Fic: The Difference between Telling and (BtVS, Wesley/Spike, PG-13)
Title: The Difference between Telling and
Author: allyndra
Pairing: Wesley/Spike
Rating: PG-13
Word count: about 8,000
Disclaimer: Although the world they’re in is AU, these characters still belong to Joss. Dammit.
Summary: Even before the Council discovered his Talent, Wesley always played by the rules. He’s not sure why the sight of an old school chum in an unexpected place would change that.
Note: Written for speakingsilence in the AU round of maleslashminis. The prompt was: Wesley/Spike in an AU where psychics (loosely defined as any mental power) are known and tracked by the government to control them--complete with resistance movement, of course. speakingsilence, I sincerely hope you like this. Thanks to Rory for the beta; all remaining mistakes are my own.
When Wesley was a boy, he’d loved his grandparents’ house. If asked, he would have said it was because his grandmother coddled him and the servants listened to him, but neither of those were his favorite thing about visiting there. His favorite thing was wandering through the rooms, touching objects and telling himself stories.
His footsteps echoed on wood floors and padded softly on rich Persian carpets as he moved from library to drawing room to guest bedroom, finding treasures in each. Wesley would pick up a silver-backed brush and tell himself tales of the beautiful, sad woman who once used it, sitting before her vanity. He’d stroke his fingers over the smooth surface of the desk and weave stories of the man who wrote frantic letter after frantic letter atop it, trying to salvage his family’s fortune with threats and pleas.
It never occurred to him that other children spent their time differently, because Wesley knew no other children. Even when he was sent away to school, where he found himself surrounded by children on all sides, it was years before he knew any of them well enough for the subject of pastimes to come up.
***
Wesley hated school, but he’d never admit it. He loved learning, and he wouldn’t have done anything that would risk losing his lessons, but that wasn’t the reason he didn’t complain about school. He was attending his father’s alma mater, St. Bartholomew’s, and he would never speak a syllable against it. He spent every phone call and letter home loudly, enthusiastically boasting of his accomplishments at school, and the rest of his time silently, secretly loathing the place.
He might have liked it better if he’d made friends. But Wesley found his schoolmates loud, rude, and stupid, and they found him critical, arrogant, and aloof. It would have been horribly lonely if he hadn’t been so used to keeping himself entertained with books … and of course, with the stories in his head. When his dorm mates whispered and snickered after lights-out, Wesley just curled more tightly into his pillow, clutching a book or penknife and spinning tales about it as he drifted off.
He spent a solid month of nights tangling an old school tie around his fingers and dreaming up stories about a boy here at St. Bartholomew’s. He’d never been one for storybooks, so he wasn’t sure why he’d named the boy Rupert, but it seemed to fit. Rupert was just as out of place here was Wesley, just as unhappy, just as bowed by parental expectation. But where Wesley tried to twist himself to fit the mold laid out for him, Rupert tried to break his.
Wesley supposed Rupert’s escapades were some sort of escapism, fantasies of things that Wesley himself would never do, like sneaking out nights to drink in the village pub and smoking fags on the cricket pitch.
And kissing other boys, hot and defiant, in the library.
***
There were other boys Wesley might have made friends with - the swotty ones who wouldn’t mock him for caring about his marks and the weedy ones who couldn’t scoff at him for being slow around the track. The only one who he actually connected with, though, was William, a year ahead of him. He sat beside Wesley at meals for most of one term, starting awkward conversations about music and football and Professor Pfincher’s hair, which stood up around his head like dandelion fluff.
Wesley wasn’t sure why William wanted to spend time with him, but he wasn’t bothered by it. William was much less idiotic than most of the other boys, and it was nice to be able to smile over at someone and find them smiling back. There were a few snide remarks about them being a matched set of speccy little poofs, but Wesley found he didn’t mind the mockery as much when he had someone with whom he could huff and roll his eyes about it.
One day, near the end of Wesley’s fifth year, William dropped his books onto the library table where Wesley was studying. He looked up with a smile, and William gave him a shy grin back. Wesley thought he ought to want William to be more confident, but he rather liked that William was still shy around him, even after months of friendship. It made him feel … special. Like William, out of all the world, didn’t take him for granted.
“Hey,” William said. His voice was quiet at the best of times, but he hushed it even more out of respect for the library. “Would you look at something?”
“Of course.”
William bit his lip and pulled an exercise book out of the stack he’d brought with him. Silently, he opened it to the middle and slid it across the table to Wesley.
It was a poem, written in William’s scrawling hand, with some bits crossed out where he’d changed his mind. Wesley bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. It was the worst poem he’d ever read, full of jumbled metaphors and clumsy phrases. His brows furrowed as he tried to think of something to say that was both honest and tactful.
He was still considering it when William drew the book away from him. Startled, Wesley looked up to find William flushed red and blinking hard.
“Never mind,” he said.
“But-” William snatched up all of his books and hurried away before Wesley even got another word out.
Wesley didn’t know what he’d done wrong, but William stopped sitting next to him at meals after that. Wesley shrugged when the other boys teased him about his lovers’ spat, but it hurt more than he let on.
Wesley intended to sort things out with William, but he never got the chance. A week and a half after William started avoiding him, a trio of men in suits came to the school and took William away.
The professors said that William had been called home, but it was whispered around the dorms and dining hall that he had Talent and had been hiding it. That he’d been called to service, and they’d never see him again. That he had to be a Reader or a Mover, because a Seer would have known they were coming for him.
Wesley felt tense and off balance long past the end of term. He expected the other boys’ taunting to increase in the wake of William’s departure, but instead it stopped altogether. In fact, the rest of the students superstitiously avoided mentioning William at all after the first wave of gossip had passed.
Wesley sometimes felt as though he was the only one in the school who even remembered William. On the last day of the term, when his trunk and bags had been packed, Wesley found himself in William’s dorm, staring at his empty bed like it might offer some explanation.
There was nothing there.
Suddenly exhausted, Wesley sat down on the bed, slumping against the pillow until something knocked against his elbow in a way that pillows simply didn’t. Wesley felt about for the culprit and pulled out a slightly battered exercise book with William’s name written on the cover in ink. Wesley ran one finger over the name, and pictured William bent over the book, pouring his heart into scribbles of wretched verse, wracking his mind for the perfect word, the perfect rhyme, the perfect phrase. He imagined William carrying the book with him whenever he could, and hiding it here the rest of the time.
Wesley had only seen the notebook once before, but he didn’t doubt his own certainty that it was important to William. He hid it inside his jacket and took it back to his dorm, where he wriggled it down into the bottom of his trunk.
For a very long time after that, when Wesley was having trouble falling asleep, he would take out William’s notebook and tell himself stories about a boy with light brown curls who wrote in it.
***
They came for Wesley in the middle of winter term in his seventh year. It was a Tuesday, Wesley remembered, because he was in double History at the time. He didn’t think anything of it when a message came asking him to go to the headmaster’s office. He just picked up his books, nodded apologetically to the professor, and went.
The corridor didn’t seem any colder than usual, but when Wesley entered the headmaster’s office and saw three men standing before the desk, a chill ran up his spine and lodged itself at the nape of his neck.
The man in the middle was stout, with graying hair and a stern face. He gave Wesley a long, slow stare and said, “Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. You never registered.”
Wesley knew it wasn’t possible to simply stop breathing. He’d studied anatomy, and he knew about the involuntary nervous system. But if he didn’t know better, he would have sworn that he’d stopped breathing. He felt as though his chest had frozen, and he had to concentrate hard to inflate it enough to reply.
“Am I Talented, then, sir?” His voice sounded shockingly normal. It made Wesley feel oddly detached to hear his voice so steady when his stomach was a roiling mess of fear and excitement, when his hands were clenching around his books, when his feet were going numb for no reason at all.
The men didn’t seem to notice.
The man on the right - tall, with blond hair and dark eyes - shook his head infinitesimally, and the man in the middle relaxed a fraction. He smiled at Wesley. At least, Wesley thought it was a smile. It looked more like a grimace.
“You are,” the man said. Still smiling, he held out a small silver spoon. Wesley shifter his books to his left arm and reached forward to accept it. It was cold against his fingers, and the handle was molded into a family crest.
“Tell me about the person who owned this,” the man said.
Wesley loved knowing the answers to things. He always revised for his exams, and he volunteered often in class. Standing there, clutching a silver spoon, he felt the familiar urge to show off, but it was tempered with a fear and doubt. He'd never been Talented; there were regular checks for unregistered Talents, and no one had ever given Wesley a second look. Wesley opened his mouth to say that he didn't know what the man was asking for.
But oh. Oh, he did know.
"It was a man," he said slowly. "Quite old. Nearly fifty. His son ... his son's wife was having a baby, and the man - Harold, his name was - had this spoon made. It was to be a christening gift. He didn't get on with his son, but family was important." Wesley swallowed hard. "They died. The son and his wife died in a car crash on the way to hospital, and the baby with them. Harold kept the spoon in his pocket, and he'd touch it and think about the fact that the family name ended with him."
Wesley blinked. He was staring down at the little spoon, rubbing his thumb over the crest the same way he knew its owner had done. He could see it, in his mind. Just one more story to tell himself, but now he'd spoken it out loud, and it was going to change everything.
The three men looked smug. The man in the middle said, "I wonder that you were never found before." Wesley nodded, as it really did seem like shocking incompetence. He hadn't been hiding anything. "Your father," the man went on, "was remiss in not examining his own family as closely as he does those of others."
