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All parts linked to from Story Notes
Temps Perdu, Part Two
No! No! No…!”
They all jolted out of bed at the sound of those screams. Giles flinging himself halfway across the room before he realized the world hadn’t come into focus and had to stumble back to snatch up his glasses.
By the time he’d pulled on a robe and made his way blearily down the corridor, the others were either already there or still arriving. It was strange to see Spike sprinting up anxiously when it wasn’t Buffy who was the one who was in danger. Giles had presumed the peroxide vampire was incapable of feeling concern for anyone but her.
The door to Angel’s bedroom was open, Lorne inside the room along with Gunn, who were both watching anxiously as Angel tried to soothe Wesley.
“Wes, it was a lie. It didn’t happen....”
Wesley stopped twisting about in Angel’s grip and opened his eyes, focusing on him. “They said you were dust.”
“It was a lie, remember? They were just trying to break you.”
“They said you’d lost the fight. They said you were dead. They said you were in hell.”
“We were in hell.” Angel took the damp cloth Lorne handed to him and pressed it gently to Wesley’s forehead. “We were both in hell together. But we didn’t die. And we got out. Remember, Wes?”
Wesley gripped his hand tightly. “But what if this isn’t real? What if I'm just dreaming it? What if you’re dead?”
“You’re awake.” Angel stroked the wet tangle of hair back from his face. “This isn’t a dream. This is real. The nightmare was the lie and what they told you when we were trapped back on that place.”
“They said you were burning. They said you’d burn for eternity because of what you’d done.”
“Do I feel hot to you?”
Wesley touched his chest and then his face. “No. You’re…room temperature.”
“See any flames?”
“No.” But Wesley still looked unconvinced that this world was the real one.
“Want me to pinch you to prove you’re awake?”
“But I dreamt I was back in the Hyperion all the time when we were in that place. And that Gunn and Lorne were alive and well.”
“They are alive and well.”
“Am I the proof you need?” Illyria walked into the bedroom, graceful and powerful and decidedly blue around the edges. “In your dreams of happiness I would not exist, would I? Fred would stand where I stand.”
Wesley looked up at her and his face cleared. “Yes, that’s true. You were never in my dreams.”
Spike winced. “Poor cow,” he murmured.
“Then this must be real,” Illyria told him. “And the vampire is telling you the truth. You are home again. Now you must learn how to be Wesley again.”
Wesley gazed at her curiously. “Do you know how to be Illyria?”
“I am not what I was. Illyria had its own form. Illyria was not contaminated with human weakness. But you have returned in your own body. You can be who you were.”
“I don’t know who I was.” Wesley looked down at himself in confusion. “I think I never did.”
“We know who you are.” Gunn wrapped his arms around himself as if it was chilly even though the room was perfectly warm. “You’re our friend. We got you back. And we’re keeping you here, okay? You’re not going anywhere else. Not to any hell dimensions or demon worlds or anywhere else. You’re staying here with us in LA.”
“And he doesn’t mean that as a threat, my lamb. That is supposed to be reassuring.”
Wesley smiled at Lorne. “Fred always said that sometimes it was better to be green.”
Giles saw that the green demon jolt a little at that but he managed a smile for Wesley. “We all miss our Fredikins, crumpet, but if she were here right now I just know she’d be telling you to make like a sequel that bucks all the trends and get better.”
Wesley blinked in confusion as he noticed the people in the doorway. “Why are the people from Sunnydale here if it’s not a dream?”
“Do I look a German Shepherd to you?” Xander demanded. “We’re real.”
“If you’re real why are you dressed as a pirate?”
Angel pressed a hand to Wesley’s forehead and winced. “You’ve got a fever again, Wes. I’ll get you something for it.”
“Don’t go.” Wesley caught Angel’s wrist and gripped it. “Angel....”
“I’ll stay,” Angel said at once. “I’ll stay right here.”
“I’ll get the fever medicine.” Willow reassured him. “Giles?”
“I’ll help.”
As they both turned away, Buffy and Xander fell into step behind them. Xander grimaced “So every time Deadboy fought they told Wesley the guy had been dustified?”
Buffy looked back over her shoulder. “Just once there should be a hell dimension where everyone hands out leis and asks you to have a nice day. Is he going to be okay?”
Willow nodded. “We just need to keep giving him the fever medicine. It’s only been a few days, we can’t expect him to throw off that kind of temperature right away.”
Lorne and Gunn caught up with them. “Wes is burning up and he’s still having the nightmares.”
Willow gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Yes, we know, don’t worry, Gunn. He is getting better, you just have to give him time.”
Gunn looked unconvinced and Lorne handed him his drink. “Eight months in a hell dimension, cupcake - forty-eight hours back home…you do the math.”
Gunn surprised Giles by taking a gulp of the cocktail. “Okay, maybe he isn’t dying.”
“He really isn’t,” Giles reassured him. “And he probably needs people around him who....”
“Aren’t totally paranoid?” Gunn finished off Lorne’s drink and then handed him the empty glass. “Maybe some of us are still working on that.”
It was Xander who slapped Gunn gently on the shoulder. “Hey, you lost almost everyone you knew who wasn’t a god-king or Spike in the space of three months. Trust me, you’re allowed to be paranoid about the one human friend you have left. If it was Willow who’d been lost in a hell dimension and I’d just got her back I’d probably want a baby monitor wired up to her room that I could carry around with me even if Buffy was taking care of her twenty-four-seven.”
Gunn looked at him. “Yeah, that’s a little crazier than even I’d wanna be. Thanks, man, that helped.”
Xander nodded. “That’s what we’re here for and - any time.”
By the time Giles took Wesley the fever medicine, he was dozing in Angel’s arms, the vampire murmuring something to him that sounded a little like a bedtime story, until Giles realized that he was actually talking about past cases.
“And then there was Jhiera and the whole Ko on the back of the neck thing....”
“Did you have sex with her?” Wesley murmured drowsily. “Because Cordy bet me ten dollars that you did and I don’t think I ever paid her.”
“That’s none of your - you two used to take bets on whether or not I slept with the clients…?”
“I always defended your honour,” Wesley insisted, still not opening his eyes. “Of course, I insisted that you would never sleep with Darla however dark you got. I think I still owe Cordelia money for that little wager....”
Angel took the bottle of medicine from Giles and shook it up. “You need to drink this.”
“I don’t want any more demon monkey meat, Angel. I can’t keep it down.”
“This is medicine. It’s nice.”
“You always say it’s nice and it’s always revolting and I’m not hungry. I just want to go to sleep.”
Angel held the bottle to his lips. “Drink it and then you can go to sleep. Come on - two mouthfuls, that’s all.”
Wearily Wesley opened his eyes and then blinked in confusion at their surroundings, but he took the bottle and obediently swallowed down two gulps of medicine, grimacing at the taste. “That’s worse than demon monkey meat.” He looked at Giles warily and then said: “Why do I have to keep dreaming about Sunnydale? I never even liked Sunnydale. Next time I want to dream about Madam Dorion's....”
“Yeah, you and me both, Wes.” As the man slumped asleep against his chest, Angel pulled up the coverlet and then took the bottle from his fingers before he spilled its contents. He handed it back to Giles. “Thank you.
Although Wesley undoubtedly looked very peaceful as long as he was snuggled up against Angel while he slept, Giles still didn’t like this situation. He didn’t like the way Wesley was so dependent upon Angel or how much the vampire seemed to like Wesley being that way; how Angel didn’t think anyone else could look after Wesley and wouldn’t share his care with the rest of them, however many times they offered. If Gunn was paranoid then Giles personally thought that Angel was a candidate for a wraparound jacket and a rubber room. “If you want a break…?” he offered. “I know that Gunn or Lorne would be very happy to watch over him.”
“No, I’m the one he needs.” Angel didn’t even attempt to sound as if he didn’t like things that way.
Giles nodded and left them to their - apparently - platonic bed-sharing but he did wonder if they were ever going to get the real Wesley back while it suited Angel quite so well for him to stay the man he was at the moment.
***
Wesley awoke to a strange almost-silence. Not the silence of rustling undergrowth in a thorny jungle or the hissing plop of lava pits bubbling; not the screech of alien birds or monkey-like demons with red eyes and curving fangs. There was the tick of a clock; the drip of a tap; and - just too far away to make out any words - the murmur of conversation.
Possibly a fever dream. He put a hand to his forehead and it was cool. None of his wounds were throbbing with any particular intensity either. They ached, certainly, the welts and burns and cuts and bruises and the wincing sear of claw wounds, but there wasn’t that inescapable pulse of infection.
He blinked a few times and looked around the room. It looked like Angel’s old bedroom back in the Hyperion, but a lot of his fever dreams were centred around the Hyperion so that didn’t really prove anything.
“Angel…?” he whispered the name cautiously. If they were still on the run in the jungle, it might alert a predator, of course, but it wouldn’t matter if he were in their shared cage while Angel was fighting yet another bout. And if Angel were already dead and he was about to be tossed to some scaly demon as a not very substantial meal then it was never going to matter again.
“Angel…?”
He heard running footsteps, someone moving upstairs at speed, then the pound of feet on carpeted corridor. If this was a fever dream, the sound effects were very good; none of that muffling of the soundtrack that usually accompanied in his dreams; or the weird echo effect.
“I’m here, Wes. I’m here.”
