The pillow was unusually soft. It appeared to be breathing. As a point of fact, the gentle rise and fall was what awoke her. It had a hand in her hair, fingers wrapped around thick strands of it, and it seemed to be singing softly. She shifted slightly, reluctant to wake up in case it was a dream.
"Hey," said Lorne. Definitely not a dream.
"Hi," Hannah whispered, then asked, "Do you need me to move?"
"No."
"Good." She smiled against his chest. She started to roll on-to her stomach so she could look up at his face, but stopped, giving a small gasp of pain.
"You alright?"
"I will be."
"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I -- lost control."
"It's alright. It's been happening like that for centuries," she said, moving more carefully to look at him. She smiled. "Well, maybe not exactly like that."
He regarded her solemnly. "I thought you didn't want to move."
"I don't want to move much. I can think of a few movements I could tolerate."
"Can you now?" he asked facetiously. "Alarmingly enough, so can I."
"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," she grinned at him impishly.
"Are you sure?"
"They're just muscles. They'll get used to it."
He took her face between his hands, weaving his fingers into her hair, creating a tartan of green and red, and kissed her. They rolled together, and she arched her head back into the pillow. His mouth trailed up her neck to her ear.
"I'll be careful," he whispered.
"I know."
His mouth met hers, and his hands began to explore her body again. She moved with him, her hands trailing over his horns, face and back. One of the of the pillows got in his way, and he negligently tossed it across the bed.
The pillow flew through the air towards the side of the bed, and then suddenly stopped as though it had run into a wall. It slid down the invisible barrier, and rested up against it. Hannah's foot brushed past the it and knocked it into a more traditional position.
Neither of them were paying any attention to the pillows.
{Sunrise. LA skyline. Hannah's head arching back into the pillow}
"I might have made a slight miscalculation," Wesley admitted, leaning against his much stained sword and squinting out the window.
"You think?" Angel asked sarcastically, edging farther away from the light pouring in through the windows. He affected an accent. "We'll have plenty of time, Angel, it's just around the corner, why don't we walk?"
"Well you didn't exactly rush through killing them, now did you?" Wesley defended himself. "I'll go get the car. You stay here and - away from the light."
"Where are you planning to put the car, Wes?" Angel asked, still bitter.
"This used to be a garage, Angel," Wesley pointed out in a diplomatic tone. "And you do have super-human strength. Make a spot for it."
"I hate you."
Wesley smiled, opened the door, and went out into the bright California sunshine.
{Beach with people on it. Downtown LA in the day-time. People walking on the streets.}
Someone was near. She could always tell. It was a defense mechanism she had developed on Pylea, and it had saved her life more than once. Slowly, and without opening her eyes more than a crack, she rolled over.
"Charles!" Fred exclaimed, and he shot up from her pillows. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I don't know," he said. "We were talking, and you told me to get out, and I thought I did."
"I hate to break it to you, but you didn't."
"I'm really sorry," Gunn apologized. "I'll go."
He went to swing his feet off the side of the bed, and stopped. He tried again; still no luck. Curious now, he reached out a hand and it stopped dead in the air just above the edge of the bed. He pushed harder, but his hand would go no farther.
"Oh no."
"What's wrong?" asked Fred.
"I can't get out."
Fred sat up and hammered her fists against the barrier.
"Computer, deactivate force field," she demanded. Gunn shot her a look. "What, it was worth a shot."
Gunn began to laugh. Fred glared at him, which only made him laugh harder. She rolled her eyes and slumped back on her pillows.
"Are you thinking?" Gunn asked her.
"Yes, of course I'm thinking," Fred snapped. "I'm trying to remember every spell I've ever heard Wesley say, and I am trying even harder not to think about large amounts of water and . . ."
"Stop!" said Gunn, throwing a pillow over her face. "Spells."
"Alright, alright. Let me think a minute."
For some reason, Gunn could not get 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' out of his head.