Wesley’s mouth went dry, and his face felt tight, like his skin had been boiled till it shrunk and then put on again. "My father?" he asked.
The men all nodded. The one in the middle said, "Your father is a Watcher. Like us. Like you will be." He held out his hand, and for a moment Wesley thought he wanted the spoon back. "I'm Quentin Travers. You'll come to know me well."
Wesley suddenly realized he was meant to shake hands, not surrender the spoon, and he fumbled to put the spoon into his left hand, which was already burdened with his books. He resented being made to feel awkward and clumsy when the power imbalance between them was already so clear. It seemed petty.
Travers' hand was large and strong, and Wesley was grateful when he was able to let go of it.
"Well," Travers said as he released Wesley. "We should be off."
Wesley frowned in confusion when they all looked at him, rather than sweeping past him out of the room. He realized all in a rush that 'we' included him, as well. He licked his lips. "What about my things?" he asked. His voice had finally decided to quaver, and it wasn't as comforting as he'd thought.
The man on the left, who had thick grey hair and a mustache that made him look like a walrus, bobbed his head at Wesley. "Don't worry about your things. You won't be needing them anymore."
The three Watchers gestured Wesley forward; he felt as if he was being herded out of the room. He wanted to protest, but he didn't know how. Most of the belongings in his room consisted of school uniforms and books, but he wanted to take his grandmother's photo with him. And William's poems. Instead, he was ushered off to his fate with only the clothes on his back, three books about the Boer War, and a small, silver spoon.
***
When he was a child, Wesley had heard the servants whispering about the Watchers. Now, he knew that they must have been aware that his father was one of them, but at the time, he'd thought they'd whispered out of awe. He'd assumed that the Watchers were people who shared a Talent, like the Seers who could peer into the future or the Movers who could lift things with their minds. He'd pictured Watchers leaning over mirrors or crystal balls, overseeing the world, and somehow ... Somehow making it a better, safer place.
Wesley was amused by his own naïveté, but sometimes he still believed he was making the world a better place.
Last week, for example, Geraldine Warton, one of the non-Talented Watchers, had brought him a locket torn from the neck of an abducted child. Wesley had Told the locket and seen the face of the attacker. Using the description Wesley provided, the police had been able to apprehend the man and return the girl to her family.
It had been worth the nightmares Wesley had been left with after Telling the locket over and over again to get the details right.
Today … today had not been worth it. Wesley’s father had come to his office with a sneer upon his face. If Wesley had never seen his father from afar, talking with other Watchers, smiling, he would have thought the sneer was permanent. He’d certainly worn it every time he’d been in Wesley’s company, even when he was a boy.
Indeed, Wesley had seen his father’s sneer more often as a child; this was only the second time he’d come to see Wesley since he’d been pulled from school and registered. The first time had been shortly after Wesley’s arrival at the Watcher’s Council. He’d been feeling lost, and the sight of his father had sent a bright pulse of hope through him, anticipation that now his father would see his worth.
Instead, the senior Wyndham-Pryce had frowned at his son and said, “I should have expected you to manifest a Talent like Telling. Only something so passive would suit you.”
More than the shame that followed his father’s words, Wesley hated the pathetic desire to promise to do better.
Today his father had come on business, bearing a handkerchief for Wesley to Tell. It was plain white cotton, but very finely woven - a handkerchief meant for use, but one that belonged to a wealthy man. Wesley spread it on his desk, stroking his fingers over the neatly hemmed edges, and raised an enquiring eyebrow at his father.
“I believe the owner of this handkerchief has a mistress,” his father said finally, lip curling disapprovingly. “Tell the blasted thing and find out who she is.”
Wesley splayed his right hand out so that his fingers touched the handkerchief from edge to edge. He closed his eyes.
It was different now, Telling. Once it had been such instinct that he’d been unaware it was even a Talent, unbidden and directionless. Three years among the Watchers had honed it into a skill. Wesley could touch objects without being caught up in their stories could differentiate between a daydream and a Telling. He could read objects that were ancient, so old that most other Tellers were unable to retrieve more than vague impressions. He could see events that the object had been present for, and he could get an impression of the thoughts and emotions of the object’s owner. Wesley had worked hard at training his Talent under the Watchers’ tutelage, and it had come to heel.
Behind his eyelids, Wesley saw the owner of the handkerchief. He was an MP, a neat little man with a mole near his left ear and a habit of wiping his forehead with his handkerchief when he got excited about a debate, be it about policy or football. He did have a mistress. Her name was Judith Barlay, and she’d been with him fully as long as his wife had. She wore false eyelashes, and her hair was always going flat on one side from the way she dozed against car windows whenever she was driven anywhere.
Wesley opened his eyes and wrote out Judith’s name and address on a piece of paper. Slide it across the desk to his father, he asked, “Will you be telling Mrs. Winthrop about her husband’s mistress?”
His father’s mouth twisted, like it wanted to smile, but had to fight the sneer. “If he agrees to support my proposal, I won’t have to.” He stuffed the paper into his pocket and left Wesley’s office without a word of thanks or farewell. Wesley stared after him, feeling bile rise in his throat. Surely, surely he hadn’t been granted this Talent, however passive it might be, so that he could support blackmail.
Wesley wished for a moment for another kidnapping.
***
It was against the law to employ a Talent except for in the service of the Council or a government ministry. In his more maudlin moments, Wesley missed the days before he was registered, when he had unknowingly broken that law several times a day. Back then, he would have entertained himself with stories as he stood in the queue to buy a coffee and a newspaper.
He was so bored that he was almost tempted to Tell the coins in his pockets, and damn the law.
Wesley stopped at this newsagent every evening on his way home. He took his paper and coffee onto the train with him and did the crossword on his way home. It had begun as a way to keep his mind and hands occupied and off of the stories hiding in the seats and windows of the train, and now it was a habit.
When it was finally his turn, Wesley stepped forward and made his purchases quickly. It wasn’t until he was accepting his change that he looked up to thank the clerk. It wasn’t the usual spotty-faced youth that Wesley saw most nights. This man was young, not much older than twenty, and his hair was bleached a bright white that nature had never intended for him. Wesley blinked. He was. Well, undeniably handsome, but there was something else.
“Thank you,” he said, hand closing around the coins.
“You already said that, mate,” the man said. He smirked like Wesley had done something much more amusing than merely repeating himself.
Wesley flushed. “Yes, well.” He shoved the money into his pocket and took his purchases. There was something … he would have stood there, staring and blushing and trying to sort out why the man’s face was so arresting, but the woman waiting behind him shuffled her feet and cleared her throat meaningfully. Wesley bobbed his head in a nod and stepped away from the counter.
Sitting on the train later, he couldn’t concentrate on his crossword. He sipped his cooling coffee and tried to tease out why, what about the man had him so distracted. It wasn’t just the sharp cut of his cheekbones or the insolent curve of his lips, Wesley was sure. Maybe it was his eyes. They were a bright blue …
Wesley froze, staring blankly at his own reflection in the window. The man at the newsagent had William’s eyes. They looked different, not hidden behind wire-rimmed glasses, but they were just the same shape and shade. Had it been anyone else from St. Bartholomew’s, Wesley wouldn’t have noticed, but he’d spent more time looking at William’s face than at all of his other schoolmates combined.
Wesley nearly missed his stop that night. He kept circling the man in his mind, wondering if it could possibly be William, and if so, what he was doing working as a clerk. He’d been an intelligent boy; surely he could have done better.
It wasn’t until he was lying in bed that night that it occurred to Wesley that the question wasn’t ‘Why the newsagent?’ it was ‘Why was William not at the Council with him?’
***
If there was one thing he’d learned from his training among the Watchers, it was discipline. Wesley didn’t allow himself to dwell on the mystery of the man while he was at work. He threw himself into Telling the objects that he was given, letting the stories pull him in. It was a good day to be a Teller. Wesley Told several artifacts for the British Museum, verifying their provenance. It was one of his favorite tasks, and he was grateful for the distraction.
Once he’d left for the evening, he kept himself to his usual pace, walking toward the newsagent just as he did every night. He joined the queue and pretended he didn’t let out a sigh of relief when he saw a pale head nodding to the customers. He fixed his eyes firmly on the back of the head of the woman standing in front of him and waited.
When he noticed his hands were shaking, he shoved them into his trouser pockets.
His throat was tight when he finally stepped up to the counter. He looked up, and yes. Those were still William’s eyes. He opened his mouth, but the other man spoke first.
“Spike,” he said firmly.
“I beg your pardon.”
“My name is Spike,” the man repeated.
Wesley bowed his head in acceptance, but inside he was shouting a denial. It wasn’t William’s accent, but it was his voice.
Spike’s eyebrows drew together, and he said again, “My name is Spike,” as though Wesley had been arguing with him.
“I’m Wesley,” he replied, and Spike gave him an approving look. He put a newspaper and a cup of coffee down on the counter in front of him. Wesley hadn’t ordered. Holding Wesley’s eye, he slowly and deliberately set a small, brass button down on top of the newspaper.
Wesley handed over the money for his newspaper and coffee and stammered out his thanks. Spike smiled at him and tapped the paper meaningfully, his finger making the button bounce. “Good choice, that,” he said. “Tell you what you need to know.”
