angel, wrapped in a blanket cocoon with soft, rhythmic snores coming from inside it.

“Shit, bitch, you didn’t waste any fuckin’ time,” Cherri said, half to herself as she crossed the room and sat on the bed beside Angel. Fat Nuggets poked his head over the lump that was Angel, ears perked up at her. She’d nearly forgotten about the demon piglet—he was so new to the apartment, and yet Cherri had noticed the change in Angel since Val had dumped the little guy off on him. A few times over the last few weeks, Angel had preceded their nights out with a quick, “Hang on, I gotta feed Nuggets,” and he almost seemed excited to do it.

Cherri reached over the blanket pile to give Fat Nuggets a pet on the head before he clamored over Angel’s sleeping form and headbutted her thigh.

“What?” she said.

Fat Nuggets leapt from the bed to the floor, where her eyes followed him over to his food bowl. Empty.

“Ah, Angie didn’t feed ya yet, did he?” Cherri deduced, pushing herself up from the bed and turning on the single light in the apartment. It hardly brightened the place, serving only to illuminate the moat of tissues surrounding Angel’s bed and the clothes, bottles, and baggies littering the floor. “Bet he was so fuckin’ wiped out after his shoot, he just passed out.”

She rummaged through the cabinets in search of something for Fat Nuggets to eat, but as per usual, Angel hardly had anything around. Most of the cabinets were empty, save for spotty glasses and cheap booze, and she couldn’t even identify what was in the fridge. It took some searching before she finally found an open box on the counter with a picture of a demon pig on it, and swiped it off. In doing so, she knocked an empty bottle onto the floor, where it shattered. She swore, sidestepping the glass and shooing Nuggets back toward his bowl.

A rustling came from the bed, followed by a handful of muffled coughs and a low groan.

“What the fuck, Nuggs?” Angel sat up in bed, still wrapped so thoroughly in his blanket that all Cherri could see when she looked at him was his face and the disheveled tuft of hair that hung over it. His eyes, glazed over with sleep and fever, focused slowly on the scene before him with Cherri holding the box of pet food and Nuggets waiting expectantly by his bowl. Realization dawned on Angel’s face. “Ah, shit. Forgot to feed ‘im.”

“I got it, bitch, stay there,” Cherri said as she poured the pellets into the dish. Fat Nuggets wasted no time digging in.

“What’d ‘e break?” Angel asked, obeying Cherri’s command to stay and huddling deeper into the blanket.

“Nah, that was me,” Cherri confessed, searching for something to help to clean up the mess and finding one of Angel’s old shirts. “You got too much shit around here.”

“Too busy talkin’ dirty to clean,” Angel said with a feeble grin, only to start coughing again. Each time he spoke, his voice faded in and out like a bad signal, and he sounded like he hadn’t been able to breathe through his nose for a while now. When Cherri looked up after gathering the glass in the shirt, she could see the flush on his cheeks and the dark circles under his eyes from a sleepless night, even from where she stood across the room. Granted, the room barely passed for a studio apartment, and she could practically reach the counters from the bed, but the fact remained that Angel looked much too unwell to have been at work less than an hour ago.

When he emerged from the coughing fit, his eyes lit upon the basket Cherri had left beside him on the bed. “Shit, you actually meant it.”

“You think I’d joke about bringin’ you somethin’?” Cherri asked, feigning offense.

Angel shrugged and extended one arm out from under the blanket to pull the basket closer and pick through it. He’d hardly pulled the first item out when he paused, blinking slowly until his brows drew together like magnets and his breath hitched. It only took a second for his expression to crumple, and he ducked into the blanket to sneeze. Coming out of it, an almost instant gasp signaled that he wasn’t done, and a second sneeze followed on the heels of the first. He raised his head with a sharp sniffle, eyes half-lidded, and started to resume his exploration of the care package, only to curse and press the blanket to his face with a dramatic, three-syllable sneeze that wracked him with a full-body shudder.

“Might wanna grab the tissues in there first, babe,” Cherri suggested, digging through the basket and pulling out a travel pack.

“Thanks,” Angel said, accepting them with shaky fingers. “But this ain’t gonna cut it for whatever I got goin’ on right now.”