Angel was across the room in a couple of strides and Wesley found himself gazing up into a familiar face. It was reassuring that Angel still had healing wounds on his face. If he’d been wearing a white suit and was entirely unmarked he would have been forced to assume this was a hallucination. They had both done their share of hallucinating over the past few months; starvation, exhaustion, infected wounds in Wesley’s case, the mindfry of blistering pain, had both sent them right to the edge of sanity more than once.
“Wes.” The bed creaked just the way a bed would and the mattress dipped in a manner that was comfortingly mundane as Angel sat on it. The hand on Wesley’s forehead was cool and familiar. “We’re home. We’re in the Hyperion. There was a portal. Do you remember running for it?”
“Have we had this conversation before?” Wesley asked.
Angel smiled. “A few times.”
“How long has it been since we came back?”
“Couple of days. You had a fever. But you’re getting better.”
“So, it’s real?” Wesley cautiously plucked at the sheets and then reached out to touch Angel’s hand. The vampire was wearing black trousers and an unbuttoned white shirt; he was barefoot and looked as if he had thrown on his clothes casually. Wesley folded back Angel’s left cuff carefully to look for the bite mark Angel had sustained in his last fight. It was almost healed but there were still indentations where the fangs had gone in. If this was a fever dream it deserved to win an award for attention to detail.
“It’s real.” Angel cupped his face in his hand. “I’m real. You’re alive and I’m no deader than I’ve been all the time you’ve known me.”
“Where did the portal come from?” Hope rose in his breast that as this impossible thing was possible perhaps all impossible things were possible. “Did Fred…?”
The flash of pain in Angel’s eyes that turned at once to a flash of pity, told him that some things remained unchanged. “It was Willow,” the vampire said gently. “Fred’s....”
“Still dead.” It always hurt so much worse after confusion or fever led him to believe she was still alive. But there was clarity here now. He could remember her death. Remember her convulsing in his arms. Remember Illyria rising up. “I think I may be sane again.” He licked his lips cautiously, the aniseed aftertaste of fennel unmistakable. “I drank something.”
“From Willow. To combat the fever.” Angel touched his forehead again. “It seems to have worked.”
“Willow’s here?” That was too confusing for him to make sense of at the moment.
“And Buffy, Giles, and Xander. They all came to help get us back. It needed a lot of mojo to get the portal open apparently. Lucky for us that Willow’s a very powerful witch these days.”
“Buffy?” Wesley realized what Angel had said. “Buffy’s here?”
“Yes.”
“Is she okay?” Wesley scanned his face anxiously. “Are you okay?”
Angel nodded. “We’re fine, Wes. Everyone’s fine. You just need to concentrate on getting well.”
“I think I am well,” Wesley admitted. “I’m just not sure if I like it.”
Angel pulled the coverlet over him and placed a hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him back down. “You’re not ‘well’, Wes. You’re just not running a temperature of a hundred and four any more. If I get you some soup can you keep it down?”
“I can try. As long as it’s not Heinz tomato soup. I hate that stuff.”
Angel grinned at him. “Oxtail? Minestrone? Leek and potato?”
“Are you mocking my national cuisine?”
“If I was mocking your cuisine I’d be talking about toad in the hole. Gunn got the soup. I think it’s chicken. Can you stay awake long enough for me to get it?”
Wesley could feel exhaustion pressing on his eyelids again but there was also a hollow in his stomach that was demanding his attention. “Yes.”
“I’ll be quick.” Angel got to his feet, crossed the room and went out of the door.
At once Wesley felt an overwhelming sense of loss. He had to stop himself from calling him back, not caring about the food, just wanting Angel to stay with him. Panic was flaring as he listened to the footsteps disappearing into the distance. Images flashed into his mind of nets cutting into their skin, the slash of demon claws, clubs beating them into submission and in his case unconsciousness. Waking to a dagger-sharp pain in his head, blood in his eyes, tied up naked on a dirt floor with no Angel to be seen, panicking and being struck again for calling out to the vampire; then the sigils being cut and burnt into his skin. Trying not to scream. Failing. More beatings, then finally being dragged by the hair back to a filthy cell and thrown into it. Rolling over to find Angel there, cold and still and bleeding, but not dust, not gone....
“Soup....”
He smelt it before he saw it, opening his eyes to the realization that he was starving. Seeing Angel, he smiled in relief. “You were quick.”
“I ran.” The vampire smiled back at him gently. “Can you sit up?”
Wesley managed to do so, a little taken aback by how weak he felt, what an effort it was to move.
“Let me help you.” A strange voice.
He started in confusion and then the woman spoke again. “It’s me, Wesley. It’s Buffy. I’m the official tray holder for this meal.”
“Oh.” He became aware that he was naked and quickly checked to see where the sheet was. The coverlet came up to his chest so that wasn’t too bad, he supposed, although he was still disconcerted to have a third person there. It had been just him and Angel for so long that it was difficult to adjust to a world with other people in it who weren’t enemies.
“I can go if you don’t want me to....” She looked at him uncertainly and he focused on her properly, remembering how young she was, and how pretty. She had a nice face. He’d forgotten that in the intervening years. Just remembering her as sarcasm and anger. But her eyes were kind.
“No. It’s fine. Thank you.”
“I get to do the feeding,” Angel said. “Buffy just attends us both.”
“I give good attendance,” she confirmed.
“I can feed myself,” Wesley protested, sitting up a little straighter in the bed, then tugging up the coverlet hastily.
“You can?” Angel looked unconvinced. “Would that be without spilling soup in my bed?”
Wesley raised a hand and noticed how shaky it was, thought about the liquid constitution of soup. “Oh. You wanted a soup-free bed then?”
Angel dug the spoon into the soup which Buffy obligingly held for him. “Smartass, eh? You must be feeling better. Do I need to do the whole little train going into the tunnel thing or are you going to open wide without me needing to ask?”
“That sounds so dirty,” Buffy murmured.
“Filthy,” Wesley agreed.
“Get your minds out of the gutter,” Angel returned easily. “And you, Wes, open your mouth and swallow when I tell you to.”
Wesley decided there were worse things than being sane. If Angel was able to make jokes then they were either imminently about to die and he was trying to keep Wesley’s mind off things - which didn’t seem likely - or the danger was really past. “Are you going to run this pervert routine with everyone?”
Angel scooped the spoon back into the soup. “Yeah, I was planning to make Gunn hold the tray next time. But, hey, Giles would be the funniest.”
“Giles might tell my father.” Wesley opened his mouth for the next spoonful of soup.
“Giles wouldn’t dream of it.”
For a moment he thought it was his father in the doorway. Wesley swallowed the soup hastily, torn between sitting up straighter and sinking down into the bed and looking as ill as possible in the hope that he could avoid punishment. Then the man stepped out of the contre jour of the doorway and into the room and he saw that it was Rupert Giles.
The man continued easily: “But I have to tell you that we can hear every word downstairs and you’ve even succeeded in ‘grossing out’ Xander and Spike. So, I suppose congratulations are in order.”
“It was nothing.” Angel inclined his head modestly and held up another spoonful of soup. “You have to eat all of this, by the way, as Gunn went out especially to get it and will be sure to tell you that if you don’t finish it.”
“I wasn’t gonna say a word.”
Wesley recognized that silhouette straight away. Unmistakably Gunn. And although he was feeling slightly panicked by having so many people around him, it was also comforting to see so many people he at least knew, and in Gunn’s case, liked. “Thank you for the soup, Charles.”
“You’re welcome. Just make sure you eat it.”
Angel took the opportunity of Wesley opening his mouth to answer to shove another spoonful of soup into him. Wesley swallowed it quickly. “I’m not a toddler, you know. I like soup. I’m hungry and I want to eat it.”
“Good.” Buffy smiled at him. “Because we don’t get our chocolate cake until you do.”
“There’s chocolate cake?” Wesley had thought about chocolate a few times while lost in that hell dimension, but he had almost forgotten how it tasted. Now, he suddenly remembered the exact texture of the thick chocolate on a Mars bar from his tuck box. “I want cake.”
“Soup first,” Angel held out another spoonful.
“But chocolate cake....” Wesley gazed up at him imploringly.
“Oh let him have the cake, Angel,” Gunn said at once. “I hate it when he looks like that.”
“Please, Angel....” Wesley could almost smell the icing on the cake; that thick American frosting that stuck to everything and which he’d always complained about so bitterly in the past when Cordelia let it get dangerously close to his books. Now he wanted to feel it melt on his tongue.
“Okay.” Angel sighed in defeat. “Enough with the eyes, Wes. You can have cake.”
“I’ll get the cake.” Buffy leapt to her feet with alacrity. “And I get to watch him eat it.”
Wesley gazed at her in confusion. “Is there some reason why you would want to…?”
“It’s the stray found in the gutter complex. All women have it,” Giles explained. “Willow wanted to bathe you and now Buffy wants to feed you. Tomorrow they’ll fight over who gets to buy you a new basket.”
“Yes,” Buffy agreed. “But I’ll win because Willow isn’t allowed to use witchcraft on us and I’m stronger than she is.”
As Buffy sped out of the room, taking the tray with her, Wesley felt somewhat exhausted. He slumped back on the pillows and looked up at Angel. “They’re quite…tiring, aren’t they?”
“The Sunnydale crowd?” Angel nodded. “Like watching squirrels do the cha-cha.”
“I remember never really understanding most of what they said.” Wesley laid his head back on the pillow. “It sounded like English but it never seemed to mean what it appeared to on the surface.”
