Angel’s Girls (Don’t Seem To Like Him) (Patreon)

featuring Angel, Carmen, and their daughter Primroooose

A long time ago, when their daughter was still a newborn, money became very hard to come by for Carmen and Angel. The healthcare system didn’t look too mercifully on a sickly disabled infant in need of many medical procedures, nor on her working class parents. Worse yet, Carmen was still recovering from the rough birth and unable to work much. To help fund his daughter’s medical care, Angel secretly did what many poor canines do. He turned to bloodsport. Underground dogfighting.

All behind Carmen’s back, of course….she had enough to worry about already. At first Angel only bets on matches, but growing increasingly desperate, he decides to step into the ring himself. Quick, low stakes matches at first. He trains for them in secret. It won’t do for him to come home battered and bruised- he sets out to inflict far more damage than he takes in.

Over time, he gets good at it. Very good at it. Everything begins to escalate- the size of his opponents, the money riding on the fights, the stakes. Angel becomes something of an underground legend…and he gets his name. The Angel of Death.

Carmen isn’t stupid, she knows something is going on. But Angel is so evasive to her questioning, on what exactly goes on at his “night shifts”, and they need the money so badly. She forces herself to have faith in him, to trust that he knows what he’s doing.

She's rocked to her core the night police bust a local dogfighting ring- and Angel, her husband, her best friend since childhood, is arrested.

Angel goes to prison for a long time. Carmen is left to pick up the pieces- left to raise Primrose alone. She has never, never forgiven Angel for this.

Not for forcing her to watch the father of her child be sentenced to prison….not for making her raise Primrose alone while she struggled to earn her degree. For the lies, for the secret cruelty, for shattering her trust, for missing so much of their daughter's childhood. Carmen hates Angel for a lot of things, and one thing she especially hates him for is coming back.

She hates his stupid, one-eyed face that gazes at her so sadly….his painfully earnest, awkward attempts to reconnect with Primrose….but most of all, she hates herself for still loving him. Because sometimes, when he makes her laugh, things almost feel the way they used to be. When she sees that Prim has, in a total brat move, superglued a googly-eye to Angel's eyepatch, and he amusedly wears it anyway while Prim huffs in the background- it almost feels like they could be a family again, maybe. When Angel speaks to her in a low voice and puts a deceptively-innocent hand on her knee, she still feels an involuntary little shiver before she thinks to push him away. Proximity is tortuous to both of them, but they can't avoid each other totally, as they share custody of Primrose. No matter what, Carmen cannot bring herself to deprive her daughter of her father, even if Primrose (who considers her dad a particularly annoying semi-stranger) doesn’t often appreciate the sentiment.

And so, Carmen and Angel keep drifting back together….and jerking back apart. It’s a very familiar song and dance….but it doesn’t mean Carmen isn’t allowed to vent her frustrations every once in a while.

~~~~~~~Carmen is tol, Angel is smol. Love the idea of her sometimes getting so mad she shakes him around like a baby rattle. Angel’s pretty into it. Primrose was staying at a friend’s house during Angel’s scheduled visit, so he sits down for a civil cup of coffee with Carmen, and stuff ends up happening between them because of course it does, their interactions are like 60% antagonistic sexual tension. Carmen’s pretty peeved this keeps happening. 

I was originally holding off on revealing Angel’s sketchy past cuz i wanted to build up the mystery, buuuut i’m pretty strapped for time these days so i figure there’s no harm giving y'all a little taste. >:3 Despite his grim dogfighting moniker, and for as gruesome as bloodsport can be, Angel has never actually killed anyone……..probably