InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "the cub caught the lion's prey"

Cordelia Chase takes crap from no one. (thisismyofframp) wrote in colligo_threads,
@ 2012-01-15 20:05:00

Entry tags:

cordelia chase, owen harper

WHO: Cordelia Chase and Owen Harper
WHAT: These two are roommates. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
WHEN: Sunday late morning.
WHERE: Apartment 110A.
RATING: TBD
STATUS: In Progress

Having spent the better part of the night before - also known as her birthday - in a drunken stupor thanks to the liquor that Spike had given her, Cordelia had not risen bright and early as she typically did. In fact, it was closer to eleven than ten in the morning when she finally rolled over and peered out blearily at her alarm clock beside her bed. Snuggling down deeper under her covers, she probably would have slept until eleven had passed by entirely and noon was close to doing the same if not for one thing that finally registered in her sluggish, hungover mind.

She was in her bed.

Sitting up straight, an action she regretted a split second later when the world tilted violently at the sudden motion, she slowly drank in the welcomed sight of her bedroom. Despite feeling as though her brain was currently doing a protest march against her temples, Cordelia smiled. "Finally," she exclaimed. Almost giddily, she quickly grabbed a bottle of pain killers that she kept beside her bed, mostly in case her visions ever turned into giant balls of agonizing slow death again but also handy for when she'd hit the bottle a little too hard the night before. After swallowing a couple of the pills, she tossed the blanket aside and padded out of her room with every intention of making a beeline for the coffee pot in order to continue her hangover cure ritual.

It wasn't until she had actually reached the kitchen that she realized another very important fact. Yes, she was back in her own apartment... but she wasn't alone. In fact, there was someone sitting at her counter, looking for all the world as though they belonged there. Someone masculine, or at least pretty butch if the haircut was anything to go by. Someone that definitely was not Daryl, or Constantine, or Spike, or any other guy she recognized who might, for some reason, be there.

"Uh, excuse me," she heard herself saying before she'd even really given any thought to what she was doing. "But what in the hell do you think you're doing?"

Smart, Cordy. Real smart, she thought to herself as soon as the words had left her mouth. Nothing like pissing off a potential robber while unarmed and in your pajamas, no less. If you get yourself killed before you've even brushed your hair, you are never living this down. Of course, the thought was all well and good, but she wasn't paying that much attention to her common sense at the moment. She was too busy standing in the doorway, hands on her hips and a ticked off expression on her face, waiting for Mr. Made-Himself-At-Home to answer her.

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imatwat
2012-01-16 03:48 am UTC (link)

Of course he felt comfortable using just in that sentence. After all, he'd put almost two cups on the first cereal he'd had after coming back, so much so that he'd basically just been eating a bowl of sugar mush. Very, very good sugar mush that had left him feeling happy and satisfied, as well as crazy energized through out the morning, until the inevitable crash at around noon. He was sure he'd tapper back off to a much more reasonable tablespoon full by the end of the month. At least he hadn't gotten completely hammered last night like he had the first evening he'd arrived. That would have been a pretty horrible position to be in while trying to deal with all of this.

Really, it almost looked like the position she'd been in, but he wasn't about to say anything about that. After all, he'd already pointed out she looked like shite. Seemed about all that needed to be sad on the matter. "No touching?" Owen asked, lifting an eyebrow. "Not even if your coat finds its way on top of my shoes, or I have to move your feminine hygiene products in order to get to the toliet? Because you've got to be a bit flexible on these things." Otherwise, they'd all be going mad whenever someone was a bit inconsiderate and left something in the way.

He was watching with a vague amusement as she started to clean out the fridge, but that amusement faded almost immediately when she told him not to help her if she started glowing or levitating, not exactly your garden variety issues to have on a regular basis. Narrowing his eyes at her in confusion, Owen just frowned at her flippant attitude towards...whatever it was. "So. Weird shit happens, I should just, what, pretend you're practicing magic tricks?"