“Well, Americans and teenagers,” Giles conceded with a shrug. “The English language was always going to be an inevitable casualty.”
“We heard that!” Chorused from downstairs.
Wesley closed his eyes and for a moment the jungle loomed, the slash of claws, the bite of the net, but when he opened them again he was still in Angel’s bed, not being dragged anywhere, the sheets cool and clean against his sore skin. “I’m just going to close my eyes....” he murmured.
As he drifted into sleep he heard Buffy say in a disappointed voice: “I wanted to feed him cake.”
“Tomorrow.” Someone who sounded strangely like Rupert Giles from Sunnydale said, “You can feed him cake tomorrow, Buffy.”
As he slipped back into his tangled dreams, Wesley wondered why Buffy would be fighting Ertash demons in a hell dimension instead of minding the Hellmouth in Sunnydale, and what cake had to do with anything.
***
Xander had to admit this place was kind of growing on him. The idea of having a whole hotel at one’s disposal was pretty cool, and he liked Gunn. The guy was scarily normal and seemed to understand very well the whole not-having-super-powers-when-everyone-around-you-did thing. Not that Giles had super powers, of course, except for remaining resolutely English in the face of all temptation to be otherwise, but even he could do the occasional magic trick. Today Lorne, Spike, and Illyria were all where Illyria was. Not that he was certain where that was, but it was perhaps just as well it wasn’t in the lobby, as the blue-rinsed demon apparently looked on Wesley as more or less her personal property and, at the moment, Buffy seemed to be doing the same thing. A cat fight between a slayer and a demon over a convalescent Watcher might well turn ugly.
He had to admit, too, that it was kind of fun to watch Buffy and Willow doing their ‘he followed us all the way home, can we keep him?’ thing with, of all people, stuffy pompous Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Except that Wesley was neither stuffy nor pompous these days; just a little confused and lost, and scarily thin.
It was probably just as well that Buffy had intervened, because Angel had been creepily possessive for nearly a week until Buffy had pretty much marched into that bedroom and insisted that Angel shared the taking care of Wesley duties and she wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. Angel had sulked a little but, as he got Wesley at night, he was letting the rest of them spend short supervised time periods with him during the day, pleasing Buffy and Willow, who could then tend to a healing Watcher in a smothering and equally creepy way that neither Giles nor Xander would have tolerated for five minutes.
Angel was healing fast, Wesley a great deal slower, but that just meant he had a longer convalescence and so more time for the women to fuss. Normally, Xander would have baulked at women fussing so much over someone who wasn’t him, but for once he had to admit that Wesley really seemed to need it, and more importantly he seemed totally unused to it. It had been a slow process building up his strength enough for him to be able to get out of bed, but from there he had progressed to a slow struggle down the stairs of the Hyperion to the lobby and the semblance of some normality. Xander liked to think they had all done their bit to try to help him get over his jumpiness. Wesley was still having nightmares about Angel being dead and dusted but although he and Angel were still - rather weirdly - sharing a bed, it was clear that nothing mattress-springy was going on between them. Wes was just kind of disorientated when he came out of a nightmare and Angel was kind of insanely clingy and protective twenty-four-seven. Wesley’s temperature was still inclined to spike back to fever levels, especially if he didn’t get enough rest, but he could keep down his meals much better, and although whenever his temperature went up he had to be reassured all over again that he was back in LA, for the most part he was fairly normal.
Being in bed had afforded him a little bit of protection from the excesses of the female fussing but it had only been a matter of time before they went to full strength mother hen mode, and now that he was convalescent, getting saner every day, and strong enough to be benevolently tyrannized, there was nothing to hold them back. Wesley seemed bewildered by Buffy’s attitude to him, giving her a deer in headlights look that unfortunately - as it made his eyes look even bigger in his thin face - made her crank up the protective fussing thing to Mach Ten.
Every time Buffy made Wesley a sandwich he looked at it as if he’d never seen one before in his life, turning it over cautiously on the plate as if he was expected to perform a ritual before tasting it.
“Um....”
“It’s food, Wesley,” Buffy said helpfully. “As in for eating. You put it in your mouth and chew on it until swallowing feels like the next logical step.”
“Has it occurred to you he might not actually be hungry?” Giles looked up from his book. He had taken over the office in the Hyperion and seemed to be enjoying reading his way through all of Wesley’s books, a pile of which he now had at the front desk. “It was only two hours ago that Willow spoon fed him something gooey and chocolatey with no apparent food value.”
“Devil’s Food Cake is all food value,” Xander assured the man. “It’s the ultimate food.”
As Buffy continued to coax Wesley into taking a bite out of the sandwich she’d made him, Giles added, “I’m not clear why Angel isn’t getting an equivalent amount of fussing.”
“It’s the blood.” Xander explained. “It isn’t interesting enough. You want to feed up Angel or Spike you get a choice of offering them blood or…blood. With Wesley there are an infinite variety of sticky foodstuffs to tempt him with.”
“This is a chick thing, right?” Gunn came to join them by the reception desk.
“Definitely,” Xander confirmed. “They almost came to blows yesterday about who got to cut his hair.”
“Who won?” Giles enquired.
“Buffy is cutting Angel’s and Willow is doing Wesley’s. They have this afternoon scheduled for it. Then they get to buy Wesley clothes.”
Wesley evidently heard that because he looked around in confusion. “I have clothes. Gunn, don’t I have clothes?”
“No jammies,” Buffy explained. “Convalescing people need jammies. Navy blues ones, preferably.”
“Or tartan.” Willow came into the room with a towel and a pair of scissors. “And there is the whole robe question.”
“This is ridiculous.” Giles marked the page in his book with a neatly folded kleenex. “Everyone knows that pyjamas should be striped.”
“But I don’t think I need....” Wesley noticed the scissors. “Is that for cutting my hair…? Because I used to go to a hairdresser on the corner of Wilshire & Linden Drive.”
“You can’t walk that far,” Willow reminded him. “And you don’t want to go on having the hippy hair, do you? I bet it tickles your ears.”
“These women are unbelievable,” Xander observed. “Someone really needs to buy them a puppy and soon.”
“I dunno. It’s kind of cute watching Wes get fussed over.” Gunn leant back against the reception desk and grinned. “He hasn’t had that since Cordelia....”
“I never really pictured Cordelia as the fussing type,” Giles admitted.
Gunn shrugged. “Well, you know. It was kind of tough-love fussing. ‘Eat something, Wesley, now, I mean it, because you looking like that is just going to make my hips look wide’, ‘Do you have any clothes that don’t make you look gay?’, ‘Okay, no more fighting big stinky clawed demons for Wesley until he learns not to bleed on my blouse afterwards. Is that clear?’”
“That’s my girl,” said Xander fondly.
“Those two fought like cat and dog. Drove me buggo.”
“They were all smoochy and ‘oh Wesley you have the sexiest accent’ when I knew them,” Xander observed.
“Yeah, well, they were well over that when I knew them and definitely into the brother-sister thing, only with added squabbling.”
“Sit back, Wesley,” Willow said in the kind of soothing voice that would personally have sent Xander scampering for cover. Wesley didn’t look too soothed either, but he had come back so spacey, starving, and used to doing what Angel told him that he hadn’t really regained the knack of rebellion yet. The women, of course, were exploiting that ruthlessly.
“Angel!” Buffy was using her best ‘brooking no argument’ tone and Xander wasn’t exactly surprised when the vampire sloped out of the office, looking trapped.
“Yes. What?”
“You know what. Now sit down next to Wesley.” She pointed to the chair that had been placed next to the ex-Watcher.
“I can pay for a haircut,” Angel protested.
“You can pay me in chocolate cake.” Buffy pointed at the chair. “Sit.”
Willow said, still-soothingly, “I’ll have you looking just the way you used to in no time, Wesley, I promise.”
“And she can actually make good on that,” Xander promised. “Because if she snips off part of your ear she can repair it with a superglue spell.”
“Don’t listen to Xander,” Willow reassured him. “There will be no snippage of ears. Or other body parts in fact.”
Willow dipped the comb she was holding into the bowl of warm water placed between her and Buffy, ran it through Wesley’s hair and then began snipping.
“Poor Wes,” Gunn sighed. “That was definitely a flinch.”
“Well, let’s face it, it would be difficult for Buffy and Willow to make those two look worse than they do now. Although it could be fun to see if they can manage it.” Xander passed Gunn a beer and they clashed the bottles together idly.
“You don’t mind your friends being ritually humiliated in the front lobby then?” Giles enquired.
Gunn shrugged. “I figure if your friends are going to be around for a while, my friends had better get used to it. Wes has never learned how to stand up to women - he was trained up by Cordelia that way. And, as Buffy’s a slayer and Angel’s a vampire, I figure he doesn’t do what she says he gets dusted.”
“So you were all aware of Angel’s history with Buffy?”
“Oh yeah.” Gunn took another sip of beer. “Cordy and Wes actually acted it out for us.”
The sudden cessation of snipping made Xander, Gunn and Giles look up. “Did you get a main artery already?” Xander enquired.
“‘Acted it out for us’?” Buffy echoed in a dangerously calm sort of voice. “Would you happen to remember any of it?”
“Wes?” Angel looked at him. “Want to share with the nice slayer?”
“Memory loss,” Wesley said hastily. He twisted his head round to give Willow a full on puppy dog eyes look that Xander had to admit had his own and Angel’s beaten hollow. “Don’t remember.”