He tore open the pack with some difficulty, sniffling intermittently until he finally extracted a couple of tissues and blew his nose, punctuating it with a few coughs. Then, he tossed the crumpled tissues down onto the bed when he was done and tugged the blanket closer around himself with a hard shiver. He closed his eyes for a moment and pinched between them before reaching back into the basket and pulling out a large glass bottle filled with hazy orange liquid.

“Screwdriver,” Cherri announced proudly, planting one knee on the bed and taking it from him. “Mixed it myself.”

Angel blinked at her, eyes glassy and unfocused. He rubbed at them, as if to reset his vision. “I don’t know if gettin’ drunk is really—”

“Don’t worry, it’s got OJ.” Cherri rose from the bed and brought the bottle over to Angel’s tiny excuse for a kitchen. She found a couple of glasses in a cabinet that looked like they hadn’t been used and dumped a few ice cubes—the only things in Angel’s freezer—into each glass before filling them both with booze. She came back and handed one to Angel before taking a swig of her own and admiring her concoction. “Drink up, bitch.”

Angel’s face pinched, and for a moment, Cherri thought he might refuse the drink. But then, he put his lips to the glass and knocked back half of it in a few swallows. He coughed after, ending the fit with a grimace and lowering the glass to his lap. He stared into it as if the drink were an ocean and he was about to fall in.

Cherri raised a hand and palmed his forehead, pushing up the disheveled hair that fell into his face. His brow was hot and damp, and his eyes closed as he leaned into her hand. He nearly fell forward when she took it away, and some of his drink spilled over the edge of the glass as he righted himself, joining the rest of the stains on the bed.

“That ice’ll cool ya down, yeah?” Cherri said, tapping the side of the glass with a fingernail.

“I guess,” Angel replied, skeptical. Still, he sipped the drink, slowly this time, and returned to picking over the basket. He pulled out a plush demon pig—one Cherri had found that resembled Fat Nuggets, who had since finished his dinner and hopped up on the bed to nose through the basket with Angel—and a fluffy pink blanket that he immediately wrapped around himself on top of the one he already had. His face lit up when he found the package of strawberry flavored hard candy and a card he opened, only to close it and set it down on the bed, saying, “My eyes’re fucked.”

When his drink was nearly empty, Cherri topped it off, but Angel set it down on the floor by the bed. He was rubbing his nose, which bore the same vibrant pink as the flush on his cheeks, and his features contorted. When he sniffled, it produced a stunted, unproductive sound, followed by a cough. He scrubbed wearily at his face before another failed sniffle that gave way to a soft hitch in his breath. Cherri watched as his eyes narrowed and his brows twitched without following through on a sneeze.

Angel wrinkled his nose, muttering, “Fuckin’ booze.”

“Need some help?” Cherri asked, reaching up toward Angel’s nose and pressing the tip of her finger against it so it wrinkled under her touch.

“No—” Angel started, pulling back into his blanket cocoon, but the damage was done. Before he could finish speaking, he buckled with a stunted sneeze. It sounded almost as if he’d tried to hold it back and failed spectacularly, and he brought both blanket-covered hands up to catch it. Another followed on its heels, along with a predictable third, and each one came out blunted by congestion, as if they’d had to fight their way out of Angel’s body to begin with. Likewise, Angel seemed to fight his way to recovering from them with a few slow blinks and his lower set of hands braced against the mattress. He searched blearily for the tissues, tearing one as he pulled it overzealously from its pack, and he looked like he might cry before Cherri pulled a second one out for him.

“You good?” Cherri asked after Angel deposited yet another tissue onto the mattress.

“Not really. I love ya, Cherr, but I think ya made it worse,” Angel said, rummaging under his pillow. Soon, he produced a small bag half filled with white powder and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I need somethin’ to wake me up, if I’m gonna keep talkin’.”

He dragged the blanket, still wrapped around his shoulders, over to the dirty counter across the room, moving as if he’d aged fifty years. After he brushed the surface off, he dumped a bit of the powder onto it before cutting it and fashioning it into a line.

Cherri scoffed. “And you think that’s gonna help?”

