Fic: Work is Hell (Wes/Lilah, PG)
Title: Work is Hell
Author: xlivvielockex
Rating: PG
Word Count: 372
Prompt: D is for death (Wes/Lilah) for laeryn at my Alphabet Writing Meme
Characters/Pairing (if any): Wes/Lilah
A/N: Maybe spoilers for Angel: After The Fall. Maybe? You don't need to know what is going on there to read this though. No beta, all mistakes are mine.
There is no break room for the ghosts. They wander the halls, sliding through walls like the corporeal employees go through doors. Wolfram and Hart figures since they don’t drink coffee, don’t eat, and don’t sleep; they don’t deserve a break room. They don’t have to work the standard eight hour days with the two fifteen minute breaks and the half hour lunch. What would they do to fill their time if not for helping the firm? After all, the firm is the reason they aren’t roasting in The Pit.
The ghosts who are lucky enough to be granted a 10301-R for solid state access are left out as well. In the shuffle of paperwork and for tax purposes, they are still ghosts. Though they can sit in a chair and not fall through, it would cost the company too much to give them a room with fluorescent bulbs, a vending machine, table and chairs. Illusions of humanity (or lack there of) are reserved for paying clients only.
So in the late hours, after the janitors have gone home, when the lights dim just enough to be a visual deterrent to vandals, Wes and Lilah gather in their own little break room. It’s an old file room but to them it is a place existing outside of time and space, outside of life and death. Some nights he apologizes over and over again. Sometimes she makes a snarky comment, causing him to flicker like the old bulbs overhead. Sometimes they don’t talk at all. They try to come together but he passes through her like tears through cheap tissue. Sometimes she puts on the glasses and pigtails and then he becomes so transparent, she is sure he has disappeared. Every night they go through the motions, Xerox copies of what they use to be, of what their lives, their ‘relationship’ used to be. They cling desperately to something: love, hate, passion. All there is, it seems, is emptiness.
Then the main lights switch on by timer, the night security guards make the last of their rounds, and the work day begins again. They leave separately, her through the door and him through the wall. And they both know that this is Hell.
Author: xlivvielockex
Rating: PG
Word Count: 372
Prompt: D is for death (Wes/Lilah) for laeryn at my Alphabet Writing Meme
Characters/Pairing (if any): Wes/Lilah
A/N: Maybe spoilers for Angel: After The Fall. Maybe? You don't need to know what is going on there to read this though. No beta, all mistakes are mine.
There is no break room for the ghosts. They wander the halls, sliding through walls like the corporeal employees go through doors. Wolfram and Hart figures since they don’t drink coffee, don’t eat, and don’t sleep; they don’t deserve a break room. They don’t have to work the standard eight hour days with the two fifteen minute breaks and the half hour lunch. What would they do to fill their time if not for helping the firm? After all, the firm is the reason they aren’t roasting in The Pit.
The ghosts who are lucky enough to be granted a 10301-R for solid state access are left out as well. In the shuffle of paperwork and for tax purposes, they are still ghosts. Though they can sit in a chair and not fall through, it would cost the company too much to give them a room with fluorescent bulbs, a vending machine, table and chairs. Illusions of humanity (or lack there of) are reserved for paying clients only.
So in the late hours, after the janitors have gone home, when the lights dim just enough to be a visual deterrent to vandals, Wes and Lilah gather in their own little break room. It’s an old file room but to them it is a place existing outside of time and space, outside of life and death. Some nights he apologizes over and over again. Sometimes she makes a snarky comment, causing him to flicker like the old bulbs overhead. Sometimes they don’t talk at all. They try to come together but he passes through her like tears through cheap tissue. Sometimes she puts on the glasses and pigtails and then he becomes so transparent, she is sure he has disappeared. Every night they go through the motions, Xerox copies of what they use to be, of what their lives, their ‘relationship’ used to be. They cling desperately to something: love, hate, passion. All there is, it seems, is emptiness.
Then the main lights switch on by timer, the night security guards make the last of their rounds, and the work day begins again. They leave separately, her through the door and him through the wall. And they both know that this is Hell.