Willow said hastily, “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, Buffy. And it was probably Cordelia’s idea anyway.”
Xander took another sip of beer. “Sucker.”
Gunn cleared his throat before saying melodramatically: “‘Oh, Buffy - I love you so much I almost forgot to brood…!’ Wasn’t that how it went, Wes?”
“Sorry. Still drawing a complete blank, I’m afraid. Thanks very much for the haircut, Willow. It’s awfully kind of you.”
“Yeah, keep sucking up to Willow, Watcher Guy,” Xander told him. “You’re going to need a witch to hide behind any minute now.”
Buffy said fiercely to Angel: “You let them make fun of…?”
“I wasn’t around. And when I walked in on them doing their little play, I told them to bite me. And I wouldn’t share with Cordelia even though she really wanted me to.”
“Then he demanded ice cream,” Gunn confirmed. “It was very manly.”
“You’re pathetic,” Buffy told Angel. She pointed her scissors at Wesley. “And you’re lucky I don’t take you for a slayer workout reminder course.”
Wesley gave Buffy a ‘poor scared little just back from a hell dimension me’ look that Xander suspected was only half real, but it worked. Buffy looked at Wesley for a moment and then sighed. “I’ll let you off just this once as I was pretty much a total bitch to you the whole time you were in Sunnydale. But, Willow, make sure you get his hair to do that spiky thing you said was so cute when you saw him last time.”
“You thought Wesley was cute when you saw him before?” Xander demanded in disbelief.
“That unshaven, insomniac, just-been-thrown-out-of-a-window look does it for you then, does it, Willow?” Gunn enquired.
“It was a spasm,” she insisted. “It passed.”
“Why do women like skinny guys anyway?” Xander looked down at his own not-skinny frame. “I mean, they’re skinny, so you’d think they’d want a contrast.”
“Skinny?” Buffy demanded frostily.
“Slender and perfectly formed was what I said, Buff,” Xander assured her hastily. “I don’t know where you’re getting ‘skinny’ from. Wes is skinny. You’re so not.”
“So, now you’re saying I’m fat?”
Xander darted Giles a ‘help me’ look but the man shrugged. “You dug yourself into that pit all by yourself. You get yourself out.”
“Buffy, you’re a vision of radiant loveliness,” Xander said hastily. “And I worship at your feet.”
She smiled triumphantly. “That’s better.”
Buffy concentrated on Angel’s hair for a moment, eyes narrowed as she assessed it. Xander thought it was downright disturbing that Buffy had evidently memorized Angel’s hair so completely that she could not only picture it in her mind she could actually recreate it. Because that was what she was doing. Turning it back from scary wild hair into even scarier sticking up fashionably hair. She even had the mousse there ready, he noticed.
“So, you actually liked Angel’s hair then, Buff?”
She seemed surprised by the question. “There are people who don’t?”
Angel looked impossibly smug and Xander rolled his eyes. “Love really is blind, isn’t it?”
Willow was looking anxious as she worked on Wesley’s hair. “Gunn, do you remember what Wesley’s hair was like before?”
“Short,” Gunn supplied helpfully.
She gave him a panicked look. “That’s it?”
“Brown?” Gunn offered.
“Do you need mousse?” Buffy asked.
“Wesley’s doesn’t need to stick up.”
“To stop it sticking up.”
Willow looked at Wesley’s face. “It would look kind of cute if it did.”
Buffy also gazed at him for a moment. “It would look so cute.”
Giles rolled his eyes. “Oh for goodness sake, you two. Could you leave the poor man the tattered remnants of some dignity?”
“Later we get to buy him clothes.” Buffy apparently had no shame - or mercy. “And to make ‘aww’ing noises in the store where complete strangers can hear us.”
Xander took a swig of beer before giving Wesley a sympathetic look. “I bet that hell dimension’s not looking quite so bad now, is it?”
“You can’t take Wesley out the way he looks right now,” Angel said with authority. “Wait until the bruises fade or people will assume you’re perverted sadists.”
Xander looked at Gunn. “Buffy and Willow, Bondage Mistresses of Pain. I kind of like it.”
“I’m kind of right there with you,” Gunn admitted. “Do you think they have handcuffs?”
“Buffy did used to keep Spike chained up in her basement. I always suspected she was a spanker too.”
Gunn was looking at Buffy with renewed interest. “She did. Wow. That’s.... Is it me or did it just get hot in here?”
“I still don’t understand why I need more clothes,” Wesley put in plaintively. “Did you burn my clothes when I was away? Because some of them were very expensive.”
“No, we kept them, Wes,” Gunn assured him. “But the girls don’t want to dress you up in Ralph Lauren polo shirts. They want you to wear jammies so they can ‘aww’ over you.”
“We don’t really need Wesley along to buy those do we?” Buffy turned to Willow triumphantly. “We just buy ones in the right size and then make him wear them. Same with the robe.”
“But I’m convalescent now,” Wesley insisted. “I’m wearing normal clothes.”
“But you shouldn’t be. Because you still have all your owies.”
Giles ran a hand through his hair. “What is it about an attractive man having injuries that makes women respond to him as if he’s two years old? It is the most inexplicable phenomenon.”
“You think Wesley’s attractive?” Xander put his head on one side to look at Wesley. “Don’t you think he’s kind of skinny?”
“The girls at Wolfram & Hart all thought he was a looker,” Spike offered, coming in, sipping a cup of blood. “They were always saying what a pity Wes was gay.”
Wesley looked at him in shock. “I’m not gay.”
“Well, they thought you were.”
“Why didn’t you tell them I wasn’t?”
“How was I supposed to know? Every time I saw you, you were with Angel, and with him being such a big nancy I assumed you were too.”
“Sitting right here,” Angel pointed out indignantly.
“The girls said that ‘poor Nina’ was wasting her time with Angel because everyone knew he and Mister Wyndam-Pryce were an item, and what a pity it was that Mister Wyndam-Pryce batted for the other team when he had such lovely dress sense. I thought they had inside information.”
Angel and Wesley exchanged an indignant look. “Well, they didn’t,” Angel said shortly. “And where’s Illyria?”
Spike waved a hand. “Lorne’s trying to get her to dig Aretha - I tried to tell him he was wasting his time but he’s convinced she’s got to have some soul-sister vibe in there somewhere.”
“They did sound very sure,” Gunn admitted apologetically. “The girls in the office. A couple of times I tried to correct them on the whole Wes being gay thing but they just laughed at me and said I didn’t know what I was talking about. They said the only people who didn’t know Wes was gay were the men who wanted to sleep with him, which was when I started worrying about that time when we were wrestling and how I maybe enjoyed it a little bit too much.... And then I decided not to think about any of those things ever again.”
Wesley rolled his eyes at him. “Good move, Charles. Could you try not talking about them either?”
Spike held up a hand. “See, I knew Wes was gay straight off, so that proves I’m not one of the ones who wants to sleep with him. I knew Angelus was too. The first time I met him I thought ‘what an unbelievable ponce’ - I remember it distinctly.”
“But you did have sex with Angelus,” Giles pointed out. “On numerous occasions. There are several eye witness accounts - from survivors of your various massacres - of your Bacchanalian revelries after you’d all sated yourselves on the blood of innocents.”
Spike blanched. “That’s invasion of privacy, that is. I could sue. And you can’t believe eyewitness accounts anyway. Everyone knows people are too traumatized to remember anything accurately after a vampire attack. Me and Dru, and Angelus and Darla, that’s what they would have seen - they were just confused and probably hysterical.”
Angel grimaced apologetically at Wesley. “I did some bad things in my time.”
“Well, yes.” Wesley nodded sagely. “Darla for one, and Spike, apparently, for another.”
Buffy was still looking between Gunn and Wesley with great interest, apparently oblivious to the rest of the conversation. “You wrestled? Proper sweaty wrestling? Was there oil?”
“No,” Wesley protested. “We were fully clothed, unoiled, and under the influence of a spell of Lorne’s which made us think we were seventeen.”
“So, you used to wrestle with guys a lot when you were seventeen?”
“No.” Wesley gave Gunn a reproachful look. “This conversation is entirely your fault.”
“It’s one of Buffy’s core fantasies,” Willow explained. “Angel and Spike wrestling naked. There’s usually oil. Sometimes mud. Once…jello. It’s another of those mental images that occasionally makes me question my lesbian credentials, but only for a moment.”
Angel and Spike looked at one another before both scowling at Buffy who showed no signs of shame at all.
“Pervert,” Xander told her loftily.
“You and Angel are actually sleeping together,” Giles pointed out to Wesley. “Is it really so surprising that people might jump to…certain conclusions?”
“We’re only sleeping together in a non-sexual way,” Angel retorted.
“There’s a non-sexual way to sleep together?” Gunn enquired.
Spike gazed across at Buffy. “Yes, there is. And it’s the best way sometimes. Comforting. Makes you feel like you matter as a person. Like you’re someone.”
Xander looked at him sideways. “Man, Spike, you’ve been out of the dating game for a while, haven’t you?”
“Isn’t it ironic that with all this talk about sex there is no way any of us are going to be getting any from any of the people here?” Willow observed.
“You had to say that out loud?” Xander demanded.
“I could have said something about Buffy indulging in a naughty threesome with Angel and Spike, but I didn’t. That would have been wrong.”
“Angelus was always looking for a threeway with Faith and Wes,” Gunn observed conversationally.
“No, he wasn’t,” Angel said quickly.