{Sunny street in LA. Wesley walks down it.}
Wesley always enjoyed mornings. They were all about beginnings and clean slates, and even now that they came at the end of his day, he still liked the symbolism. This particular morning was bright, and there was a light breeze. Of course, the breeze was coming in from exactly the wrong direction, so it carried smog rather than the essence of the sea, but it made the trees move all the same. It was a nice day. Pity all he wanted to do was sleep through it.
{Hyperion, Cordelia's room.}
She still wasn't sure why she hadn't made someone drive her home last night. Or why she hadn't waited until everyone was quiet and then climbed out a window and called a cab. She absolutely detested the beds at the Hyperion, and it felt strange to sleep without Dennis there. She had fallen asleep easily enough, but it had been an uncomfortable, wakeful night.
She looked at her borrowed alarm clock and realized that she had two minutes before it went off and she had to get ready to open the office. She burrowed back into the pillows, unwilling to admit that her uncomfortable night in this terrible bed was over and she was still so tired.
Her alarm clock went off. She cursed her situation again. She hated buzzer alarm clocks, but last night she had been in no condition to tell Fred to set it to radio. She crawled over to the edge of the bed and reached out a hand to turn off the clock.
Except she couldn't. She sat up and tried again. The alarm clock, under the impression that it had not been successful in waking her, increased its volume. Cordelia sat back against the head board and out her pillows over her ears.
"Shit."
{Hyperion, Hannah's room}
"You're still afraid," he said. It wasn't a question.
"A little," she admitted. She was almost immediately distracted by his hands. His skin fascinated her, and she loved the contrast between his mottled blue-green tones and her pale translucence. "You read me while we were. . ."
"No. It's more of an intuition thing." He gave her a sad half-smile. "We'll find a way you know."
"I know." She didn't sound convinced. Then his hands became even more distracting and she more or less stopped caring.
{Streets of Los Angeles, Wesley}
Wesley looked at his watch. The others would be up and about now, preparing for yet another day at Angel Investigations. He yawned and decided that he should stop and bring them coffee. God knows, he needed it, though hopefully he'd be able to catch a quick nap before anything too apocalyptic showed up.
He stepped through the door of the coffee shop they all frequented often enough for the wait staff to have their order memorized, and gasped in dismay. The place was packed! It was never this full. All the tables were crammed and the line up at the carry-out was about eight times longer than usual. Wes stepped into line and snagged the sleeve of the first waitress with an empty tray who passed him.
"Molly, what's happened?" he asked the girl.
"Oh - hi Wesley," Molly said breathlessly. "The new advertising campaign is finally paying off. I've gotta run."
Wesley gaped after her fast-retreating form and then sighed. The sigh quickly became a yawn, which he smothered with his hand. The things he endured for caffeine.
{Garage, Angel.}
"It'll be a nice walk, Angel, we don't need to take the car." It was actually quite therapeutic to heave the machines around the garage's floor. It helped if he imagined Wesley under the really big ones. Angel grunted. "Nice walk, my ass."
He paused and looked around the garage. Half an hour ago, the floor had been covered with old industrial machinery and coated with the viscera of the demons he and Wesley had dispatched. Now, most of the machinery had been stacked in the corners, making an odd shape on the floor as the sunlight prohibited his movement into some areas. The guts he had left where they were. He wasn't that bored.
"Yes, this is exactly how I planned on spending my day," he informed a severed head before climbing up on one of the piles he'd made to sit for a bit. "After all, why would I want to be home in my nice bed with a warm cup of blood when I could be here with you?"
The head didn't answer him. That in itself was reassuring.
{Hyperion, Fred's room.}
"You're grinding your teeth again," Fred said, unable to keep the acidity out of her voice.
"Sorry. I've never been much for captivity."
"You adapt," said Fred quietly.
Gunn shot her a thoughtful look, but she wouldn't meet his eyes.
"Didn't mean to bring up old ghosts." Her eyes asked him to change the subject, so he did. "Thought of anything yet?"
"Well," said Fred in the tone of voice that usually guaranteed he'd be completely lost within four words, "given that the materials I have to work with are you, me, a set of sheets and three throw pillows - no. I haven't."
Gunn sighed.
"Angel and Wesley. . ." she began.