“I do hope so,” Wesley said. He wrapped his hand around the paper carefully, so that the button was trapped under his thumb, and he picked up his coffee. “Thank you,” he said. He felt off balance, like the brief exchange had shifted something fundamental. It made him clumsy as he walked away, stumbling as he looked over his shoulder at Spike, who was ignoring Wesley completely and serving his next customer.
He held the button so tightly on the ride home that it left a ridge in his palm.
Because he did have discipline, Wesley walked quietly to his block of flats, smiling at Mrs. Jessup as she passed him to walk her dog in the park and holding the door for Maggie Ellis, who was just coming in with her shopping. He took the stairs up to his flat, quietly opened his door and locked it behind him, and made his way into his bedroom.
It wasn’t until the bedroom door was locked as well that Wesley opened his hand around the button and looked at it. It was very plain. Just a round disk of metal with a pierced nub on the back, where the thread went through. Wesley nudged it with one finger, and then he took a deep breath. Closing his eyes, Wesley did something he’d not done in three years.
He Told something just for himself.
The button had once graced a jacket, part of William’s school uniform. It had been a good choice, Wesley thought with the small part of his mind that wasn’t walking the halls of St. Bartholomew’s. It was a personal enough possession to prove to Wesley that Spike truly was William, but not something he’d worn recently enough to be traced by it. Not that Wesley was willing to ask a Finder to help him track William in any case.
The button didn't give Wesley any useful information, not in the way his father or teachers or Mr. Travers would judge it useful. But watching his own friendship with William develop was sweet in a way that had nothing to do with useful. He knew that Spike might be counting on that, expecting the nostalgia to soften him, but Wesley was confident he could handle it. He was a professional, after all. He wasn't going to let a mere Telling influence his emotions or weaken his will.
That didn't stop him from Telling the button late into the night. When he woke, he was slumped at the table with the button clenched in his fist as though he'd been afraid to lose it.
***
There was no law that all Talented people had to work for the Council, but there was a law that they all had to be registered. And once registered, they had to accept training from the Watcher's Council, 'for the protection of the populace.' Few Talented people went on to work outside of the Council after their training, and even those who did - man, woman, or child - could be called into service at any time. It was unheard of for a person to complete their training and then go into hiding, refusing to cooperate with the Council and hoarding his Talent away from the greater good.
At least, Wesley had never heard of it.
He knew, he knew that he ought to go to the Council immediately. He ought to lead them to William so that he could be apprehended for evading registration. He was a fool, but 'ought to' didn't have the hold on him that it usually did. He went to the office as usual in the morning and pretended as if everything was completely ordinary. He kept up the pretense until after work, when he found himself face to face with William once again.
There was a knowing smirk on William ... Spike's face again, and Wesley felt a pang of loss for the shy smile he remembered. He didn't wait for Wesley to say anything, just yelled over his shoulder, "I'll be back in a bit. Watch the till," and hopped over the counter. He knocked his elbow against Wesley’s and said, “Come on, then.”
Wesley followed.
Spike led him to a park, public enough that the presence of other people felt like a safeguard, but empty enough that no one was close enough to overhear them. Wesley considered being impressed by Spike’s forethought, but then, William always had been a clever boy.
They stood on the grass, greying with autumn, and looked at one another, and Wesley wondered if they were going to be silent and uncomfortable the entire time. If so, he’d have preferred another button. After several minutes, though, Spike spoke. “You’re a Teller,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I am,” Wesley agreed. He didn’t attempt to keep the pride out of his voice. His father’s opinion aside, he was one of the strongest and best Tellers the Council had seen in years.
“I always wondered why there were so many stories in your head,” Spike said, his smirk softening into a smile. “Thought you just had more of an imagination than you let on.”
“What, you. You’re a Reader?” Spike nodded. “And you knew, even then. Why weren’t you registered before you came to school?” Wesley asked. He’d never even guessed that William was Talented until the Council had come for him.
“My mum wanted to keep me at home,” Spike said with a shrug. “It’s not like there’s any guarantee that you’ll keep your child if the Council decides they want him more.”
Wesley had to open his mouth three times before he could reply. “But that’s against the law,” he said. He was honestly shocked. His father would have sent him to the Council in a heartbeat, if he’d ever suspected Wesley’s Talent.
Spike snorted, looking far more amused than he had any call to. “Some of the most fun a boy can have is against the law.”
Wesley pressed his lips together. “Is that what this,” he waved his hand, indicating Spike’s appearance, his situation, his desertion of his duty, “is all about? Fun?”
Spike’s smile sharpened and went bitter. “This is about so much more,” he said. Then he cocked his head and gave Wesley a look that could only be described as insolent. “The fun does make it bearable, though.”
“I don’t understand,” Wesley complained. It may have been the first time those words had passed his lips, and he flushed to hear himself say them. Something in Spike’s eyes warmed, in spite of Wesley’s discomfiture. Or because of it.
“I know,” Spike said. He was silent for a long moment. “I’m not going to tell you anything today, though.” When Wesley moved to protest, he added, “I’ve got to clear it with some mates before I say anything. You’re a danger.”
Perhaps he should feel insulted, but Wesley couldn’t help the way his chest swelled a bit with the pride of being thought dangerous.
“If you betray me,” Spike said companionably, “I’ll cut your heart out and leave it on the Council steps.” It wasn’t the words that made Wesley’s blood run cold, it was the flat, earnest way Spike said them. Wesley couldn’t hear them as anything less than a promise.
Wesley pushed his glasses up higher on his nose and concentrated on breathing normally. “What about … there are Readers at the office. They‘ll know if I think about you.” He’d spent the yesterday and today obsessively focused on his work, so as to not let anything slip, but he couldn’t maintain that level for long.
Instead of threatening Wesley any more or looking worried, Spike grinned at him. “That’s easy,” he said. “Every time a thought about me pops up in your mind, don’t think, ‘I’ve got such a bloody great secret.’ Think, ‘Spike’s got a lovely arse.’ Gets the Council Readers out of your head every time.”
Wesley didn’t think he’d blushed as much in the five years since he’d last seen William as he had in the past two days.
"Can’t Readers tell when you’re hiding something?” he asked.
“That’s the brilliant thing,” Spike said, turning and walking back the way they‘d come. “They can tell if you’re hiding something, and they can tell if you’re thinking something false to cover it up. But if you keep thinking about my sexy little body, they’ll think the secret is along those same lines.” He gave Wesley a challenging look over his shoulder. “The cover up only works if you believe it.”
Wesley swallowed hard and followed Spike. He had no doubt that any Readers at the Council would believe every prurient thought about Spike that passed his mind.
Spike stopped as they approached the newsagent. “Right, then. Stop by tomorrow. If I’m here, we’ll talk a bit more.”
“What if you’re not here?” Wesley asked.
“If I’m not here, it’ll mean we’ve decided not to trust you. Whether you remember that you’ve seen me or not will depend on how much we don’t trust you.” And then he was gone, back into the shop and taking his place at the till to sell magazines and newspapers.
Wesley stood on the pavement for a long time, turning Spike’s last words over in his mind. He’d heard rumors, but they’d always been just that. Rumors. There had never been any official acknowledgment that there were Talented people who could go beyond Reading minds and actually affect them.
He wasn't sure what frightened him more: the idea that such a thing was possible and had been kept secret, or the fact that Spike's friends might use that Talent on him.
***
Even his work couldn't keep Wesley from thinking about Spike the next day. Every time he wondered where Spike was or what he was doing, every time he thought about Spike's arse (whether as intention cover or random admiration), Wesley felt a flash of relief that he was still able to think about Spike. That no one had taken those thoughts and memories away.
He wondered if he was always going to fear having his mind manipulated, now that it had been suggested to him.
When he got to the newsagent that evening, Spike was waiting outside for him. "Good, you’re here," he said. Without looking to see if Wesley was following, he started walking. He wasn’t going in the direction of the park, and Wesley felt lost and rather tired of being kept in the dark as he trailed behind.
Spike stopped at a bookshop that looked as if it had left its better days far in the past, and shoved the door open. He held it wide for Wesley, who stepped inside tentatively. He blinked at the gloom inside, and as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized there were several others inside, leaning against bookshelves or in one case, sitting in an armchair. Spike gave him a wry grin and spread his arms wide.
“Welcome to the Resistance,” he said.
“The Resistance.” Wesley stumbled over the word. “What. What precisely are you resisting?”
“Registration,” said a girl in one corner. She wore her blonde hair back in a ponytail, and her arms were folded defensively across her chest.
“The enslavement of our talents and our minds. And I don’t mean metaphorically, like those kids who don’t want to go to school and get all ‘rebel without a cause,’” a girl with long ginger hair said earnestly, waving her hands like it would make her point more apparent.
“The Council,” the blonde girl added.
“Oh, dear,” Wesley said, reaching out a hand to support himself with the doorframe.
“I thought you said he wasn’t an idiot,” a tall man said, stepping forward. He wasn’t old, but was still older than everyone else in the shop and probably ten years older than Wesley. His hair was a sandy, light brown and he wore glasses, like Wesley. There was something about his face. Wesley stared at him.
“Rupert?” Wesley knew now, of course he knew, that when he’d told himself stories as a boy, he’d really been Telling objects. But somehow he hadn’t translated that to mean that the characters in those stories were real people.
“You know him, Ripper?” Spike asked, almost belligerently.
Rupert frowned, and Wesley said, “No, no.” He gave Rupert an apologetic look. “I found your tie at school.”