“Oh, my mistake. That ‘It’s never just about you and me, Faith, Wes’ll always be in the middle’ was about something else, was it?”
“He meant as a bargaining chip in hostage negotiations.”
“Funny how Angelus always got a hard-on during the kind of hostage negotiations that involved pulling Wes in really tight against his body....” Gunn murmured innocently.
“Was that what that was?” Wesley looked at Angel in surprise. “I really did think you had a gun in your pocket.”
“I knew it!” Gunn punched the air. “The real reason Angelus never killed Wesley confirmed.”
Angel narrowed his eyes. “You’re so close to being dead right now.”
Buffy and Willow exchanged a guilty look. “You too?” Buffy offered quietly.
Willow nodded. “‘Fraid so.”
“What?” Xander enquired.
Buffy grimaced. “It’s just…Angel, Wesley and Faith…not entirely lacking in hotness as a concept. Not that I would.... There would be no peeking, of course, because that would be wrong but as mental images go….”
“It was Angelus, Wesley and Faith,” Angel pointed out grimly. “So step one in that little ménage a trios would have been Angelus turning Faith into a vampire, and step two would have been him doing lots of very non consensual things to Wesley, probably before peeling his skin off slowly with a razor blade.”
“You’re really killing the mood,” Buffy told him. “Let me have my fantasies and you have yours. It’s just that mine would be…better.”
Giles looked at her in disbelief. “Are there any males in this room you don’t want to see naked, covered in oil and doing something sticky to another equally naked and oil-covered male?”
“Well, you, of course. That would be squicky on so many levels.”
Spike shrugged. “I dunno. Giles and Wes - gotta lot in common, haven’t they? They’re both kind of boring and tweedy and a bit mentally unstable and don’t get laid very often. That would give them some common ground. I could see them as a couple.”
“Me too,” Willow admitted. As both men glared at her she amended quickly. “Not for the reasons Spike said. Just because…you’re both Watchers and…English so you could talk about…cricket together and things, and it would be sweet.”
“If this conversation doesn’t end now I’m going to put out my other eye myself,” Xander exclaimed. “No more of the homo-enough-already. You girls are sick!”
Buffy said: “I have four words for you, Xander - Willow. Kennedy. Tongue. Stud.” She snipped at Angel’s hair triumphantly, put down the scissors, picked up the mousse and ran her fingers through his dark locks with what looked like professional aplomb. Xander had to admit that the end result was Angel with the same scary hair he’d always had. She whipped off the sheet around his shoulders and invited applause. When no one did she rolled her eyes impatiently. “Come on. It’s a masterpiece.”
“You made it look like it did before,” Spike pointed out. “No one here likes the way it looked before except for you and Angel.”
“I like it,” Wesley said hastily.
“You’re just scared of Buffy,” Spike said.
“Yes,” Wesley admitted. “But at least I’m man enough to admit it.”
“Wesley gets a cookie,” Buffy said smugly. “Because sometimes it’s smart to be scared. No cookie for Spike.”
Xander held up a hand. “If I say that you made it look just the way it used to look and don’t add that I always thought Angel’s hair made him look like a complete freak, do I get a cookie?”
Buffy considered the point for a moment. “No. Will, have you finished?”
“I’m not sure.” Willow examined Wesley’s hair anxiously. “Do you think I could use a little spell to tidy it up?”
“How many ears does he have left, Willow?” Xander enquired comfortingly. “That’s the main thing.”
“Gunn?” Willow gave the man a begging look. “Does this look right?”
“Looks short and brown to me, Willow. I think you got it.”
Buffy gave Wesley a cookie and a mirror, putting the first into his hand and holding the other in front of him. “It’s perfect. It’s all interestingly tousled in an ‘I’m too cool and rogue demon huntery to run a comb through it or shave’ kind of way.”
Willow beamed. “That’s just the look I was going for.”
“Well, you’ve got it.” Buffy held the mirror up for Wesley. “Didn’t Willow get it right, Wesley? And remember who supplies the cookies around here.”
Wesley darted a fearful glance at his reflection and then looked relieved. “Oh. That actually looks like me again. Thank you, Willow.” He felt his chin. “And I do shave. Just…not every day.”
Xander nodded sagely. “Probably saw Miami Vice at an impressionable age.”
“I told Wes and Gunn that they looked like Crocket and Tubbs and they just looked blank,” Spike complained.
“We didn’t know what you were talking about. We still don’t. Gunn was fighting vampires from the age of twelve and I was studying to be a Watcher. We didn’t get a lot of time for popular culture.”
Willow turned to Buffy. “He even sounds just like Giles. Do you think we should matchmake?”
“Willow….” Giles warned ominously. “Remember I still have a direct line to a very powerful coven of witches.”
“That sounds very Devil Rides Out, doesn’t it?” Spike observed to Angel. “I can just see Giles summoning the Goat of Mendes while witches cavort around naked.”
“It’s not that kind of a coven,” Giles said wearily.
Xander sighed. “That’s a pity because the image of witches cavorting around naked…” Catching Willow’s eye he amended hastily: “…is just so stereotypical and wrong. I never believed those engravings. And the woodcuts on pages 57, 296, and 531 of that book of Giles’, I never believed those either on any of my numerous viewings of them.”
Gunn raised an eyebrow. “Having the Sunnydale crew to visit really does up the pervert ratio, doesn’t it?”
“The IQ level is taking a bit of a beating though,” Angel murmured.
“Oh, so you don’t think Giles is smarter than Spike?” Buffy demanded.
“The waffle iron is smarter than Spike. That isn’t the point. You and Willow may have aced your SATs but all you’ve done since you got here is fuss over Wesley like the poor guy is a cocker spaniel.”
Buffy pouted. “It’s fun.”
“Not for him.”
“He’s not here to have fun. He’s here to be fussed over - whether he likes it or not. And anyone who gets between me and my fun gets no cookies and possibly a stake in the heart. Is that clear?”
Angel and Spike exchanged a worried look. “Very clear.”
“Couldn’t be clearer.” Spike gave Wesley an apologetic look. “Sorry, mate, you’re on your own.”
“But I’m better now. I’m well again. I’m....”
“Still owied up.”
Wesley looked at Buffy in disbelief. “You can’t possibly think that’s a verb?”
She folded her arms. “Let’s recap, shall we? Who in this room has Slayer strength and who has lots and lots of bruises?”
“Angel....” Wesley cast a begging look at the vampire who automatically took a step forward.
“Buffy, couldn’t you let him…?”
“No. He has to do as he’s told and be fussed over until he’s better. It will be character building for Wesley and fun for me and Willow.” She pointed at Wesley imperiously. “You need to go to bed now and rest, and Willow and I need to buy you jammies.”
Wesley looked up at the ceiling and sighed in resignation. “Does anyone know how to open a portal to a hell dimension?”
“You do need to rest,” Angel told him gently.
“Nonsense, I’m…” Wesley got to his feet and swayed, face paling to an even whiter shade. Buffy caught his arm at once. “Perfectly well,” he finished unconvincingly.
“Wes, Angel has more colour than you do and he doesn’t have a pulse,” Gunn pointed out.
Angel was already looping Wesley’s arm around his shoulders and supporting him with an arm around his waist, expression anxious. “Are you getting that sloshing sound in your ears again? Do you need glucose? Iron?”
“Lying down isn’t sounding like such a bad idea,” Wesley admitted faintly.
Angel helped him up the stairs while they all watched their slow progress. Xander shook his head and took another swig of beer. “It’s all fun and games until someone breaks a nail.”
“See, still convalescent,” Buffy said triumphantly. “The man needs jammies.”
Temps Perdu, Part Two
No! No! No…!”
They all jolted out of bed at the sound of those screams. Giles flinging himself halfway across the room before he realized the world hadn’t come into focus and had to stumble back to snatch up his glasses.
By the time he’d pulled on a robe and made his way blearily down the corridor, the others were either already there or still arriving. It was strange to see Spike sprinting up anxiously when it wasn’t Buffy who was the one who was in danger. Giles had presumed the peroxide vampire was incapable of feeling concern for anyone but her.
The door to Angel’s bedroom was open, Lorne inside the room along with Gunn, who were both watching anxiously as Angel tried to soothe Wesley.
“Wes, it was a lie. It didn’t happen....”
Wesley stopped twisting about in Angel’s grip and opened his eyes, focusing on him. “They said you were dust.”
“It was a lie, remember? They were just trying to break you.”
“They said you’d lost the fight. They said you were dead. They said you were in hell.”
“We were in hell.” Angel took the damp cloth Lorne handed to him and pressed it gently to Wesley’s forehead. “We were both in hell together. But we didn’t die. And we got out. Remember, Wes?”
Wesley gripped his hand tightly. “But what if this isn’t real? What if I'm just dreaming it? What if you’re dead?”
“You’re awake.” Angel stroked the wet tangle of hair back from his face. “This isn’t a dream. This is real. The nightmare was the lie and what they told you when we were trapped back on that place.”
“They said you were burning. They said you’d burn for eternity because of what you’d done.”
“Do I feel hot to you?”
Wesley touched his chest and then his face. “No. You’re…room temperature.”
“See any flames?”
“No.” But Wesley still looked unconvinced that this world was the real one.
“Want me to pinch you to prove you’re awake?”
“But I dreamt I was back in the Hyperion all the time when we were in that place. And that Gunn and Lorne were alive and well.”
“They are alive and well.”