"Look out the window, Fred," Gunn said. "Angel isn't going anywhere for a while."
"I have to go to the toilet."
"I've asked you to stop saying that."
There were a few moments of silence.
"Dammit, Gunn, where is Wesley?"
{LA Street, Wesley falling out of a tree.}
Whoever it was that coined the phrase "what goes up must come down" obviously never owned a cat. Actually, that was not entirely fair. They could well have owned a nice, sedate, aloof cat, who was content to spend its days lounging about in the sun and sharpening its claws on various bits of furniture. They would not have owned a kitten. Particularly not a stupid, acrophobic kitten like this one.
Wesley cursed as his shirt caught again on the branches of the tree he was climbing. The way up had been bad enough. While his shoes provided excellent tread for fighting demons, they were apparently exactly the wrong kind of shoes to wear when one is climbing trees, as he had discovered within seconds of beginning his ascent. The way down was proving torturous. The kitten was held in his left hand, and the idiotic thing kept digging its claws into his arm, which was throwing off his balance. In addition, his eyes watered in reaction to his half forgotten allergy.
With a thud, Wesley and the kitten landed heavily on the ground. The child who owned it happily traded Wes the tray of coffees for the kitten and walked away cuddling it, after issuing several dozen 'thank yous'.
Wesley tied his shoelaces, picked up the shreds of his dignity, sneezed, and kept walking.
{Hyperion, Cordelia's room.}
At least the visions were over quickly. Sure, they were skull-splittingly painful and wildly unpredictable, but for the most part, they came, she saw and Angel conquered, while someone got her the pain killers. The damn alarm clock, on the other hand, buzzed on and on, completely unaware that it was loathed.
She had spent the first hour or so trying to tune the alarm clock out, but its steadily increasing volume foiled her efforts in short order. Then, she had amused herself by planning elaborate ways of exacting revenge on the alarm clock once somebody finally rescued her from the damn thing and gave her five minutes alone with it, but even that had worn thin quickly, and she hadn't got much more creative than blunt force trauma.
Didn't most alarm clocks turn themselves off? This was getting ridiculous. Cordelia piled the pillows over her head and crawled under the duvet. At this stage, if cutting off sound included cutting off her air, she was all for it.
{Hyperion, Fred's room.}
"If this was a waterbed, I'd be seasick by now," Gunn informed the pacing Fred.
"If this was a waterbed, I would have had you open it with your penknife and electrocuted it with my watch, hopefully shorting out the barrier an hour ago," Fred snapped. "And I thought we weren't going to mention water."
"Sorry."
"Where do you think Cordy, Lorne and Hannah are?" Fred asked suddenly.
"I was assuming they were stuck too," Gunn said.
"In bed?"
"Unless they were somewhere else when whatever this is happened."
"They're probably stuck in the bathroom." Fred groused, flopping back on to the mattress.
"If they are in bed, hopefully Lorne and Hannah got stuck together. Then at least they're having fun."
"What?!"
"You mean you didn't notice?" Gunn teased. "So much for woman's intuition."
"My mind is too busy concentrating on not performing certain semi-reflexive bodily functions to be intuitive," Fred growled, futilely crossing her legs. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"That buzzing noise."
{LA Street, someone chases Wesley.}
"David? David Abbot?" rang out a voice from behind him. Someone grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. Wesley wasn't quite sure what kept him from lashing out instinctively with his stake.
"David! It's Larry." Wes regarded the exuberant man blankly. "Larry Nivon, chess club? I haven't heard from you in years! How've you been?"
"I think this is a mis. . ." began Wesley, but he was cut off.
"Whatever happened to Tess? Did the two of you get married? I can't believe I'd run into you here in LA of all places. You always said you'd never come here."
"Actually. . ."
"Well it's nice to see you've made it out of your own back-yard. Small towns can be so stifling. Hey, I've got to run, I'm late for a business meeting. Here, take my card. Call me and we'll go to some bar and catch up while I beat you at darts."
And he was gone, leaving a dazed Wesley standing in the middle of the sidewalk, holding a business card.