“Yes, well. I’m sure I was quite different then.” Rupert said uncomfortably.
“Do you still have it?” asked a man who had been sprawling in another armchair. He wasn’t much more than a boy, really, younger than Wesley by at least a few years. “Could you Tell it for us? Because I am so on board for stories of Giles, the naughty schoolboy.”
“Honestly, Xander,” Rupert said, rolling his eyes. “Mr. Wyndham-Pryce isn’t the sort to Tell objects willy-nilly for your entertainment.”
The blonde girl gave Wesley a measuring look and said, “Yeah. I don’t think he’s the willy-nilly kind.”
Spike clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Don’t go talking about his willy. Girl like you. It’s not nice.” He gave Wesley a wicked look. “Leave that to me.”
Before he could start blushing again, Wesley cleared his throat. “I would like to bear out Spike’s claim of not being an idiot,” he said, “but I’m afraid I don’t understand. Do you mean to say that you’re all evading registration?”
“We are,” Rupert said. He seemed to be making himself the spokesman of the group. “For a variety of reasons. Perhaps you ought to sit down whilst we explain.”
Wesley felt unsteady. The notion of Talented people refusing to serve the Council hadn’t even crossed his mind before he’d found Spike, and now he was in a shop full of criminals who were doing just that. Rupert rousted Xander from his chair and motioned for Wesley to take it.
It was threadbare in several places, but it was exceptionally comfortable. Wesley let himself sink back into it.
“I hardly think you need to know everyone’s life story,” Rupert said once Wesley was seated. The blond girl nodded emphatically. “But, I think, Spike …”
“Right,” Spike said. He leaned himself against a bookcase as though it was just as comfortable as Wesley’s chair. “Well, you knew me at school, so you know what a weakling I was.” Wesley wanted to speak out in defense of William, but Spike fixed him with a look that kept him quiet. “When the Council came for me at St. Bartholomew’s, they didn’t give me a choice. Didn’t even let me visit home to say goodbye to my mum. Just shuttled me off to learn how to be a better Reader.”
“Thing was,” Spike went on, “I was already a good Reader. Bloody brilliant Reader. So there wasn’t much they could teach me, and they put me to work. Do you know what they had me at? Sixteen years old, frightened of my own shadow, and they had me Reading criminals.” Spike was standing in a patch of sun, and it lit his hair like a halo. The expression on his face, though, was dark and grim.
Wesley cleared his throat and plucked at a stray thread on the arm of his chair. “But that’s. That’s very important work. It’s led to the recovery of stolen property, victim’s bodies returned for proper burial …”
Spike laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “I wasn’t after recovering stolen property,” he said. He pitched his voice to mimic Wesley’s, and it made him sound so much like the boy he’d been that Wesley ached with it. “They had me Reading rapists and murderers, finding out which of them could be conditioned as soldiers and agents. I had to look at everything they’d done, feel it inside me, coated in blood and gore and screams. And then see those same men set loose to kill again, as long as it was people the Council wanted dead.”
Wesley felt sick. “That’s not. They don’t. That can’t be right.”
“It isn’t right, but it does happen,” Rupert said quietly. “When I found Spike, he was barely holding onto his humanity. He’d been inside the heads of madmen so much that he was losing control of his own mind.” His mouth made a tight, angry line. “He was such a tangle of hate and fear and revulsion, there was barely room for anything else. Readers and Sensers in the Council saw him every day, and they did nothing to protect him.”
“What did you do?” Wesley asked simply.
“I brought him here,” Rupert said. “And I gave him to Willow.”
“I fixed him,” the ginger girl said proudly. She faltered for a moment. “Not like he was. I mean, I know he’s different now. But he’s not all torn up inside his head anymore.”
“How? How could you repair his mind?” Wesley asked. She was so young.
Rupert stepped over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Willow has a rather unique Talent,” he said. “She is the best I’ve ever seen at making changes in a person’s mind. She can insert new thoughts, counteract negative thought patterns, erase and create memories. She’s a prodigy.”
“The best? But there are others who can do those things? In the Council?” Wesley demanded.
“Course there are,” Spike said. “They don’t take up every Talented kid they can find and miss a thing like that.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,”
“No one has,” the blonde girl said. “The Council doesn’t exactly advertise it.”
“There’s not even a name for it,” Xander added. “I thought ‘Minder’ because it’s all about the mind, but Giles says that makes Willow sound like a babysitter.”
“Some days I feel like I am one,” she said pointedly. Xander just grinned at her.
“Once you were better,” Wesley said, looking at Spike, “why didn’t you go back to the Watchers. You could have made them see what they’d done to you, asked for a different assignment.”
“Oh, I went back,” Spike said. “Went back and found a whole lot of them in my office, thinking loud about how I’d run off and deserted the Council. They were going to get one of their own who could do what Willow does and have my Talent blocked, then lock me up somewhere. Couldn’t have me running around knowing what I know.”
Wesley stared at him uncomprehendingly. “But you got away.”
“Read them from the corridor outside my office,” Spike said. “I never opened the door. Just turned around and came right back here. Been with Ripper and his pack of kiddies ever since.”
Wesley stared at his hands, at the floor. He didn’t know how to believe them. To be honest, he didn’t want to believe them. A small black journal dropped into his lap, and Wesley startled, barely grabbing it before it fell to the floor.
“I wrote in this at the time,” Spike said. “Just scribbles and poetry. I lost my last one when the Council took me from school, so I carried it with me all the time.”
Wesley moved to open it. “Do you want me to read it?”
“No, moron. I want you to Tell it.”
In the past three years, the only thing Wesley had Told outside of the line of duty was William’s button. He ran his fingers over the worn leather cover of the journal. It he Told it, he’d have to believe. Objects couldn’t lie to him or hide from him. Once he Told it, he’d know that Spike was telling him the truth.
Wesley took a long, shuddering breath. “No,” he said. “I don’t need to.” He stroked one finger over the spine of the book and handed it back to Spike.
He looked around the shop at the others, who were watching them openly. “Are you all Talented?” he asked.
“I am,” Willow said, waving at him.
“Yes, I believe we established that,” Rupert told her, his voice full of resigned amusement. “I’m a Senser, and Buffy,” he gestured toward the blonde girl, “is the strongest Mover I’ve ever seen. She can lift a lorry all on her own.”
Wesley raised his eyebrows, but she just nodded. “That’s me,” she said. “Truck lifting girl.”
“I’m just here to be the handsome comic relief,” Xander said.
“Xander was a close friend of Willow and Buffy,” Rupert explained. “He was critical in extracting them from the Council.”
Wesley’s eyes widened. “They were taken by the Council?” They weren’t even British.
“Hey, now,” Buffy said. “I thought we were only going to get all ‘This Is Your Life’ about Spike.”
“I beg your pardon,” Wesley said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Anyway, you can see why we weren’t super thrilled when Spike said he wanted to bring in his Watcher’s Council boyfriend,” Xander said. “So thanks for being not being a psychopath. We appreciate it.”
“I.” Boyfriend? “You’re very welcome,” Wesley said.
“We were thinking,” Willow said, leaning forward and propping her elbows on her knees. “That you could be like our inside man, you know? ‘Cause none of us can go back in there. I mean, even if he could, Spike would stick out like a sore thumb. But you’re Joe Watcher. They’d never suspect you, and you can help us keep an eye on the badness. We try to stop it when we can,” she said.
Wesley nearly swallowed his tongue. “They have Readers at the Council,” he said. Good Lord, when they Read what he’d heard today, he was finished.
“Don’t be afraid,” Rupert said. If it had been anyone else, Wesley would have vehemently denied being afraid, but Rupert could Sense it, so he held his tongue.
“I can give you a shield,” Willow said brightly. “I’ve been working on it, and I’ve finally got it right.”
“She’s been trying it on me,” Xander said. “Since I’m a deadhead. The shield she put on me last week kept Spike and Giles both out.”
Wesley looked back and forth between them. It was a terrifying prospect, spying on an organization he’d always believed in, knowing the consequences if he got caught. But on the other hand …
Spike was back against the bookshelf again, thumbs hooked through his belt loops and an unconcerned expression on his face. “If you’re not up for it,” he said, “Willow can do her mojo and make you forget all this. You can go back to your safe little life.”
Wesley had to consider the suggestion. He would have liked to be brave enough to dismiss it outright, but he couldn’t. If he agreed to this, he’d be a traitor to the Watcher’s Council. He’d be betraying everything he’d thought was important, just days ago.
But Wesley remembered being a child, hearing the servants whisper about the Watchers. He remembered feeling protected, knowing the Watchers were out there, even without knowing precisely what a Watcher was. He remembered last week, when he’d been responsible for bringing a child back to her family.
He wanted to be the kind of Watcher he’d believed in as a boy, making the world a better, safer place, and he thought perhaps he could do it with these people.
And though Spike wasn’t really William, not anymore, Wesley thought he’d like to try being that kind of Watcher with Spike in his life.
Wesley looked up to tell Spike his decision and found he didn’t have to. Spike was stepping toward him, grinning delightedly. “We’re going to have so much fun,” Spike said, reaching down to pull Wesley up from his chair.
Wesley stood in a ramshackle bookshop surrounded by criminals he’d just met, holding both of Spike’s hands in his. Spike’s wide, bright grin bore only the faintest resemblance to William’s shy smile, but it still made Wesley feel special. It was very nearly as terrifying as the proposition of joining a Resistance.