“Am I the proof you need?” Illyria walked into the bedroom, graceful and powerful and decidedly blue around the edges. “In your dreams of happiness I would not exist, would I? Fred would stand where I stand.”
Wesley looked up at her and his face cleared. “Yes, that’s true. You were never in my dreams.”
Spike winced. “Poor cow,” he murmured.
“Then this must be real,” Illyria told him. “And the vampire is telling you the truth. You are home again. Now you must learn how to be Wesley again.”
Wesley gazed at her curiously. “Do you know how to be Illyria?”
“I am not what I was. Illyria had its own form. Illyria was not contaminated with human weakness. But you have returned in your own body. You can be who you were.”
“I don’t know who I was.” Wesley looked down at himself in confusion. “I think I never did.”
“We know who you are.” Gunn wrapped his arms around himself as if it was chilly even though the room was perfectly warm. “You’re our friend. We got you back. And we’re keeping you here, okay? You’re not going anywhere else. Not to any hell dimensions or demon worlds or anywhere else. You’re staying here with us in LA.”
“And he doesn’t mean that as a threat, my lamb. That is supposed to be reassuring.”
Wesley smiled at Lorne. “Fred always said that sometimes it was better to be green.”
Giles saw that the green demon jolt a little at that but he managed a smile for Wesley. “We all miss our Fredikins, crumpet, but if she were here right now I just know she’d be telling you to make like a sequel that bucks all the trends and get better.”
Wesley blinked in confusion as he noticed the people in the doorway. “Why are the people from Sunnydale here if it’s not a dream?”
“Do I look a German Shepherd to you?” Xander demanded. “We’re real.”
“If you’re real why are you dressed as a pirate?”
Angel pressed a hand to Wesley’s forehead and winced. “You’ve got a fever again, Wes. I’ll get you something for it.”
“Don’t go.” Wesley caught Angel’s wrist and gripped it. “Angel....”
“I’ll stay,” Angel said at once. “I’ll stay right here.”
“I’ll get the fever medicine.” Willow reassured him. “Giles?”
“I’ll help.”
As they both turned away, Buffy and Xander fell into step behind them. Xander grimaced “So every time Deadboy fought they told Wesley the guy had been dustified?”
Buffy looked back over her shoulder. “Just once there should be a hell dimension where everyone hands out leis and asks you to have a nice day. Is he going to be okay?”
Willow nodded. “We just need to keep giving him the fever medicine. It’s only been a few days, we can’t expect him to throw off that kind of temperature right away.”
Lorne and Gunn caught up with them. “Wes is burning up and he’s still having the nightmares.”
Willow gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Yes, we know, don’t worry, Gunn. He is getting better, you just have to give him time.”
Gunn looked unconvinced and Lorne handed him his drink. “Eight months in a hell dimension, cupcake - forty-eight hours back home…you do the math.”
Gunn surprised Giles by taking a gulp of the cocktail. “Okay, maybe he isn’t dying.”
“He really isn’t,” Giles reassured him. “And he probably needs people around him who....”
“Aren’t totally paranoid?” Gunn finished off Lorne’s drink and then handed him the empty glass. “Maybe some of us are still working on that.”
It was Xander who slapped Gunn gently on the shoulder. “Hey, you lost almost everyone you knew who wasn’t a god-king or Spike in the space of three months. Trust me, you’re allowed to be paranoid about the one human friend you have left. If it was Willow who’d been lost in a hell dimension and I’d just got her back I’d probably want a baby monitor wired up to her room that I could carry around with me even if Buffy was taking care of her twenty-four-seven.”
Gunn looked at him. “Yeah, that’s a little crazier than even I’d wanna be. Thanks, man, that helped.”
Xander nodded. “That’s what we’re here for and - any time.”
By the time Giles took Wesley the fever medicine, he was dozing in Angel’s arms, the vampire murmuring something to him that sounded a little like a bedtime story, until Giles realized that he was actually talking about past cases.
“And then there was Jhiera and the whole Ko on the back of the neck thing....”
“Did you have sex with her?” Wesley murmured drowsily. “Because Cordy bet me ten dollars that you did and I don’t think I ever paid her.”
“That’s none of your - you two used to take bets on whether or not I slept with the clients…?”
“I always defended your honour,” Wesley insisted, still not opening his eyes. “Of course, I insisted that you would never sleep with Darla however dark you got. I think I still owe Cordelia money for that little wager....”
Angel took the bottle of medicine from Giles and shook it up. “You need to drink this.”
“I don’t want any more demon monkey meat, Angel. I can’t keep it down.”
“This is medicine. It’s nice.”
“You always say it’s nice and it’s always revolting and I’m not hungry. I just want to go to sleep.”
Angel held the bottle to his lips. “Drink it and then you can go to sleep. Come on - two mouthfuls, that’s all.”
Wearily Wesley opened his eyes and then blinked in confusion at their surroundings, but he took the bottle and obediently swallowed down two gulps of medicine, grimacing at the taste. “That’s worse than demon monkey meat.” He looked at Giles warily and then said: “Why do I have to keep dreaming about Sunnydale? I never even liked Sunnydale. Next time I want to dream about Madam Dorion's....”
“Yeah, you and me both, Wes.” As the man slumped asleep against his chest, Angel pulled up the coverlet and then took the bottle from his fingers before he spilled its contents. He handed it back to Giles. “Thank you.
Although Wesley undoubtedly looked very peaceful as long as he was snuggled up against Angel while he slept, Giles still didn’t like this situation. He didn’t like the way Wesley was so dependent upon Angel or how much the vampire seemed to like Wesley being that way; how Angel didn’t think anyone else could look after Wesley and wouldn’t share his care with the rest of them, however many times they offered. If Gunn was paranoid then Giles personally thought that Angel was a candidate for a wraparound jacket and a rubber room. “If you want a break…?” he offered. “I know that Gunn or Lorne would be very happy to watch over him.”
“No, I’m the one he needs.” Angel didn’t even attempt to sound as if he didn’t like things that way.
Giles nodded and left them to their - apparently - platonic bed-sharing but he did wonder if they were ever going to get the real Wesley back while it suited Angel quite so well for him to stay the man he was at the moment.
***
Wesley awoke to a strange almost-silence. Not the silence of rustling undergrowth in a thorny jungle or the hissing plop of lava pits bubbling; not the screech of alien birds or monkey-like demons with red eyes and curving fangs. There was the tick of a clock; the drip of a tap; and - just too far away to make out any words - the murmur of conversation.
Possibly a fever dream. He put a hand to his forehead and it was cool. None of his wounds were throbbing with any particular intensity either. They ached, certainly, the welts and burns and cuts and bruises and the wincing sear of claw wounds, but there wasn’t that inescapable pulse of infection.
He blinked a few times and looked around the room. It looked like Angel’s old bedroom back in the Hyperion, but a lot of his fever dreams were centred around the Hyperion so that didn’t really prove anything.
“Angel…?” he whispered the name cautiously. If they were still on the run in the jungle, it might alert a predator, of course, but it wouldn’t matter if he were in their shared cage while Angel was fighting yet another bout. And if Angel were already dead and he was about to be tossed to some scaly demon as a not very substantial meal then it was never going to matter again.
“Angel…?”
He heard running footsteps, someone moving upstairs at speed, then the pound of feet on carpeted corridor. If this was a fever dream, the sound effects were very good; none of that muffling of the soundtrack that usually accompanied in his dreams; or the weird echo effect.
“I’m here, Wes. I’m here.”
Angel was across the room in a couple of strides and Wesley found himself gazing up into a familiar face. It was reassuring that Angel still had healing wounds on his face. If he’d been wearing a white suit and was entirely unmarked he would have been forced to assume this was a hallucination. They had both done their share of hallucinating over the past few months; starvation, exhaustion, infected wounds in Wesley’s case, the mindfry of blistering pain, had both sent them right to the edge of sanity more than once.
“Wes.” The bed creaked just the way a bed would and the mattress dipped in a manner that was comfortingly mundane as Angel sat on it. The hand on Wesley’s forehead was cool and familiar. “We’re home. We’re in the Hyperion. There was a portal. Do you remember running for it?”
“Have we had this conversation before?” Wesley asked.
Angel smiled. “A few times.”
“How long has it been since we came back?”
“Couple of days. You had a fever. But you’re getting better.”
“So, it’s real?” Wesley cautiously plucked at the sheets and then reached out to touch Angel’s hand. The vampire was wearing black trousers and an unbuttoned white shirt; he was barefoot and looked as if he had thrown on his clothes casually. Wesley folded back Angel’s left cuff carefully to look for the bite mark Angel had sustained in his last fight. It was almost healed but there were still indentations where the fangs had gone in. If this was a fever dream it deserved to win an award for attention to detail.
“It’s real.” Angel cupped his face in his hand. “I’m real. You’re alive and I’m no deader than I’ve been all the time you’ve known me.”
“Where did the portal come from?” Hope rose in his breast that as this impossible thing was possible perhaps all impossible things were possible. “Did Fred…?”
The flash of pain in Angel’s eyes that turned at once to a flash of pity, told him that some things remained unchanged. “It was Willow,” the vampire said gently. “Fred’s....”
“Still dead.” It always hurt so much worse after confusion or fever led him to believe she was still alive. But there was clarity here now. He could remember her death. Remember her convulsing in his arms. Remember Illyria rising up. “I think I may be sane again.” He licked his lips cautiously, the aniseed aftertaste of fennel unmistakable. “I drank something.”