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thisismyofframp
2012-01-16 04:01 am UTC (link)

"My coat is not going to be anywhere near your shoes," Cordelia stated flatly. "And if you even think about touching my feminine hygiene products, you're getting shot somewhere you do not want to be shot, buddy." She continued to empty out the fridge as she spoke, tossing the now soured mayonnaise into the trashcan with a bit more force than was absolutely necessary at his last question. Distantly, she knew he probably hadn't meant anything by the comment but it still made her hackles rise, nonetheless.

Spinning around to face him, she snapped, "If that's what makes you keep your grubby little hands to yourself and not interfere, then yes. Pretend I'm freaking Houdini reincarnated, for all I care. Just stay out of it." A bit defensively, she tacked on, "And it's not weird. Weird is eating more sugar than cereal for breakfast when you aren't six-years-old."

Turning back toward the fridge, she continued to clear out the expired items, muttering under her breath as she went. "Stupid city. It wasn't bad enough I was stuck in hillbilly hell for two weeks. Nooo. Now I get Doogie Howswer, all grown up, for a freaking roo-" The rest of her sentence was cut off, the juice she'd been about to dump being instead set back in the fridge as she sighed heavily. Instantly her gaze shot to the ceiling.

"Now?!" she growled out in frustration. "You're showing me this now? Seriously?! Are you kidding me?" Setting down the trashcan, she turned back to face Owen as though she hadn't just had a not-exactly-sane moment a heartbeat earlier.

"Don't," she bit out, clearly trying to sound civil even if she didn't really feel that way for reasons that weren't necessarily all his fault, "cross the street in front of the clinic at six tonight. Okay?"

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imatwat
2012-01-16 04:30 am UTC (link)

"Let me tell you something, princess, there's no where you could shoot me that I haven't been shot before, so you'd best untwist your knickers and get used to the idea of me being here," Owen said, taking another bite of his cereal and talking through the mouthful. "This is where I've been put, and considering I don't have anywhere better to go nor anyone I really know here except my boss and his boyfriend, and I've got absolutely no desire to listen to those two bugger all night and day. So it looks like you're stuck with me."

Owen tried to do exactly what she'd told him when she started freaking out, relaxing his face into a mask of banality despite the way that his heart leapt into his throat at the sudden tension in her body. It wasn't nearly as bad as she'd made out to be. No glowing. No levitation, but there had been a clear physiological reaction to something, even if it wasn't quite clear what that was. As she turned back to face him, Owen arched one eyebrow at her, unsure of exactly what she was aiing at.

"Don't walk in front of the clinic at six tonight?" Owen asked, snorting slightly. "Why? Am I going to get hit by a car? Run over by a bus? Or just mugged on the way home?" He asked, his tone indicating that whatever psychic bullshit game she was trying to play on him, he wasn't buying it. "I've got to work. This place is sorely in need of a medical staff that haven't been lobotomized. That hospital is a bit frightening if you ask the wrong questions."

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thisismyofframp
2012-01-16 04:51 am UTC (link)

Under any other circumstances, Cordelia would have all too happily continued the argument about whether or not she had to get used to the idea of him being there and precisely what was going to happen if he messed with her things. She would have tacked on a few more insults, probably another sarcastic comment or two, and it would have kept going until either he stormed off or, well, the world ended, because she did not back down from things like that. However, these were not other circumstances and, no matter how difficult it was to grit her teeth and bite her tongue against the scathing commentary that threatened to spew forth, she managed it because a vision was involved and her visions took precedence no matter what.

"Hey! Hairclub for Men!" she snapped, slamming her hand down on the table for emphasis, "Shut up a second and listen to me! I didn't say you couldn't work. I didn't say you couldn't go to the clinic. I said not to cross the street in front of it at six. Because if you do, you're going to get shot in the head, you're going to die, and there won't be a damn thing anyone in this city will be able to do to bring you back."

And with that, Cordelia picked back up her coffee and took another sip before calmly turning around and continuing to empty out the fridge.