“Yes,” Wesley said. “I believe we will.”
Author: allyndra
Pairing: Wesley/Spike
Rating: PG-13
Word count: about 8,000
Disclaimer: Although the world they’re in is AU, these characters still belong to Joss. Dammit.
Summary: Even before the Council discovered his Talent, Wesley always played by the rules. He’s not sure why the sight of an old school chum in an unexpected place would change that.
Note: Written for speakingsilence in the AU round of maleslashminis. The prompt was: Wesley/Spike in an AU where psychics (loosely defined as any mental power) are known and tracked by the government to control them--complete with resistance movement, of course. speakingsilence, I sincerely hope you like this. Thanks to Rory for the beta; all remaining mistakes are my own.
When Wesley was a boy, he’d loved his grandparents’ house. If asked, he would have said it was because his grandmother coddled him and the servants listened to him, but neither of those were his favorite thing about visiting there. His favorite thing was wandering through the rooms, touching objects and telling himself stories.
His footsteps echoed on wood floors and padded softly on rich Persian carpets as he moved from library to drawing room to guest bedroom, finding treasures in each. Wesley would pick up a silver-backed brush and tell himself tales of the beautiful, sad woman who once used it, sitting before her vanity. He’d stroke his fingers over the smooth surface of the desk and weave stories of the man who wrote frantic letter after frantic letter atop it, trying to salvage his family’s fortune with threats and pleas.
It never occurred to him that other children spent their time differently, because Wesley knew no other children. Even when he was sent away to school, where he found himself surrounded by children on all sides, it was years before he knew any of them well enough for the subject of pastimes to come up.
***
Wesley hated school, but he’d never admit it. He loved learning, and he wouldn’t have done anything that would risk losing his lessons, but that wasn’t the reason he didn’t complain about school. He was attending his father’s alma mater, St. Bartholomew’s, and he would never speak a syllable against it. He spent every phone call and letter home loudly, enthusiastically boasting of his accomplishments at school, and the rest of his time silently, secretly loathing the place.
He might have liked it better if he’d made friends. But Wesley found his schoolmates loud, rude, and stupid, and they found him critical, arrogant, and aloof. It would have been horribly lonely if he hadn’t been so used to keeping himself entertained with books … and of course, with the stories in his head. When his dorm mates whispered and snickered after lights-out, Wesley just curled more tightly into his pillow, clutching a book or penknife and spinning tales about it as he drifted off.
He spent a solid month of nights tangling an old school tie around his fingers and dreaming up stories about a boy here at St. Bartholomew’s. He’d never been one for storybooks, so he wasn’t sure why he’d named the boy Rupert, but it seemed to fit. Rupert was just as out of place here was Wesley, just as unhappy, just as bowed by parental expectation. But where Wesley tried to twist himself to fit the mold laid out for him, Rupert tried to break his.
Wesley supposed Rupert’s escapades were some sort of escapism, fantasies of things that Wesley himself would never do, like sneaking out nights to drink in the village pub and smoking fags on the cricket pitch.
And kissing other boys, hot and defiant, in the library.
***
There were other boys Wesley might have made friends with - the swotty ones who wouldn’t mock him for caring about his marks and the weedy ones who couldn’t scoff at him for being slow around the track. The only one who he actually connected with, though, was William, a year ahead of him. He sat beside Wesley at meals for most of one term, starting awkward conversations about music and football and Professor Pfincher’s hair, which stood up around his head like dandelion fluff.
Wesley wasn’t sure why William wanted to spend time with him, but he wasn’t bothered by it. William was much less idiotic than most of the other boys, and it was nice to be able to smile over at someone and find them smiling back. There were a few snide remarks about them being a matched set of speccy little poofs, but Wesley found he didn’t mind the mockery as much when he had someone with whom he could huff and roll his eyes about it.
One day, near the end of Wesley’s fifth year, William dropped his books onto the library table where Wesley was studying. He looked up with a smile, and William gave him a shy grin back. Wesley thought he ought to want William to be more confident, but he rather liked that William was still shy around him, even after months of friendship. It made him feel … special. Like William, out of all the world, didn’t take him for granted.
“Hey,” William said. His voice was quiet at the best of times, but he hushed it even more out of respect for the library. “Would you look at something?”
“Of course.”
William bit his lip and pulled an exercise book out of the stack he’d brought with him. Silently, he opened it to the middle and slid it across the table to Wesley.
It was a poem, written in William’s scrawling hand, with some bits crossed out where he’d changed his mind. Wesley bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. It was the worst poem he’d ever read, full of jumbled metaphors and clumsy phrases. His brows furrowed as he tried to think of something to say that was both honest and tactful.
He was still considering it when William drew the book away from him. Startled, Wesley looked up to find William flushed red and blinking hard.
“Never mind,” he said.
“But-” William snatched up all of his books and hurried away before Wesley even got another word out.
Wesley didn’t know what he’d done wrong, but William stopped sitting next to him at meals after that. Wesley shrugged when the other boys teased him about his lovers’ spat, but it hurt more than he let on.
Wesley intended to sort things out with William, but he never got the chance. A week and a half after William started avoiding him, a trio of men in suits came to the school and took William away.
The professors said that William had been called home, but it was whispered around the dorms and dining hall that he had Talent and had been hiding it. That he’d been called to service, and they’d never see him again. That he had to be a Reader or a Mover, because a Seer would have known they were coming for him.
Wesley felt tense and off balance long past the end of term. He expected the other boys’ taunting to increase in the wake of William’s departure, but instead it stopped altogether. In fact, the rest of the students superstitiously avoided mentioning William at all after the first wave of gossip had passed.
Wesley sometimes felt as though he was the only one in the school who even remembered William. On the last day of the term, when his trunk and bags had been packed, Wesley found himself in William’s dorm, staring at his empty bed like it might offer some explanation.
There was nothing there.
Suddenly exhausted, Wesley sat down on the bed, slumping against the pillow until something knocked against his elbow in a way that pillows simply didn’t. Wesley felt about for the culprit and pulled out a slightly battered exercise book with William’s name written on the cover in ink. Wesley ran one finger over the name, and pictured William bent over the book, pouring his heart into scribbles of wretched verse, wracking his mind for the perfect word, the perfect rhyme, the perfect phrase. He imagined William carrying the book with him whenever he could, and hiding it here the rest of the time.
Wesley had only seen the notebook once before, but he didn’t doubt his own certainty that it was important to William. He hid it inside his jacket and took it back to his dorm, where he wriggled it down into the bottom of his trunk.
For a very long time after that, when Wesley was having trouble falling asleep, he would take out William’s notebook and tell himself stories about a boy with light brown curls who wrote in it.
***
They came for Wesley in the middle of winter term in his seventh year. It was a Tuesday, Wesley remembered, because he was in double History at the time. He didn’t think anything of it when a message came asking him to go to the headmaster’s office. He just picked up his books, nodded apologetically to the professor, and went.
The corridor didn’t seem any colder than usual, but when Wesley entered the headmaster’s office and saw three men standing before the desk, a chill ran up his spine and lodged itself at the nape of his neck.
The man in the middle was stout, with graying hair and a stern face. He gave Wesley a long, slow stare and said, “Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. You never registered.”
Wesley knew it wasn’t possible to simply stop breathing. He’d studied anatomy, and he knew about the involuntary nervous system. But if he didn’t know better, he would have sworn that he’d stopped breathing. He felt as though his chest had frozen, and he had to concentrate hard to inflate it enough to reply.
“Am I Talented, then, sir?” His voice sounded shockingly normal. It made Wesley feel oddly detached to hear his voice so steady when his stomach was a roiling mess of fear and excitement, when his hands were clenching around his books, when his feet were going numb for no reason at all.
The men didn’t seem to notice.
The man on the right - tall, with blond hair and dark eyes - shook his head infinitesimally, and the man in the middle relaxed a fraction. He smiled at Wesley. At least, Wesley thought it was a smile. It looked more like a grimace.
“You are,” the man said. Still smiling, he held out a small silver spoon. Wesley shifter his books to his left arm and reached forward to accept it. It was cold against his fingers, and the handle was molded into a family crest.
“Tell me about the person who owned this,” the man said.
Wesley loved knowing the answers to things. He always revised for his exams, and he volunteered often in class. Standing there, clutching a silver spoon, he felt the familiar urge to show off, but it was tempered with a fear and doubt. He'd never been Talented; there were regular checks for unregistered Talents, and no one had ever given Wesley a second look. Wesley opened his mouth to say that he didn't know what the man was asking for.
But oh. Oh, he did know.
"It was a man," he said slowly. "Quite old. Nearly fifty. His son ... his son's wife was having a baby, and the man - Harold, his name was - had this spoon made. It was to be a christening gift. He didn't get on with his son, but family was important." Wesley swallowed hard. "They died. The son and his wife died in a car crash on the way to hospital, and the baby with them. Harold kept the spoon in his pocket, and he'd touch it and think about the fact that the family name ended with him."
Wesley blinked. He was staring down at the little spoon, rubbing his thumb over the crest the same way he knew its owner had done. He could see it, in his mind. Just one more story to tell himself, but now he'd spoken it out loud, and it was going to change everything.
The three men looked smug. The man in the middle said, "I wonder that you were never found before." Wesley nodded, as it really did seem like shocking incompetence. He hadn't been hiding anything. "Your father," the man went on, "was remiss in not examining his own family as closely as he does those of others."