"I doubt that. I've had a lot of practice lately," he informed the air beside him.
He tucked the business card into his wallet, tossed his empty coffee cup into a rubbish bin and picked Gunn's up out of the tray. He took a drink, only to discover that the coffee was cold. Wesley cursed and threw the rest of the coffees out. It seemed that today, not even caffeine could save him.
{Hyperion, Hannah's room.}
"You're addicted, aren't you," Lorne said, weaving his fingers into her hair again.
"Yes," Hannah admitted quietly. "And the potency is decreasing. Wesley has to give me more now, and we might have to go to two doses a day."
"Diabetics do that."
"Diabetics don't take spelled potions to keep themselves sane."
"What happens if you don't take it?"
"Withdrawal, and we have no idea what that would entail," Hannah said. "And then the madness again."
She shuddered, and he pulled her closer.
"You know what though?" she asked rhetorically. "If I do lose it again, at least I'll have had this."
"This isn't enough," he protested.
"No," she agreed. "But if you visited me on a good day, I might sing. You might not like what you hear though."
"Don't talk like that. It isn't going to happen."
"Lorne. . ."
"It isn't going to happen," he repeated firmly.
"I wonder why no one has come to wake us up yet." She tactfully changed the subject.
"Maybe they're being discreet."
"You think?" she snorted. "They're probably listening outside the door."
He began to tickle her mercilessly. Hannah laughed so hard she couldn't protest.
"Let's make them squirm then, shall we?"
{Hyperion, Fred's room.}
Gunn squirmed. He was in a rather awkward position, after all.
"I'm sorry about what I said last night," he said finally. "I just. . .worry."
"Let Angel worry," Fred suggested. "He's pretty much made a career of it. Besides, if I work with Wesley, I can keep him from doing something drastic. Or at least warn you on the off chance that he does."
Gunn regarded her solemnly. She was still rocking back and forth, but he didn't doubt her sincerity.
"All right," he said, then asked teasingly, "Why don't you just go?"
She looked at him with a horrified expression on her face. He laughed, and her expression became indignant.
"I am not going to wet the bed in front of you, Charles Gunn."
They laughed together. Everything might end up all right after all.
{Hyperion, Cordelia's room.}
She was going mad. Stark, staring bonkers. She couldn't remember ever not hearing that wretched clock. At the same time, the buzzing did seem to be lessening, but that might just have been her going deaf.
Cordelia sat up and looked out the window just as a beleaguered looking Wesley turned off the sidewalk and on to the front walk of the Hyperion. She hammered her fists against the barrier, even though she knew it was futile. Wesley passed out of her field of view, but she knew that within moments, he would be standing in the lobby.
"Wesley!"
{Hyperion, Wesley looks around the lobby.}
Wesley realized that something was wrong as soon as he entered the foyer. Everything was exactly as it had been when he had left. No coffee had been brewed, the lamp on the counter was still on, and the door to the weapons cabinet was still slightly ajar from Angel's hurried departure the previous night.
"Wesley!" he heard Cordelia yell. "Help!!"
She sounded absolutely panicked, so he dashed up the stairs two at a time, pausing only to pick a sword out of the cabinet. He burst into Cordelia's room to find her sitting in bed. He stopped in the doorway, puzzled.
"Why is the clock doing that?" he asked.
"Because I can't turn it off!" she snapped. "I've been stuck here for almost two hours."
Wesley came into the room and poked at the barrier with the tip of his sword.
"Fascinating," he commented.
"Wesley, for the love of Pete, turn off the damn clock!"
"All right, give me a minute."
As Wesley turned to lean his sword against the foot board, the alarm clock, all buzzed out, exploded in a shower of sparks. The barrier around Cordelia's bed sizzled purple as the sparks hit it, and then dissipated. Cordelia slowly reached out a hand, then a foot, and finally jumped out of bed altogether.
"Oh, thank God."
"We should check the others," Wesley pointed out. "Bring your taser."
{Hyperion, Fred's room.}
It had been too long since he'd seen Fred laugh. Still smiling, he leaned back against the barrier, only to find himself tail over teakettle on the floor.