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imatwat
2012-01-16 05:52 am UTC (link)

Shot in the head? Shot in the bloody head? Owen just stared at her for a long moment before cursing over his breath, pushing off away from the counter as he picked up his bowl and carried it over to the sink, rubbing his temple with his free hand as he dropped it down in. "What am I, a bullet magnetic?" Owen asked, sounding more than a little annoyed before turning back to Cordelia, narrowing his eyes at her. He still wasn't sure how she knew that, or why she was being told something so basically inconsequential about him, but she looked and sounded serious. And Owen had learned his lesson. When someone looks serious, they usually are bloody well serious, and you should probably should listen to what they have to say, if only to make sure they weren't an actual nutter.

"Any particular reason I'm going to get shot, or do people just like killing me for some reason?" Owen asked with a huff, feeling a little like he'd been labeled a walking target and nobody had bothered to tell him. Really, getting shot once had been fine, particularly when it had been Ianto that had done it, and he was a crap enough shot to miss anything vital. But the head? Did this universe hate him or what?

"Look, I won't leave the building. I won't touch your stuff. And I'll stay out of the way as best I can, but you can't expect me to not be me," Owen said. "Which means I'm basically going to be an overgrown six-year-old, at least until I have a reason to grow up again. Right now, I've been dead far too long to be the responsible one."

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thisismyofframp
2012-01-16 04:00 pm UTC (link)

Not leave the building? For a long moment, that was all Cordelia could hear and she couldn't help but wonder what part of any of what she had said translated into 'become a veritable recluse'. Then she paused to think, really think, about things from his perspective. Clearly, he was a fairly new arrival to the crazy that was Colligo. And apparently, before winding up in the city that sanity forgot, he had been dead. As someone who could more than relate to that last bit, and remembered all too clearly how weird things had seemed in the city when she'd first arrived, she could sort of relate. Which meant that maybe, just maybe, she should cut him a little slack and at least try to explain things without acting like he was the reason that everything in her life was crappy beyond the telling of it.

So, in a move that was rather unusual for her unless it involved people that she considered more family than friends, Cordelia apologized.

"Look," she began in a tone that was lacking all of her former hostility, "I'm sorry. If anyone gets the whole just back from the dead thing, it's me. And I'm really not that upset with you. I'm just..." She sighed heavily and shook her head, picking up her coffee cup as she moved to the nearest stool and took a seat. "I'm hungover, not to mention frustrated and annoyed at everything that is this place right now, and just spent the last two weeks with a guy that was one pig obsession away from being straight out of Deliverance." Which, okay, not the fairest thing she could say about Daryl but whatever. She continued. "And did I mention I'm hungover? Because seriously. I think I drank my weight in liquor last night."

Taking a sip of her coffee, her gaze fell to the cup for a moment before she looked back up at him.

"I'm a Seer," she stated simply, as though it was the most common thing in the world. "I get visions of things that are going are happen that are meant to be stopped. Sometimes, that includes levitating and other things, sometimes it's just a vision. But no matter what else might happen, one thing is always the same. My visions are very real and always come true if they aren't stopped. And the latest one shows you, getting shot, on the street in front of the clinic at six o'clock tonight."

Cordelia shrugged ever so slightly. "So, like I said. Just don't be there at six. Be inside the clinic. Be behind the clinic. Be here, or at a bar, or anywhere in this entire freaking city, except on that street. That's all I'm saying."

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imatwat
2012-01-17 01:33 pm UTC (link)

Owen chuckled. It probably wasn't the best response that he could have had to an apology, but it was the one which seemed the most appropriate to him in a situation that had gone from extremely tense to much more at ease just because of a few words. Sure, his mind was still rattled by the idea that one false step would result in him being dead again, particularly when he'd only just been brought back in a way that made him feel semi-normal once more, but he pushed that out of his mind as he pushed himself away from the counter and moved to the shelves in the kitchen.