Wesley’s mouth went dry, and his face felt tight, like his skin had been boiled till it shrunk and then put on again. "My father?" he asked.
The men all nodded. The one in the middle said, "Your father is a Watcher. Like us. Like you will be." He held out his hand, and for a moment Wesley thought he wanted the spoon back. "I'm Quentin Travers. You'll come to know me well."
Wesley suddenly realized he was meant to shake hands, not surrender the spoon, and he fumbled to put the spoon into his left hand, which was already burdened with his books. He resented being made to feel awkward and clumsy when the power imbalance between them was already so clear. It seemed petty.
Travers' hand was large and strong, and Wesley was grateful when he was able to let go of it.
"Well," Travers said as he released Wesley. "We should be off."
Wesley frowned in confusion when they all looked at him, rather than sweeping past him out of the room. He realized all in a rush that 'we' included him, as well. He licked his lips. "What about my things?" he asked. His voice had finally decided to quaver, and it wasn't as comforting as he'd thought.
The man on the left, who had thick grey hair and a mustache that made him look like a walrus, bobbed his head at Wesley. "Don't worry about your things. You won't be needing them anymore."
The three Watchers gestured Wesley forward; he felt as if he was being herded out of the room. He wanted to protest, but he didn't know how. Most of the belongings in his room consisted of school uniforms and books, but he wanted to take his grandmother's photo with him. And William's poems. Instead, he was ushered off to his fate with only the clothes on his back, three books about the Boer War, and a small, silver spoon.
***
When he was a child, Wesley had heard the servants whispering about the Watchers. Now, he knew that they must have been aware that his father was one of them, but at the time, he'd thought they'd whispered out of awe. He'd assumed that the Watchers were people who shared a Talent, like the Seers who could peer into the future or the Movers who could lift things with their minds. He'd pictured Watchers leaning over mirrors or crystal balls, overseeing the world, and somehow ... Somehow making it a better, safer place.
Wesley was amused by his own naïveté, but sometimes he still believed he was making the world a better place.
Last week, for example, Geraldine Warton, one of the non-Talented Watchers, had brought him a locket torn from the neck of an abducted child. Wesley had Told the locket and seen the face of the attacker. Using the description Wesley provided, the police had been able to apprehend the man and return the girl to her family.
It had been worth the nightmares Wesley had been left with after Telling the locket over and over again to get the details right.
Today … today had not been worth it. Wesley’s father had come to his office with a sneer upon his face. If Wesley had never seen his father from afar, talking with other Watchers, smiling, he would have thought the sneer was permanent. He’d certainly worn it every time he’d been in Wesley’s company, even when he was a boy.
Indeed, Wesley had seen his father’s sneer more often as a child; this was only the second time he’d come to see Wesley since he’d been pulled from school and registered. The first time had been shortly after Wesley’s arrival at the Watcher’s Council. He’d been feeling lost, and the sight of his father had sent a bright pulse of hope through him, anticipation that now his father would see his worth.
Instead, the senior Wyndham-Pryce had frowned at his son and said, “I should have expected you to manifest a Talent like Telling. Only something so passive would suit you.”
More than the shame that followed his father’s words, Wesley hated the pathetic desire to promise to do better.
Today his father had come on business, bearing a handkerchief for Wesley to Tell. It was plain white cotton, but very finely woven - a handkerchief meant for use, but one that belonged to a wealthy man. Wesley spread it on his desk, stroking his fingers over the neatly hemmed edges, and raised an enquiring eyebrow at his father.
“I believe the owner of this handkerchief has a mistress,” his father said finally, lip curling disapprovingly. “Tell the blasted thing and find out who she is.”
Wesley splayed his right hand out so that his fingers touched the handkerchief from edge to edge. He closed his eyes.
It was different now, Telling. Once it had been such instinct that he’d been unaware it was even a Talent, unbidden and directionless. Three years among the Watchers had honed it into a skill. Wesley could touch objects without being caught up in their stories could differentiate between a daydream and a Telling. He could read objects that were ancient, so old that most other Tellers were unable to retrieve more than vague impressions. He could see events that the object had been present for, and he could get an impression of the thoughts and emotions of the object’s owner. Wesley had worked hard at training his Talent under the Watchers’ tutelage, and it had come to heel.
Behind his eyelids, Wesley saw the owner of the handkerchief. He was an MP, a neat little man with a mole near his left ear and a habit of wiping his forehead with his handkerchief when he got excited about a debate, be it about policy or football. He did have a mistress. Her name was Judith Barlay, and she’d been with him fully as long as his wife had. She wore false eyelashes, and her hair was always going flat on one side from the way she dozed against car windows whenever she was driven anywhere.
Wesley opened his eyes and wrote out Judith’s name and address on a piece of paper. Slide it across the desk to his father, he asked, “Will you be telling Mrs. Winthrop about her husband’s mistress?”
His father’s mouth twisted, like it wanted to smile, but had to fight the sneer. “If he agrees to support my proposal, I won’t have to.” He stuffed the paper into his pocket and left Wesley’s office without a word of thanks or farewell. Wesley stared after him, feeling bile rise in his throat. Surely, surely he hadn’t been granted this Talent, however passive it might be, so that he could support blackmail.
Wesley wished for a moment for another kidnapping.
***
It was against the law to employ a Talent except for in the service of the Council or a government ministry. In his more maudlin moments, Wesley missed the days before he was registered, when he had unknowingly broken that law several times a day. Back then, he would have entertained himself with stories as he stood in the queue to buy a coffee and a newspaper.
He was so bored that he was almost tempted to Tell the coins in his pockets, and damn the law.
Wesley stopped at this newsagent every evening on his way home. He took his paper and coffee onto the train with him and did the crossword on his way home. It had begun as a way to keep his mind and hands occupied and off of the stories hiding in the seats and windows of the train, and now it was a habit.
When it was finally his turn, Wesley stepped forward and made his purchases quickly. It wasn’t until he was accepting his change that he looked up to thank the clerk. It wasn’t the usual spotty-faced youth that Wesley saw most nights. This man was young, not much older than twenty, and his hair was bleached a bright white that nature had never intended for him. Wesley blinked. He was. Well, undeniably handsome, but there was something else.
“Thank you,” he said, hand closing around the coins.
“You already said that, mate,” the man said. He smirked like Wesley had done something much more amusing than merely repeating himself.
Wesley flushed. “Yes, well.” He shoved the money into his pocket and took his purchases. There was something … he would have stood there, staring and blushing and trying to sort out why the man’s face was so arresting, but the woman waiting behind him shuffled her feet and cleared her throat meaningfully. Wesley bobbed his head in a nod and stepped away from the counter.
Sitting on the train later, he couldn’t concentrate on his crossword. He sipped his cooling coffee and tried to tease out why, what about the man had him so distracted. It wasn’t just the sharp cut of his cheekbones or the insolent curve of his lips, Wesley was sure. Maybe it was his eyes. They were a bright blue …
Wesley froze, staring blankly at his own reflection in the window. The man at the newsagent had William’s eyes. They looked different, not hidden behind wire-rimmed glasses, but they were just the same shape and shade. Had it been anyone else from St. Bartholomew’s, Wesley wouldn’t have noticed, but he’d spent more time looking at William’s face than at all of his other schoolmates combined.
Wesley nearly missed his stop that night. He kept circling the man in his mind, wondering if it could possibly be William, and if so, what he was doing working as a clerk. He’d been an intelligent boy; surely he could have done better.
It wasn’t until he was lying in bed that night that it occurred to Wesley that the question wasn’t ‘Why the newsagent?’ it was ‘Why was William not at the Council with him?’
***
If there was one thing he’d learned from his training among the Watchers, it was discipline. Wesley didn’t allow himself to dwell on the mystery of the man while he was at work. He threw himself into Telling the objects that he was given, letting the stories pull him in. It was a good day to be a Teller. Wesley Told several artifacts for the British Museum, verifying their provenance. It was one of his favorite tasks, and he was grateful for the distraction.
Once he’d left for the evening, he kept himself to his usual pace, walking toward the newsagent just as he did every night. He joined the queue and pretended he didn’t let out a sigh of relief when he saw a pale head nodding to the customers. He fixed his eyes firmly on the back of the head of the woman standing in front of him and waited.
When he noticed his hands were shaking, he shoved them into his trouser pockets.
His throat was tight when he finally stepped up to the counter. He looked up, and yes. Those were still William’s eyes. He opened his mouth, but the other man spoke first.
“Spike,” he said firmly.
“I beg your pardon.”
“My name is Spike,” the man repeated.
Wesley bowed his head in acceptance, but inside he was shouting a denial. It wasn’t William’s accent, but it was his voice.
Spike’s eyebrows drew together, and he said again, “My name is Spike,” as though Wesley had been arguing with him.
“I’m Wesley,” he replied, and Spike gave him an approving look. He put a newspaper and a cup of coffee down on the counter in front of him. Wesley hadn’t ordered. Holding Wesley’s eye, he slowly and deliberately set a small, brass button down on top of the newspaper.
Wesley handed over the money for his newspaper and coffee and stammered out his thanks. Spike smiled at him and tapped the paper meaningfully, his finger making the button bounce. “Good choice, that,” he said. “Tell you what you need to know.”
