milliways_bar | (no subject)

Angela is cute when she's asleep. At least in Hodgins's completely biased opinion.

And part of the fun of catching her asleep is waking her up.

Which involves kissage, naturally.

Hodgins grins and leans down to kiss his girlfriend on the lips.

When a girl is awakened to discover that she is being kissed by someone she does not know, and that (furthermore) she does know where or even who she is, well, in moments like that, it helps to stick to what she does remember.

Namely, that the correct response to the situation is for the kissee to slap the kisser.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Ow!"

When Angela had said she was all muscle, she hadn't been kidding. It's a bit of an effort for Hodgins to keep his eyes from watering.

"Hey. Sorry Ange. I didn't mean to startle you."

There may be just a mild tinge of huffiness. But just a tinge.

"Oh, no, of course you didn't," she says, and the sarcasm is doing the proverbial dripping.

"I'm quite sure I can figure out what you meant to do."

Angela can be sarcastic with the best of them. But something about this is a little......off.

"Just to wake you up," Hodgins replies cautiously.

"Angela, is everything okay?"

"Everything is fine," she says.

Where "fine" equals "freaked out, insecure, neutoric, and emotional but damn determined not to let any of it show."

"And since you've accomlished your objective, whoever you are, you can run along."

"Whoever I am? Run along?"

Okay. Something is not right here. And that's not the paranoia talking. That is the inner-Hodgins-who-knows-Angela-pretty-well talking.

Hodgins leans in a little closer so he can be sure to be looking her directly in the eye. "Angela, what's up with you? You know who I am."

Intimately, for that matter.

She leans back as he leans closer.

"I don't know who you are, or where you came from."

Or who she is, or where she came from.

But she's fairly certain she shouldn't tell that to a person who's accosted her once already this evening.

Hodgins is, by now, looking fairly concerned.

"Jack? Jack Hodgins? Your boyfriend?"

He regards Angela for a moment. "Are you putting me on?" he asks.

He's hoping that any second now she'll grin, lean in and kiss him, and rib him for being completely gullible.

There's a sweeping skeptical glance, taking him in from head to toe.

"You're my boyfriend?

"Aren't you a little . . . short?"

From concerned to mildly indignant in 2.5 seconds. He's not that much shorter than she is.

"Yeah. Better leverage, remember?"

And back to concerned. It's pretty clear that this isn't a practical joke. Angela would have cracked by now if it was.

"You seriously don't remember who I am?" Hodgins reaches for her hand. "Do you know who you are?"

"Leverage? I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

Angela moves her hand away.

"Of course I do," she says, primly. "I'm . . . Angela."

He keeps callign her that.

Clearly something freaky is up. And, just like in the lab, the situation needs to be evaluated before it can be solved.

Hodgins carefully withdraws his hands, holding them up in a vague 'peace' gesture.

"Yeah? Angela what?" he prods.

"Well, if . . . if you're my boyfriend, then you should know that, shouldn't you?"

Classic stalling technique.

"Yeah. The point is to see if you know it."

Hodgins looks uncharacteristically grim.

"You don't know who you are, do you?"

"Well, no. To be honest, I don't," she says.

"And furthermore, I don't know that I believe you about the Angela part. I don't feel like an Angela. An Angela is a person who sells you a book or something. And I don't know what I do, but I'm pretty sure it's not that.

"I feel like a ~~Joan~~ . . . Lenore. Or a Myrna."

Though the situation is not even remotely funny, Hodgins can't quite keep his lips from twitching. Her memory may have taken a hiatus, but her sense of whimsy is fully intact.

"No, you're definitely an Angela. Remember? Angela Montenegro. And you're an artist. I mean, you do original paintings and stuff, and you're the forensic artist for the Jeffersonian's anthropology department. You know, where we work? In the medico-legal lab?"

"Is any of this ringing a bell?" he asks hopefully.

Myrna (she has, for the moment, settled on Myrna), shakes her head.

"No, none of it. Sounds very . . . serious.

"Am I a serious person, then?"

"God, no."

Okay, that came out wrong and somewhat inaccurate.

"I mean, yeah you can be when the situation is serious. And you definitely don't put up with any crap. But you're.....an artist type, you know? Fun. Whimsical. Smart. Compassionate."

If anyone knows Angela Montenegro's good points, it's Jack Hodgins.

He's reaching for her hand again without even really thinking about it. It's just the natural thing for him to do around Angela.

She lets him take her hand this time, but he better not try anything else.

"Well, that doesn't sound too bad," she concedes.

Hodgins squeezes her hand reassuringly. "No, it's not bad at all."

Okay. Amnesia. Work through the process. He's not sure what exactly the process for amnesia is, but he'll play it by ear.

"What's the last thing you do remember? Did you hit your head? Hurt yourself?" He tries to think of other plausible options--and there are a lot of those in a place like Milliways. "Did anyone ask you to look into a device that emitted bright flashes of light?"

Hey, it could happen.

She looks at him like he might be crazy.

"I . . . don't really remember anything before you woke me up. And my head doesn't hurt. Neither does anything else."

"Okay."

Hodgins ponders for a moment. And he doesn't loosen his hold on her hand.

"The thing is, if we were home it would be easier to determine what's happened to you. But here.....it could be virtually anything."

And 'virtually anything' means that finding the way to reverse it is going to be akin to finding one particular spore in Yellowstone National Park.

"The good news is that most cases of amnesia cure themselves. We just need to figure out which switch to flip."

The woman yawns, and blinks open her eyes.

"Yes?"

[OOC: I've just seen this. Slowtime is fine and lovely, if you like.]