“From Willow. To combat the fever.” Angel touched his forehead again. “It seems to have worked.”
“Willow’s here?” That was too confusing for him to make sense of at the moment.
“And Buffy, Giles, and Xander. They all came to help get us back. It needed a lot of mojo to get the portal open apparently. Lucky for us that Willow’s a very powerful witch these days.”
“Buffy?” Wesley realized what Angel had said. “Buffy’s here?”
“Yes.”
“Is she okay?” Wesley scanned his face anxiously. “Are you okay?”
Angel nodded. “We’re fine, Wes. Everyone’s fine. You just need to concentrate on getting well.”
“I think I am well,” Wesley admitted. “I’m just not sure if I like it.”
Angel pulled the coverlet over him and placed a hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him back down. “You’re not ‘well’, Wes. You’re just not running a temperature of a hundred and four any more. If I get you some soup can you keep it down?”
“I can try. As long as it’s not Heinz tomato soup. I hate that stuff.”
Angel grinned at him. “Oxtail? Minestrone? Leek and potato?”
“Are you mocking my national cuisine?”
“If I was mocking your cuisine I’d be talking about toad in the hole. Gunn got the soup. I think it’s chicken. Can you stay awake long enough for me to get it?”
Wesley could feel exhaustion pressing on his eyelids again but there was also a hollow in his stomach that was demanding his attention. “Yes.”
“I’ll be quick.” Angel got to his feet, crossed the room and went out of the door.
At once Wesley felt an overwhelming sense of loss. He had to stop himself from calling him back, not caring about the food, just wanting Angel to stay with him. Panic was flaring as he listened to the footsteps disappearing into the distance. Images flashed into his mind of nets cutting into their skin, the slash of demon claws, clubs beating them into submission and in his case unconsciousness. Waking to a dagger-sharp pain in his head, blood in his eyes, tied up naked on a dirt floor with no Angel to be seen, panicking and being struck again for calling out to the vampire; then the sigils being cut and burnt into his skin. Trying not to scream. Failing. More beatings, then finally being dragged by the hair back to a filthy cell and thrown into it. Rolling over to find Angel there, cold and still and bleeding, but not dust, not gone....
“Soup....”
He smelt it before he saw it, opening his eyes to the realization that he was starving. Seeing Angel, he smiled in relief. “You were quick.”
“I ran.” The vampire smiled back at him gently. “Can you sit up?”
Wesley managed to do so, a little taken aback by how weak he felt, what an effort it was to move.
“Let me help you.” A strange voice.
He started in confusion and then the woman spoke again. “It’s me, Wesley. It’s Buffy. I’m the official tray holder for this meal.”
“Oh.” He became aware that he was naked and quickly checked to see where the sheet was. The coverlet came up to his chest so that wasn’t too bad, he supposed, although he was still disconcerted to have a third person there. It had been just him and Angel for so long that it was difficult to adjust to a world with other people in it who weren’t enemies.
“I can go if you don’t want me to....” She looked at him uncertainly and he focused on her properly, remembering how young she was, and how pretty. She had a nice face. He’d forgotten that in the intervening years. Just remembering her as sarcasm and anger. But her eyes were kind.
“No. It’s fine. Thank you.”
“I get to do the feeding,” Angel said. “Buffy just attends us both.”
“I give good attendance,” she confirmed.
“I can feed myself,” Wesley protested, sitting up a little straighter in the bed, then tugging up the coverlet hastily.
“You can?” Angel looked unconvinced. “Would that be without spilling soup in my bed?”
Wesley raised a hand and noticed how shaky it was, thought about the liquid constitution of soup. “Oh. You wanted a soup-free bed then?”
Angel dug the spoon into the soup which Buffy obligingly held for him. “Smartass, eh? You must be feeling better. Do I need to do the whole little train going into the tunnel thing or are you going to open wide without me needing to ask?”
“That sounds so dirty,” Buffy murmured.
“Filthy,” Wesley agreed.
“Get your minds out of the gutter,” Angel returned easily. “And you, Wes, open your mouth and swallow when I tell you to.”
Wesley decided there were worse things than being sane. If Angel was able to make jokes then they were either imminently about to die and he was trying to keep Wesley’s mind off things - which didn’t seem likely - or the danger was really past. “Are you going to run this pervert routine with everyone?”
Angel scooped the spoon back into the soup. “Yeah, I was planning to make Gunn hold the tray next time. But, hey, Giles would be the funniest.”
“Giles might tell my father.” Wesley opened his mouth for the next spoonful of soup.
“Giles wouldn’t dream of it.”
For a moment he thought it was his father in the doorway. Wesley swallowed the soup hastily, torn between sitting up straighter and sinking down into the bed and looking as ill as possible in the hope that he could avoid punishment. Then the man stepped out of the contre jour of the doorway and into the room and he saw that it was Rupert Giles.
The man continued easily: “But I have to tell you that we can hear every word downstairs and you’ve even succeeded in ‘grossing out’ Xander and Spike. So, I suppose congratulations are in order.”
“It was nothing.” Angel inclined his head modestly and held up another spoonful of soup. “You have to eat all of this, by the way, as Gunn went out especially to get it and will be sure to tell you that if you don’t finish it.”
“I wasn’t gonna say a word.”
Wesley recognized that silhouette straight away. Unmistakably Gunn. And although he was feeling slightly panicked by having so many people around him, it was also comforting to see so many people he at least knew, and in Gunn’s case, liked. “Thank you for the soup, Charles.”
“You’re welcome. Just make sure you eat it.”
Angel took the opportunity of Wesley opening his mouth to answer to shove another spoonful of soup into him. Wesley swallowed it quickly. “I’m not a toddler, you know. I like soup. I’m hungry and I want to eat it.”
“Good.” Buffy smiled at him. “Because we don’t get our chocolate cake until you do.”
“There’s chocolate cake?” Wesley had thought about chocolate a few times while lost in that hell dimension, but he had almost forgotten how it tasted. Now, he suddenly remembered the exact texture of the thick chocolate on a Mars bar from his tuck box. “I want cake.”
“Soup first,” Angel held out another spoonful.
“But chocolate cake....” Wesley gazed up at him imploringly.
“Oh let him have the cake, Angel,” Gunn said at once. “I hate it when he looks like that.”
“Please, Angel....” Wesley could almost smell the icing on the cake; that thick American frosting that stuck to everything and which he’d always complained about so bitterly in the past when Cordelia let it get dangerously close to his books. Now he wanted to feel it melt on his tongue.
“Okay.” Angel sighed in defeat. “Enough with the eyes, Wes. You can have cake.”
“I’ll get the cake.” Buffy leapt to her feet with alacrity. “And I get to watch him eat it.”
Wesley gazed at her in confusion. “Is there some reason why you would want to…?”
“It’s the stray found in the gutter complex. All women have it,” Giles explained. “Willow wanted to bathe you and now Buffy wants to feed you. Tomorrow they’ll fight over who gets to buy you a new basket.”
“Yes,” Buffy agreed. “But I’ll win because Willow isn’t allowed to use witchcraft on us and I’m stronger than she is.”
As Buffy sped out of the room, taking the tray with her, Wesley felt somewhat exhausted. He slumped back on the pillows and looked up at Angel. “They’re quite…tiring, aren’t they?”
“The Sunnydale crowd?” Angel nodded. “Like watching squirrels do the cha-cha.”
“I remember never really understanding most of what they said.” Wesley laid his head back on the pillow. “It sounded like English but it never seemed to mean what it appeared to on the surface.”
“Well, Americans and teenagers,” Giles conceded with a shrug. “The English language was always going to be an inevitable casualty.”
“We heard that!” Chorused from downstairs.
Wesley closed his eyes and for a moment the jungle loomed, the slash of claws, the bite of the net, but when he opened them again he was still in Angel’s bed, not being dragged anywhere, the sheets cool and clean against his sore skin. “I’m just going to close my eyes....” he murmured.
As he drifted into sleep he heard Buffy say in a disappointed voice: “I wanted to feed him cake.”
“Tomorrow.” Someone who sounded strangely like Rupert Giles from Sunnydale said, “You can feed him cake tomorrow, Buffy.”
As he slipped back into his tangled dreams, Wesley wondered why Buffy would be fighting Ertash demons in a hell dimension instead of minding the Hellmouth in Sunnydale, and what cake had to do with anything.
***
Xander had to admit this place was kind of growing on him. The idea of having a whole hotel at one’s disposal was pretty cool, and he liked Gunn. The guy was scarily normal and seemed to understand very well the whole not-having-super-powers-when-everyone-around-you-did thing. Not that Giles had super powers, of course, except for remaining resolutely English in the face of all temptation to be otherwise, but even he could do the occasional magic trick. Today Lorne, Spike, and Illyria were all where Illyria was. Not that he was certain where that was, but it was perhaps just as well it wasn’t in the lobby, as the blue-rinsed demon apparently looked on Wesley as more or less her personal property and, at the moment, Buffy seemed to be doing the same thing. A cat fight between a slayer and a demon over a convalescent Watcher might well turn ugly.
He had to admit, too, that it was kind of fun to watch Buffy and Willow doing their ‘he followed us all the way home, can we keep him?’ thing with, of all people, stuffy pompous Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Except that Wesley was neither stuffy nor pompous these days; just a little confused and lost, and scarily thin.