"I could pretty much tell that, sweetheart," Owen said, his tone pretty much naturally condescending even when he didn't entirely mean it to be. "No offense, but I meant it when I said you look like shite. Death warmed over," He said before grinning in triumph as he snagged a can of tomato soup from the back of one cabinet. "Any Tabasco sauce and lemon juice?" If there was one thing that Owen actually did have plenty of experience with outside of all the creepy-crawlies of Torchwood, it was easing the results of an evening of binge drinking.

He listened to her explanation of what had happened and why, finding it a bit odd but knowing all too well that there were plenty of things in this world that they hadn't figured out yet, that there just seemed to be more and more getting heaped on top of what they didn't know, and considering even what Torchwood had dealt with didn't all qualify as aliens, Owen just nodded in understanding to what she was saying. "That's what I meant. I'll just say inside the clinic all evening, won't leave even to get dinner," He said even if the idea of foregoing a meal so soon after not having had any in what seemed like forever irritated him. But all the same, one late dinner was better than going back to the darkness.

"And I'm an alien doctor," Owen said, grinning over at her. "So we're both on our own separate sides of the weird line here. I'm sure we can figure out some way to get along without driving each other mad."

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thisismyofframp
2012-01-17 01:47 pm UTC (link)

Tabasco sauce and lemon juice? Seriously? Cordelia's stomach churned at the mere mention of those two things, much less the thought of them combined together in any way, shape, or form. Motioning vaguely toward the fridge, she managed a slightly queasy sounding, "In there, somewhere. Unless there was some kind of condiment burglar while I was stuck with Daryl." She didn't retort to his comment that she looked like death warmed over. Sure, it was a bit of a rude thing to say but she knew it was probably true if only because she felt like death warmed over. And that was putting it mildly.

Fortunately, before she could ponder that thought for too long - or flee to the bathroom with a refusal to come out until she looked like at least a semblance of her normal, well put together and attractive self - he had changed the topic back to something that wasn't about her. "Just don't leave at six," Cordelia responded simply, with a slight shrug before blinking as the last thing he'd said finally registered in her sluggish mind. "And did you just say you were an alien doctor?" she echoed somewhat faintly. "As in... from another planet, E.T. phone home, kind of alien?"

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imatwat
2012-01-17 02:03 pm UTC (link)

Moving to the fridge, Owen shifted a few things aside before succeeding in finding the things that he needed. Pulling out a bowl, Owen dumped the soup and the lemon juice into the bowl, shaking in a few drops of the Tabasco sauce before popping all of it into the microwave and heating it up. He knew how disgusting it probably sounded as well as how horrible it might taste to someone who wasn't used to it, but it worked. And it was far better than just having a stomach full of nothing but coffee until you actually felt recovered enough to eat solid food.

"What we work with tend to be more aggressive than E.T.," Owen said with a laugh before pouring himself a cup of coffee. "Think more like a horror movie where everybody that isn't smart enough not to get themselves killed has to have their death faked in a much more realistic way," He said with a grin as he moved back over to the counter, quirking an eyebrow at her. "Not that I'm alien myself, mind you," He said, "if you were thinking that." He wouldn't have put it past some people to make that mistake. "Just plan old brilliant human doctor recruited by a covert agency."

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thisismyofframp
2012-01-17 02:08 pm UTC (link)

Cordelia stared at him as he put together his little concoction, somehow knowing it was for her yet really, really hoping it wasn't. Or that the power would go out before it finished heating up. Or that the world would explode. She could handle that, too, over the thought of-

Suddenly her attention was torn from the microwave slowly counting down to what she was absolutely certain was going to be her last meal, to the man responsible for fixing it. "A covert agency that deals with aggressive alien threats," she repeated flatly. "That's..." She paused, then shook her head. "Nope. No words. I actually do not have words to describe that. And I always have words to describe things, typically in a colorful, amusing way, in fact."

With a soft groan, she brought her fingers up to her temples and began massaging them softly. "I am way too sober for this conversation," she complained quietly before drawing in a breath and forcing herself to face Owen once more. She could handle this. She could. The food he was making, not so much, but this conversation about aliens? That was doable.

Maybe.