“I do hope so,” Wesley said. He wrapped his hand around the paper carefully, so that the button was trapped under his thumb, and he picked up his coffee. “Thank you,” he said. He felt off balance, like the brief exchange had shifted something fundamental. It made him clumsy as he walked away, stumbling as he looked over his shoulder at Spike, who was ignoring Wesley completely and serving his next customer.
He held the button so tightly on the ride home that it left a ridge in his palm.
Because he did have discipline, Wesley walked quietly to his block of flats, smiling at Mrs. Jessup as she passed him to walk her dog in the park and holding the door for Maggie Ellis, who was just coming in with her shopping. He took the stairs up to his flat, quietly opened his door and locked it behind him, and made his way into his bedroom.
It wasn’t until the bedroom door was locked as well that Wesley opened his hand around the button and looked at it. It was very plain. Just a round disk of metal with a pierced nub on the back, where the thread went through. Wesley nudged it with one finger, and then he took a deep breath. Closing his eyes, Wesley did something he’d not done in three years.
He Told something just for himself.
The button had once graced a jacket, part of William’s school uniform. It had been a good choice, Wesley thought with the small part of his mind that wasn’t walking the halls of St. Bartholomew’s. It was a personal enough possession to prove to Wesley that Spike truly was William, but not something he’d worn recently enough to be traced by it. Not that Wesley was willing to ask a Finder to help him track William in any case.
The button didn't give Wesley any useful information, not in the way his father or teachers or Mr. Travers would judge it useful. But watching his own friendship with William develop was sweet in a way that had nothing to do with useful. He knew that Spike might be counting on that, expecting the nostalgia to soften him, but Wesley was confident he could handle it. He was a professional, after all. He wasn't going to let a mere Telling influence his emotions or weaken his will.
That didn't stop him from Telling the button late into the night. When he woke, he was slumped at the table with the button clenched in his fist as though he'd been afraid to lose it.
***
There was no law that all Talented people had to work for the Council, but there was a law that they all had to be registered. And once registered, they had to accept training from the Watcher's Council, 'for the protection of the populace.' Few Talented people went on to work outside of the Council after their training, and even those who did - man, woman, or child - could be called into service at any time. It was unheard of for a person to complete their training and then go into hiding, refusing to cooperate with the Council and hoarding his Talent away from the greater good.
At least, Wesley had never heard of it.
He knew, he knew that he ought to go to the Council immediately. He ought to lead them to William so that he could be apprehended for evading registration. He was a fool, but 'ought to' didn't have the hold on him that it usually did. He went to the office as usual in the morning and pretended as if everything was completely ordinary. He kept up the pretense until after work, when he found himself face to face with William once again.
There was a knowing smirk on William ... Spike's face again, and Wesley felt a pang of loss for the shy smile he remembered. He didn't wait for Wesley to say anything, just yelled over his shoulder, "I'll be back in a bit. Watch the till," and hopped over the counter. He knocked his elbow against Wesley’s and said, “Come on, then.”
Wesley followed.
Spike led him to a park, public enough that the presence of other people felt like a safeguard, but empty enough that no one was close enough to overhear them. Wesley considered being impressed by Spike’s forethought, but then, William always had been a clever boy.
They stood on the grass, greying with autumn, and looked at one another, and Wesley wondered if they were going to be silent and uncomfortable the entire time. If so, he’d have preferred another button. After several minutes, though, Spike spoke. “You’re a Teller,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I am,” Wesley agreed. He didn’t attempt to keep the pride out of his voice. His father’s opinion aside, he was one of the strongest and best Tellers the Council had seen in years.
“I always wondered why there were so many stories in your head,” Spike said, his smirk softening into a smile. “Thought you just had more of an imagination than you let on.”
“What, you. You’re a Reader?” Spike nodded. “And you knew, even then. Why weren’t you registered before you came to school?” Wesley asked. He’d never even guessed that William was Talented until the Council had come for him.
“My mum wanted to keep me at home,” Spike said with a shrug. “It’s not like there’s any guarantee that you’ll keep your child if the Council decides they want him more.”
Wesley had to open his mouth three times before he could reply. “But that’s against the law,” he said. He was honestly shocked. His father would have sent him to the Council in a heartbeat, if he’d ever suspected Wesley’s Talent.
Spike snorted, looking far more amused than he had any call to. “Some of the most fun a boy can have is against the law.”
Wesley pressed his lips together. “Is that what this,” he waved his hand, indicating Spike’s appearance, his situation, his desertion of his duty, “is all about? Fun?”
Spike’s smile sharpened and went bitter. “This is about so much more,” he said. Then he cocked his head and gave Wesley a look that could only be described as insolent. “The fun does make it bearable, though.”
“I don’t understand,” Wesley complained. It may have been the first time those words had passed his lips, and he flushed to hear himself say them. Something in Spike’s eyes warmed, in spite of Wesley’s discomfiture. Or because of it.
“I know,” Spike said. He was silent for a long moment. “I’m not going to tell you anything today, though.” When Wesley moved to protest, he added, “I’ve got to clear it with some mates before I say anything. You’re a danger.”
Perhaps he should feel insulted, but Wesley couldn’t help the way his chest swelled a bit with the pride of being thought dangerous.
“If you betray me,” Spike said companionably, “I’ll cut your heart out and leave it on the Council steps.” It wasn’t the words that made Wesley’s blood run cold, it was the flat, earnest way Spike said them. Wesley couldn’t hear them as anything less than a promise.
Wesley pushed his glasses up higher on his nose and concentrated on breathing normally. “What about … there are Readers at the office. They‘ll know if I think about you.” He’d spent the yesterday and today obsessively focused on his work, so as to not let anything slip, but he couldn’t maintain that level for long.
Instead of threatening Wesley any more or looking worried, Spike grinned at him. “That’s easy,” he said. “Every time a thought about me pops up in your mind, don’t think, ‘I’ve got such a bloody great secret.’ Think, ‘Spike’s got a lovely arse.’ Gets the Council Readers out of your head every time.”
Wesley didn’t think he’d blushed as much in the five years since he’d last seen William as he had in the past two days.
"Can’t Readers tell when you’re hiding something?” he asked.
“That’s the brilliant thing,” Spike said, turning and walking back the way they‘d come. “They can tell if you’re hiding something, and they can tell if you’re thinking something false to cover it up. But if you keep thinking about my sexy little body, they’ll think the secret is along those same lines.” He gave Wesley a challenging look over his shoulder. “The cover up only works if you believe it.”
Wesley swallowed hard and followed Spike. He had no doubt that any Readers at the Council would believe every prurient thought about Spike that passed his mind.
Spike stopped as they approached the newsagent. “Right, then. Stop by tomorrow. If I’m here, we’ll talk a bit more.”
“What if you’re not here?” Wesley asked.
“If I’m not here, it’ll mean we’ve decided not to trust you. Whether you remember that you’ve seen me or not will depend on how much we don’t trust you.” And then he was gone, back into the shop and taking his place at the till to sell magazines and newspapers.
Wesley stood on the pavement for a long time, turning Spike’s last words over in his mind. He’d heard rumors, but they’d always been just that. Rumors. There had never been any official acknowledgment that there were Talented people who could go beyond Reading minds and actually affect them.
He wasn't sure what frightened him more: the idea that such a thing was possible and had been kept secret, or the fact that Spike's friends might use that Talent on him.
***
Even his work couldn't keep Wesley from thinking about Spike the next day. Every time he wondered where Spike was or what he was doing, every time he thought about Spike's arse (whether as intention cover or random admiration), Wesley felt a flash of relief that he was still able to think about Spike. That no one had taken those thoughts and memories away.
He wondered if he was always going to fear having his mind manipulated, now that it had been suggested to him.
When he got to the newsagent that evening, Spike was waiting outside for him. "Good, you’re here," he said. Without looking to see if Wesley was following, he started walking. He wasn’t going in the direction of the park, and Wesley felt lost and rather tired of being kept in the dark as he trailed behind.
Spike stopped at a bookshop that looked as if it had left its better days far in the past, and shoved the door open. He held it wide for Wesley, who stepped inside tentatively. He blinked at the gloom inside, and as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized there were several others inside, leaning against bookshelves or in one case, sitting in an armchair. Spike gave him a wry grin and spread his arms wide.
“Welcome to the Resistance,” he said.
“The Resistance.” Wesley stumbled over the word. “What. What precisely are you resisting?”
“Registration,” said a girl in one corner. She wore her blonde hair back in a ponytail, and her arms were folded defensively across her chest.
“The enslavement of our talents and our minds. And I don’t mean metaphorically, like those kids who don’t want to go to school and get all ‘rebel without a cause,’” a girl with long ginger hair said earnestly, waving her hands like it would make her point more apparent.
“The Council,” the blonde girl added.
“Oh, dear,” Wesley said, reaching out a hand to support himself with the doorframe.
“I thought you said he wasn’t an idiot,” a tall man said, stepping forward. He wasn’t old, but was still older than everyone else in the shop and probably ten years older than Wesley. His hair was a sandy, light brown and he wore glasses, like Wesley. There was something about his face. Wesley stared at him.
“Rupert?” Wesley knew now, of course he knew, that when he’d told himself stories as a boy, he’d really been Telling objects. But somehow he hadn’t translated that to mean that the characters in those stories were real people.
“You know him, Ripper?” Spike asked, almost belligerently.
Rupert frowned, and Wesley said, “No, no.” He gave Rupert an apologetic look. “I found your tie at school.”
“Yes, well. I’m sure I was quite different then.” Rupert said uncomfortably.
