Mad, Dog, and Englishman
A five-drabble ficlet, written for
still_grrr.
The prompt was "friendship: Wes and Gunn", and I decided to go into the Birthday-verse for a while...
Mad, Dog, and Englishman
When he first meets them, the English guy’s already down one arm - and still seems to think he’s the best of the lot of them.
“…and if your squad altered its fighting pattern the way I’ve outlined here, you could increase your kill ratio by almost-”
“Hey English. Shut it. My crew, my rules. You got it?”
“Er… yes.”
And there’s nothing else that needs saying.
The werewolf’s okay - doesn’t talk too much.
“Oz.”
“Gunn.”
“Cool.”
“Yep.”
And it’s weird, because out of all of them, the vamp is the one he gets along with the most - visions and all.
* * *
“He’s losing it.”
Wesley looks up from his book. “We don’t know that for certain.”
“The guy’s convinced that his ex-girlfriend - his evil ex-girlfriend - has come back from the dead. That sounds like losing it to me.”
He turns to Oz. “You agree with me, right bro?”
Oz considers it carefully. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“Plus, yesterday morning I caught him talking to the window.”
“Be that as it may, we still need to explore all the possibilities. Including ex-girlfriends rising from the grave.” Wesley holds out a book. “We need to research.”
Like that’ll help. “You research. I’m going vamp hunting.”
* * *
Darla’s revamping hits Angel hard.
They realise how hard when he takes them downtown, and after two hours of wandering around, sword in hand, insisting “but I saw it!”, they figure out that he’s talking about the stabbing that was mentioned on the news - three weeks ago.
Wes and him glance at each other, and then simultaneously suggest that maybe Angel should go home and have a nice warm mug of blood, “…and Gunn and Oz can stay here to save that young woman.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, no problem, man - we can kick some bad-guy ass. You take the night off.”
* * *
“…and then he insisted we fly to Paris to save someone he killed two hundred years ago, and last night he woke me up to tell me that we needed to go clean out a vamp nest. You know - the one we cleaned out a week ago?”
Wes nods, looking worried. “I think his visions are starting to get confused with his memories.”
Oz raises an eyebrow. “No, really?”
“Maybe it’s time for us to stop taking him out to fight with us.”
He’s right, of course - as always.
“Well, we gotta do something, bro, ‘cause this is getting weird.”
* * *
These demons are fierce - and slimy. And they’ve got a mad set of teeth on them.
He slices his axe through one, and yells, “Too bad wolf-man’s out of the fight tonight!”
Wes nods as he skewers another. “That’s the problem with full moons: they tend to happen right before battles.”
“Could have used the help.”
“Yes - but we’ll do fine.”
“Can’t beat the best team in LA, right?”
“Right!”
And it looks like they’ve almost won… but then six more come running into the alley.
Gunn grips his axe tight. “You got my back, English?”
“I’ve got your back.”