“Hey, if I’m gonna be loopy anyway, might as well get high, right?” Angel bent until his nose nearly touched the counter before tossing one last look over his shoulder.

“Sure,” Cherri conceded, “But who do you gotta stay awake for?”

Angel didn’t answer as he braced a hand on the counter and blocked one side of his nose. But when he tried to sniff, it produced a thick, stunted sound, and he ducked to the side before he could cough and send the white powder flying. Once he’d recovered, he tried again, and Cherri could hear the effort in the way Angel inhaled past the congestion in his sinuses—not quick or sharp enough to lift the crack off the counter.

In the end, Angel pushed himself back upright with a dramatic groan. “Damn it, I can’t fuckin’ breathe.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you got the flu,” Cherri supplied.

She expected a quip from Angel, but he was swaying, just slightly. Fat Nuggets eyed him from where he lay curled up on the spare blanket Angel had left pooled in the recently vacated spot on the bed.

“Angie?”

His back still faced her, but she watched him put a hand gingerly to his head as his lower arms flew out to balance him. “Fuck, I think I gotta pass out.”

“Like in a sleepin’ way or like I gotta catch your ass before you crack your head open?” Cherri asked, already setting her drink down as Angel took a fumbling step back from the counter.

“I don’ know,” Angel mumbled, wavering.

Cherri launched off the bed and caught him by the waist as he stumbled. For a moment, his full weight transferred to her, and she nearly dropped him before she lifted him up and he gathered his legs under him again. Even then, she kept her arms around him, feeling the heat of his fever come through the blanket until he rebalanced enough that he could pull away and stand on his own.

“C’mon, I don’t wanna have to scoop your brains back into your head,” Cherri said, leaving an arm around Angel’s waist as she guided him back to bed.

Angel fell face first onto the mattress so hard that Fat Nuggets bounced and rolled away from him. The little pig scrambled back over as Cherri hoisted Angel’s legs up and shoved them over the side of the mattress. Angel turned over onto his back and reached for his pet, who eagerly stepped up on Angel’s chest fluff and let Angel wrap his arms around him. Then, he reached for the plush pig, hugging it to his middle with his second set of arms.

“Think that made me dizzy,” Angel finally said, waving one hand in the direction of the line still sitting on the counter, slightly disheveled after Angel’s attempts to snort it.

“Yeah, that’s why you don’t do coke when you’re sick, fuckhead,” Cherri said, her tone softer.

Angel groaned and brought one arm up to cover his eyes in the crook of his elbow. His nose bore a light dusting of white from where it had touched the powder. “I didn’t even do any!”

The blanket had mostly fallen off him now, revealing a cropped t-shirt hanging off his shoulder and a pair of lounge shorts. His hair stuck up, and the shorter, usually well-groomed fur that covered his body looked damp and tousled from fever and its time beneath the blanket. His chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths, as if the few steps it took to cross the apartment had taken all the energy he had. Fat Nuggets nestled into it, jolting and struggling to balance when Angel coughed.

“Alright, c’mere,” Cherri finally relented. She crawled onto the bed and sat next to his head, then patted her thigh to indicate an invitation.

Angel opened his eyes to slits, and she saw the conflict in them. A beat passed while he debated whether to use what little energy the flu had left him with to roll over into her lap. In the end, he released Fat Nuggets and reached one arm over Cherri’s lap to pull himself clumsily into it.

Cherri felt the heat from his face where he rested over the hole in the leg of her pants. Despite it, he began to shiver almost immediately, and when she flipped the blanket over him again, he clung to it, bunching it under his chin with both hands. She combed her fingers absently through his hair, and he curled up at her hip before he buried his face in her thigh. Gradually, he began to relax, and she thought he might be falling asleep until he spoke, a muffled mumbling.

“‘M so fuckin’ tired,” he said, so low she almost missed it.

“Yeah, that’s the flu for ya, babe,” she said, but he shook his head.

“Nah, I mean of…everything.” He said the last word on a sigh, pausing before he continued. “I had three fuckin’ shoots back t’back t’day. Had t’do overtime ‘cause Val didn’ like how my voice sounded, an’ I gotta do a reshoot t’morrow.”