"You do know this is pretty hard to believe, right? And this is coming from a girl who grew up on a Hellmouth and gets visions from higher powers."

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imatwat
2012-01-17 02:27 pm UTC (link)

"It was a little hard for me to swallow at first, too," Owen said with a grin and a shrug, not really enjoying thoughts of when he'd first found out. Months of watching his fiance slowly fade away from him because of what he'd thought was a brain tumor, what his years of medical knowledge and experience had told him was a brain tumor, only to discover that it was an alien parasite growing in her brain, an alien parasite that killed not only her but all of the doctors who had attempted to save her life by removing it. And the only thing that anyone had told him about what he'd seen, what he was certain he'd seen, was that he should take some time off, take some time until whatever his mind was inventing to cope with Katie's death subsided, to deal with his loss.

Shaking off the thoughts, Owen chuckled, "But once you've dealt with invasions, time rifts, and all the madness that we've got to cover up to keep the world from going into a panic, it becomes part of the every day. I imagine it's the same for...whatever it is you're dealing with," Owen said, not really sure what in the world a Hellmouth was, but he presumed it was probably exactly what it sounded like.

"So. Demons, huh?" Owen asked, chuckling at the way this conversation was evolving, grinning as the microwaved singled the soup being done. Taking it out and pouring part of it into a bowl, Owen placed it down in front of her with a slight smile. "I know you're probably nauseated by the idea of it, but it helps. It also keeps your stomach from trying to dissolve itself later today."

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thisismyofframp
2012-01-25 05:08 am UTC (link)

Personally, Cordelia was more willing to consider letting her stomach dissolve itself than she was even considering trying the concoction her roommate had placed in front of her. However, in the interest of keeping the peace, she didn't say as much. She simply offered him a somewhat dubious smile and fiddled with the edge of the bowl, hoping he wouldn't realize he'd forgotten to give her silverware until she had figured out how to make her escape. Hoping to keep his attention off of the fact that she wasn't touching the bowl of... whatever in the hell it was, she focused on responding to his question.

"Yep. Demons. The guy that was supposed to get the visions from back home was a vampire, actually. Only, one of the good kind. He was on this whole path to redemption kick." Cordelia went deliberately vague at that point, not wanting to give Owen a reason to mock Angel because she would have to kill him if he did and she was pretty sure murdering one's roommate, even when you were hungover, was frowned upon. Instead she offered him a quirk of a grin.

"And because I should probably warn you ahead of time lest I risk some kind of freakout later... I'm part demon too." She shrugged, glancing down at the soup that he'd made while doing so. Blanching, she quickly looked back up at him. "It was the only way to keep my visions without them killing me," she explained as though that was a perfectly normal reason for giving up one's humanity.

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imatwat
2012-01-25 07:47 am UTC (link)

Demons weren't a fond thought for Owen. Having accidentally released one on Cardiff only to have it kill hundreds within a matter of a few minutes was exactly something that he liked remembering, particularly since he took the majority of the blame for it having happened. Nobody else in the office would have shot Jack, and if he hadn't, they never would have opened the Rift. "Not the life force sucking type, I hope," Owen said, trying to play it off like it was nothing, but there was definitely a hint of concern behind his eyes, one that made it clear that he'd had some experience before, and it had left scars. "You hardly seem murderous, but there's been too many circumstances were not seeming murderous just turned out to be a cover for being able to get away with murder. So."

Owen let the last syllable hang in the air as he looked across the counter at her, waiting for some kind of confirmation as to whether he should be worried or not. Not that he expected her to come out and say 'No, I'm a horrible nasty demon who is going to murder you in your sleep,' but any sort of warning if he'd have to worry about more freaktastic stuff than levitation and glowing would be nice.

After a moment of staring in expectation, though, Owen noticed something rather important, "No wonder you're not eating. You don't have a spoon. Honestly, genius level IQ, some of the things I miss," He said with a laugh before crossing back into the kitchen and retrieving the utensil and setting it down next to the bowl. "There. Nothing stopping you now."

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