“Do you still have it?” asked a man who had been sprawling in another armchair. He wasn’t much more than a boy, really, younger than Wesley by at least a few years. “Could you Tell it for us? Because I am so on board for stories of Giles, the naughty schoolboy.”
“Honestly, Xander,” Rupert said, rolling his eyes. “Mr. Wyndham-Pryce isn’t the sort to Tell objects willy-nilly for your entertainment.”
The blonde girl gave Wesley a measuring look and said, “Yeah. I don’t think he’s the willy-nilly kind.”
Spike clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Don’t go talking about his willy. Girl like you. It’s not nice.” He gave Wesley a wicked look. “Leave that to me.”
Before he could start blushing again, Wesley cleared his throat. “I would like to bear out Spike’s claim of not being an idiot,” he said, “but I’m afraid I don’t understand. Do you mean to say that you’re all evading registration?”
“We are,” Rupert said. He seemed to be making himself the spokesman of the group. “For a variety of reasons. Perhaps you ought to sit down whilst we explain.”
Wesley felt unsteady. The notion of Talented people refusing to serve the Council hadn’t even crossed his mind before he’d found Spike, and now he was in a shop full of criminals who were doing just that. Rupert rousted Xander from his chair and motioned for Wesley to take it.
It was threadbare in several places, but it was exceptionally comfortable. Wesley let himself sink back into it.
“I hardly think you need to know everyone’s life story,” Rupert said once Wesley was seated. The blond girl nodded emphatically. “But, I think, Spike …”
“Right,” Spike said. He leaned himself against a bookcase as though it was just as comfortable as Wesley’s chair. “Well, you knew me at school, so you know what a weakling I was.” Wesley wanted to speak out in defense of William, but Spike fixed him with a look that kept him quiet. “When the Council came for me at St. Bartholomew’s, they didn’t give me a choice. Didn’t even let me visit home to say goodbye to my mum. Just shuttled me off to learn how to be a better Reader.”
“Thing was,” Spike went on, “I was already a good Reader. Bloody brilliant Reader. So there wasn’t much they could teach me, and they put me to work. Do you know what they had me at? Sixteen years old, frightened of my own shadow, and they had me Reading criminals.” Spike was standing in a patch of sun, and it lit his hair like a halo. The expression on his face, though, was dark and grim.
Wesley cleared his throat and plucked at a stray thread on the arm of his chair. “But that’s. That’s very important work. It’s led to the recovery of stolen property, victim’s bodies returned for proper burial …”
Spike laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “I wasn’t after recovering stolen property,” he said. He pitched his voice to mimic Wesley’s, and it made him sound so much like the boy he’d been that Wesley ached with it. “They had me Reading rapists and murderers, finding out which of them could be conditioned as soldiers and agents. I had to look at everything they’d done, feel it inside me, coated in blood and gore and screams. And then see those same men set loose to kill again, as long as it was people the Council wanted dead.”
Wesley felt sick. “That’s not. They don’t. That can’t be right.”
“It isn’t right, but it does happen,” Rupert said quietly. “When I found Spike, he was barely holding onto his humanity. He’d been inside the heads of madmen so much that he was losing control of his own mind.” His mouth made a tight, angry line. “He was such a tangle of hate and fear and revulsion, there was barely room for anything else. Readers and Sensers in the Council saw him every day, and they did nothing to protect him.”
“What did you do?” Wesley asked simply.
“I brought him here,” Rupert said. “And I gave him to Willow.”
“I fixed him,” the ginger girl said proudly. She faltered for a moment. “Not like he was. I mean, I know he’s different now. But he’s not all torn up inside his head anymore.”
“How? How could you repair his mind?” Wesley asked. She was so young.
Rupert stepped over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Willow has a rather unique Talent,” he said. “She is the best I’ve ever seen at making changes in a person’s mind. She can insert new thoughts, counteract negative thought patterns, erase and create memories. She’s a prodigy.”
“The best? But there are others who can do those things? In the Council?” Wesley demanded.
“Course there are,” Spike said. “They don’t take up every Talented kid they can find and miss a thing like that.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,”
“No one has,” the blonde girl said. “The Council doesn’t exactly advertise it.”
“There’s not even a name for it,” Xander added. “I thought ‘Minder’ because it’s all about the mind, but Giles says that makes Willow sound like a babysitter.”
“Some days I feel like I am one,” she said pointedly. Xander just grinned at her.
“Once you were better,” Wesley said, looking at Spike, “why didn’t you go back to the Watchers. You could have made them see what they’d done to you, asked for a different assignment.”
“Oh, I went back,” Spike said. “Went back and found a whole lot of them in my office, thinking loud about how I’d run off and deserted the Council. They were going to get one of their own who could do what Willow does and have my Talent blocked, then lock me up somewhere. Couldn’t have me running around knowing what I know.”
Wesley stared at him uncomprehendingly. “But you got away.”
“Read them from the corridor outside my office,” Spike said. “I never opened the door. Just turned around and came right back here. Been with Ripper and his pack of kiddies ever since.”
Wesley stared at his hands, at the floor. He didn’t know how to believe them. To be honest, he didn’t want to believe them. A small black journal dropped into his lap, and Wesley startled, barely grabbing it before it fell to the floor.
“I wrote in this at the time,” Spike said. “Just scribbles and poetry. I lost my last one when the Council took me from school, so I carried it with me all the time.”
Wesley moved to open it. “Do you want me to read it?”
“No, moron. I want you to Tell it.”
In the past three years, the only thing Wesley had Told outside of the line of duty was William’s button. He ran his fingers over the worn leather cover of the journal. It he Told it, he’d have to believe. Objects couldn’t lie to him or hide from him. Once he Told it, he’d know that Spike was telling him the truth.
Wesley took a long, shuddering breath. “No,” he said. “I don’t need to.” He stroked one finger over the spine of the book and handed it back to Spike.
He looked around the shop at the others, who were watching them openly. “Are you all Talented?” he asked.
“I am,” Willow said, waving at him.
“Yes, I believe we established that,” Rupert told her, his voice full of resigned amusement. “I’m a Senser, and Buffy,” he gestured toward the blonde girl, “is the strongest Mover I’ve ever seen. She can lift a lorry all on her own.”
Wesley raised his eyebrows, but she just nodded. “That’s me,” she said. “Truck lifting girl.”
“I’m just here to be the handsome comic relief,” Xander said.
“Xander was a close friend of Willow and Buffy,” Rupert explained. “He was critical in extracting them from the Council.”
Wesley’s eyes widened. “They were taken by the Council?” They weren’t even British.
“Hey, now,” Buffy said. “I thought we were only going to get all ‘This Is Your Life’ about Spike.”
“I beg your pardon,” Wesley said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Anyway, you can see why we weren’t super thrilled when Spike said he wanted to bring in his Watcher’s Council boyfriend,” Xander said. “So thanks for being not being a psychopath. We appreciate it.”
“I.” Boyfriend? “You’re very welcome,” Wesley said.
“We were thinking,” Willow said, leaning forward and propping her elbows on her knees. “That you could be like our inside man, you know? ‘Cause none of us can go back in there. I mean, even if he could, Spike would stick out like a sore thumb. But you’re Joe Watcher. They’d never suspect you, and you can help us keep an eye on the badness. We try to stop it when we can,” she said.
Wesley nearly swallowed his tongue. “They have Readers at the Council,” he said. Good Lord, when they Read what he’d heard today, he was finished.
“Don’t be afraid,” Rupert said. If it had been anyone else, Wesley would have vehemently denied being afraid, but Rupert could Sense it, so he held his tongue.
“I can give you a shield,” Willow said brightly. “I’ve been working on it, and I’ve finally got it right.”
“She’s been trying it on me,” Xander said. “Since I’m a deadhead. The shield she put on me last week kept Spike and Giles both out.”
Wesley looked back and forth between them. It was a terrifying prospect, spying on an organization he’d always believed in, knowing the consequences if he got caught. But on the other hand …
Spike was back against the bookshelf again, thumbs hooked through his belt loops and an unconcerned expression on his face. “If you’re not up for it,” he said, “Willow can do her mojo and make you forget all this. You can go back to your safe little life.”
Wesley had to consider the suggestion. He would have liked to be brave enough to dismiss it outright, but he couldn’t. If he agreed to this, he’d be a traitor to the Watcher’s Council. He’d be betraying everything he’d thought was important, just days ago.
But Wesley remembered being a child, hearing the servants whisper about the Watchers. He remembered feeling protected, knowing the Watchers were out there, even without knowing precisely what a Watcher was. He remembered last week, when he’d been responsible for bringing a child back to her family.
He wanted to be the kind of Watcher he’d believed in as a boy, making the world a better, safer place, and he thought perhaps he could do it with these people.
And though Spike wasn’t really William, not anymore, Wesley thought he’d like to try being that kind of Watcher with Spike in his life.
Wesley looked up to tell Spike his decision and found he didn’t have to. Spike was stepping toward him, grinning delightedly. “We’re going to have so much fun,” Spike said, reaching down to pull Wesley up from his chair.
Wesley stood in a ramshackle bookshop surrounded by criminals he’d just met, holding both of Spike’s hands in his. Spike’s wide, bright grin bore only the faintest resemblance to William’s shy smile, but it still made Wesley feel special. It was very nearly as terrifying as the proposition of joining a Resistance.
“Yes,” Wesley said. “I believe we will.”