“Dickhead,” Cherri scoffed, only for realization to hit in the next moment. “Hang on, you don’t think you’re gonna kick this shit by tomorrow, do you?”

“Gonna hafta.” Angel turned his head to rub his nose into her leg. “Else that shoots gonna suck ass, and not in a fun way.”

“You’re dreamin’, Angie.” She raked her fingertips from his forehead all the way to the back of his head, and he groaned.

“ Gonna be real hard to suck dick without breathin’,” Angel said, and as much as he joked about it, Cherri heard the dread beneath the words. “Y’know what Val did last time I had a cold?”

“What?”

“Fuckin’ turned it into a kink shoot.” Angel sniffled and rubbed at his nose with his wrist this time, harder. “I never sneezed so much in my life with all the shit they put up there. I didn’t even know ya could make a person sneeze like that.”

Cherri snorted. “More than you’re sneezin’ now?”

“This ain’t nothin, sugar tits,” Angel said, nose still snubbed against his wrist before adding proudly, “But I did figure out how to sneeze with a dick in my mouth without bitin’ it off.”

“Bastards deserve to get their cocks cut off,” Cherri said bitterly and resumed carding her fingers through Angel’s hair. “Besides, nothin’ to suck, no reason to work when you’re sick.”

Angel shrugged. “Don’t matter. I’ll just hit the vendin’ machine on my way to the studio t’morrow. Feels like I’m gonna neehh–need it—” He barely finished his sentence before a shuddering sneeze overtook him. He curled in on himself so far that his knee almost bumped his forehead, though he managed to bury the sneeze into the blanket. Another followed on its heels with hardly a breath between, and Cherri felt his whole body jolt against her so intensely that she put a steadying hand to his back just in time for the third.

If Angel hadn’t already sold his soul, that final sneeze would’ve taken it. It ended with a vocal, pitched up flair that, were Angel not so unwell, even he might have admired. Cherri might have thought it was intentional, if Angel had any energy to spare for theatrics. Instead, he dropped hard to her thigh with a whimper, sniffling again behind the fluffy blanket. Soon, one of his lower arms slunk from beneath it, feeling for the tissues until Cherri nudged them into his grasp. He blew his nose a few times and balled each tissue up to join the growing sea of them across the mattress before Cherri returned to massaging his scalp.

“I swear, bein’ sick in Hell is its own kinda hell,” Angel said around a wide yawn.

“Guess that’s what we get for fuckin’ up our afterlives,” Cherri said, resigned. She let the backs of her fingers rest momentarily on Angel’s forehead, not to feel for fever—she knew all too well it hadn’t changed since she arrived—but for him. Angel leaned into her touch the way he always did and yawned again.

“I don’ feel good,” he said into his blanket, eyes closed.

“Sleep it off, Angie,” she said.

It didn’t take long for him to drift off, soft snores turning more congested. They left his mouth hanging open and a spot of drool gathering on her leg.

A grin spread across her face, and she pulled out her phone. She opened Voxtagram, angling the camera so it captured a full view of Angel’s fever-flushed face, Fat Nuggets tucked under his chin, and part of her own face, blurry with how close it was to the lens. She typed a quick caption—“this bitch is so fuckin sickkk 🤒🤒🤒 still a cutie tho”—and hit post. Then, she reached for the strawberry candies she brought, popped one in her mouth, and settled in with her back against the wall to keep Angel company while he slept.

#so yeah i love everything about this and will be reading it again and again #the fact that Cherri thinks a screwdriver will be helpful because it has oj #she's so proud of herself #babe #A for effort #you know it was probably more like vodka with a splash of oj #love how Angel is like fuck it and tosses it back anyway #then instant regrets #and then she presses the sneeze button #Cherri babe pump the breaks #I love how Angel feels safe and secure enough in their friendship to outright tell her that she made it worse #while also still expressing his appreciation of her #Angel is so freakin cute and pitiful throughout this whole fic #the blanket cocoon #the double blanketing #THE FAT NUGGETS PLUSHIE #Angel cuddling Nuggs in his upper set of arms and the plushie in his lower set of arms while his head rests on his bff's thigh #is exactly what he needed #h/azbin h/otel

61 notes · View notes