"Charles!" exclaimed Fred, dashing off the bed.
"It's OK, I'm all right," he called after her retreating figure as it fled towards the bathroom. He pulled himself to his feet just as Wesley and Cordelia knocked on the door. He called them in.
"Where's Fred?" Wesley asked. A toilet flushed. "Never mind."
"The force fields must have all been connected somehow," Cordelia said. "When the clock blew out mine, it brought them all down."
"Clock?" said Gunn.
"It's a long story."
"Speaking of long stories, I have to get Angel," Wesley said. "Oh, and Lorne wasn't in his room, but someone should check on Hannah."
Cordelia and Gunn shared a look. Cordy rolled her eyes.
"Just go get Angel, Wes."
{Hyperion, Hannah's room.}
Hannah sat on the edge of the bed, buttoning up Lorne's shirt.
"If you wear that, what am I supposed to wear?" he asked, smiling.
She scowled at him, threw the shirt in his face, and got up to look for one of her own.
"It looked good on you."
"I like bright colours."
He returned her smirk and pulled the shirt over his shoulders. Hannah emerged from her closet wrapped in a towel and headed for the bathroom. Lorne set to making the bed, and was just reaching for the duvet when he heard a discreet knock at the door
"Come in." It wasn't like keeping secrets was an option.
{Angel moving machinery. Wesley falling out of a tree. Cordelia hitting her head against the head board. Fred pacing while Gunn watches. Lorne tickling Hannah.}
"A kitten?" Gunn asked for about the fourth time, sending Hannah and Fred into giggles again.
"Yes, a kitten," Wesley replied patiently, setting the tea tray down on the counter and motioning to everybody that they could jolly well pour out themselves. "A very stupid kitten who needs to be declawed as soon as possible."
Hannah made an attempt to swallow her laughter, which resulted in an extended coughing fit.
"I'm glad someone thought my morning was amusing," Wesley said.
"Did we ever find out what that this was?" Cordelia asked, reaching around Angel for the sugar.
"I did a quick search when I got home," Wesley said. "As far as I can tell, it was a Concillium Courtae charm."
"A what?" Gunn asked.
"Concillium Courtae," Wesley repeated. "It was used by Roman senators to prevent people from leaving during long-winded speeches. It shows up a few times in history until Wagner tried to use to keep people from leaving 'The Ring Cycle'. The spell went AWOL from the stress of over-use and began manifesting spontaneously."
"You're kidding," Fred said.
"No, no actually it shows up quite frequently," Wesley said. "There was one in Philadelphia while the Declaration of Independence was being drafted, and there's almost always one at the Oscars."
"That explains a lot." Lorne commented.
"But why did we all fall asleep?" Hannah asked.
"I'm not entirely sure," Wes admitted. "It might have something to do with where you all were when it happened."
"Is there any way we can prevent it from happening again?" Angel asked.
"I can look into it, but they are very sporadic, and for the most part, harmless." Wesley said. "It wears off by itself in about five hours."
"I'll file it under pending," Cordelia said.
"So, Angel rearranged an abandoned garage, I rescued a cat, Cordy had a battle of wills with an alarm clock, Fred, well, uh," Wes coughed, and then turned to look at Hannah. "What did you do?"
Hannah and Lorne exchanged a glance.
"Is Wesley old enough to hear my answer?" she asked.
"No," came from all corners.
"Well then," Hannah turned to face Wesley with an innocent smile, and just a hint of colour on her face. "We played chess. It was very engrossing."
Gunn choked.
"So engrossing, in fact, that they never even noticed they were trapped," Cordelia added, grinning wickedly.
Gunn gave up entirely and laughed out loud. As it dawned on them that they had all spent a very ridiculous morning, they joined in one by one, and the lobby filled with the sound of laughter.
* * * * *
A.N. I have nothing against 'The Ring Cycle', the Oscars or the Declaration of Independence. I have a great deal against alarm clocks, but that's a story for another time. I realize that there are several gaping plot holes in this story, but I had so much fun writing it, that I really don't care. And I didn't want to write any more dialogue.