It was probably just as well that Buffy had intervened, because Angel had been creepily possessive for nearly a week until Buffy had pretty much marched into that bedroom and insisted that Angel shared the taking care of Wesley duties and she wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. Angel had sulked a little but, as he got Wesley at night, he was letting the rest of them spend short supervised time periods with him during the day, pleasing Buffy and Willow, who could then tend to a healing Watcher in a smothering and equally creepy way that neither Giles nor Xander would have tolerated for five minutes.
Angel was healing fast, Wesley a great deal slower, but that just meant he had a longer convalescence and so more time for the women to fuss. Normally, Xander would have baulked at women fussing so much over someone who wasn’t him, but for once he had to admit that Wesley really seemed to need it, and more importantly he seemed totally unused to it. It had been a slow process building up his strength enough for him to be able to get out of bed, but from there he had progressed to a slow struggle down the stairs of the Hyperion to the lobby and the semblance of some normality. Xander liked to think they had all done their bit to try to help him get over his jumpiness. Wesley was still having nightmares about Angel being dead and dusted but although he and Angel were still - rather weirdly - sharing a bed, it was clear that nothing mattress-springy was going on between them. Wes was just kind of disorientated when he came out of a nightmare and Angel was kind of insanely clingy and protective twenty-four-seven. Wesley’s temperature was still inclined to spike back to fever levels, especially if he didn’t get enough rest, but he could keep down his meals much better, and although whenever his temperature went up he had to be reassured all over again that he was back in LA, for the most part he was fairly normal.
Being in bed had afforded him a little bit of protection from the excesses of the female fussing but it had only been a matter of time before they went to full strength mother hen mode, and now that he was convalescent, getting saner every day, and strong enough to be benevolently tyrannized, there was nothing to hold them back. Wesley seemed bewildered by Buffy’s attitude to him, giving her a deer in headlights look that unfortunately - as it made his eyes look even bigger in his thin face - made her crank up the protective fussing thing to Mach Ten.
Every time Buffy made Wesley a sandwich he looked at it as if he’d never seen one before in his life, turning it over cautiously on the plate as if he was expected to perform a ritual before tasting it.
“Um....”
“It’s food, Wesley,” Buffy said helpfully. “As in for eating. You put it in your mouth and chew on it until swallowing feels like the next logical step.”
“Has it occurred to you he might not actually be hungry?” Giles looked up from his book. He had taken over the office in the Hyperion and seemed to be enjoying reading his way through all of Wesley’s books, a pile of which he now had at the front desk. “It was only two hours ago that Willow spoon fed him something gooey and chocolatey with no apparent food value.”
“Devil’s Food Cake is all food value,” Xander assured the man. “It’s the ultimate food.”
As Buffy continued to coax Wesley into taking a bite out of the sandwich she’d made him, Giles added, “I’m not clear why Angel isn’t getting an equivalent amount of fussing.”
“It’s the blood.” Xander explained. “It isn’t interesting enough. You want to feed up Angel or Spike you get a choice of offering them blood or…blood. With Wesley there are an infinite variety of sticky foodstuffs to tempt him with.”
“This is a chick thing, right?” Gunn came to join them by the reception desk.
“Definitely,” Xander confirmed. “They almost came to blows yesterday about who got to cut his hair.”
“Who won?” Giles enquired.
“Buffy is cutting Angel’s and Willow is doing Wesley’s. They have this afternoon scheduled for it. Then they get to buy Wesley clothes.”
Wesley evidently heard that because he looked around in confusion. “I have clothes. Gunn, don’t I have clothes?”
“No jammies,” Buffy explained. “Convalescing people need jammies. Navy blues ones, preferably.”
“Or tartan.” Willow came into the room with a towel and a pair of scissors. “And there is the whole robe question.”
“This is ridiculous.” Giles marked the page in his book with a neatly folded kleenex. “Everyone knows that pyjamas should be striped.”
“But I don’t think I need....” Wesley noticed the scissors. “Is that for cutting my hair…? Because I used to go to a hairdresser on the corner of Wilshire & Linden Drive.”
“You can’t walk that far,” Willow reminded him. “And you don’t want to go on having the hippy hair, do you? I bet it tickles your ears.”
“These women are unbelievable,” Xander observed. “Someone really needs to buy them a puppy and soon.”
“I dunno. It’s kind of cute watching Wes get fussed over.” Gunn leant back against the reception desk and grinned. “He hasn’t had that since Cordelia....”
“I never really pictured Cordelia as the fussing type,” Giles admitted.
Gunn shrugged. “Well, you know. It was kind of tough-love fussing. ‘Eat something, Wesley, now, I mean it, because you looking like that is just going to make my hips look wide’, ‘Do you have any clothes that don’t make you look gay?’, ‘Okay, no more fighting big stinky clawed demons for Wesley until he learns not to bleed on my blouse afterwards. Is that clear?’”
“That’s my girl,” said Xander fondly.
“Those two fought like cat and dog. Drove me buggo.”
“They were all smoochy and ‘oh Wesley you have the sexiest accent’ when I knew them,” Xander observed.
“Yeah, well, they were well over that when I knew them and definitely into the brother-sister thing, only with added squabbling.”
“Sit back, Wesley,” Willow said in the kind of soothing voice that would personally have sent Xander scampering for cover. Wesley didn’t look too soothed either, but he had come back so spacey, starving, and used to doing what Angel told him that he hadn’t really regained the knack of rebellion yet. The women, of course, were exploiting that ruthlessly.
“Angel!” Buffy was using her best ‘brooking no argument’ tone and Xander wasn’t exactly surprised when the vampire sloped out of the office, looking trapped.
“Yes. What?”
“You know what. Now sit down next to Wesley.” She pointed to the chair that had been placed next to the ex-Watcher.
“I can pay for a haircut,” Angel protested.
“You can pay me in chocolate cake.” Buffy pointed at the chair. “Sit.”
Willow said, still-soothingly, “I’ll have you looking just the way you used to in no time, Wesley, I promise.”
“And she can actually make good on that,” Xander promised. “Because if she snips off part of your ear she can repair it with a superglue spell.”
“Don’t listen to Xander,” Willow reassured him. “There will be no snippage of ears. Or other body parts in fact.”
Willow dipped the comb she was holding into the bowl of warm water placed between her and Buffy, ran it through Wesley’s hair and then began snipping.
“Poor Wes,” Gunn sighed. “That was definitely a flinch.”
“Well, let’s face it, it would be difficult for Buffy and Willow to make those two look worse than they do now. Although it could be fun to see if they can manage it.” Xander passed Gunn a beer and they clashed the bottles together idly.
“You don’t mind your friends being ritually humiliated in the front lobby then?” Giles enquired.
Gunn shrugged. “I figure if your friends are going to be around for a while, my friends had better get used to it. Wes has never learned how to stand up to women - he was trained up by Cordelia that way. And, as Buffy’s a slayer and Angel’s a vampire, I figure he doesn’t do what she says he gets dusted.”
“So you were all aware of Angel’s history with Buffy?”
“Oh yeah.” Gunn took another sip of beer. “Cordy and Wes actually acted it out for us.”
The sudden cessation of snipping made Xander, Gunn and Giles look up. “Did you get a main artery already?” Xander enquired.
“‘Acted it out for us’?” Buffy echoed in a dangerously calm sort of voice. “Would you happen to remember any of it?”
“Wes?” Angel looked at him. “Want to share with the nice slayer?”
“Memory loss,” Wesley said hastily. He twisted his head round to give Willow a full on puppy dog eyes look that Xander had to admit had his own and Angel’s beaten hollow. “Don’t remember.”
Willow said hastily, “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, Buffy. And it was probably Cordelia’s idea anyway.”
Xander took another sip of beer. “Sucker.”
Gunn cleared his throat before saying melodramatically: “‘Oh, Buffy - I love you so much I almost forgot to brood…!’ Wasn’t that how it went, Wes?”
“Sorry. Still drawing a complete blank, I’m afraid. Thanks very much for the haircut, Willow. It’s awfully kind of you.”
“Yeah, keep sucking up to Willow, Watcher Guy,” Xander told him. “You’re going to need a witch to hide behind any minute now.”
Buffy said fiercely to Angel: “You let them make fun of…?”
“I wasn’t around. And when I walked in on them doing their little play, I told them to bite me. And I wouldn’t share with Cordelia even though she really wanted me to.”
“Then he demanded ice cream,” Gunn confirmed. “It was very manly.”
“You’re pathetic,” Buffy told Angel. She pointed her scissors at Wesley. “And you’re lucky I don’t take you for a slayer workout reminder course.”
Wesley gave Buffy a ‘poor scared little just back from a hell dimension me’ look that Xander suspected was only half real, but it worked. Buffy looked at Wesley for a moment and then sighed. “I’ll let you off just this once as I was pretty much a total bitch to you the whole time you were in Sunnydale. But, Willow, make sure you get his hair to do that spiky thing you said was so cute when you saw him last time.”
“You thought Wesley was cute when you saw him before?” Xander demanded in disbelief.
“That unshaven, insomniac, just-been-thrown-out-of-a-window look does it for you then, does it, Willow?” Gunn enquired.
“It was a spasm,” she insisted. “It passed.”
“Why do women like skinny guys anyway?” Xander looked down at his own not-skinny frame. “I mean, they’re skinny, so you’d think they’d want a contrast.”
“Skinny?” Buffy demanded frostily.
“Slender and perfectly formed was what I said, Buff,” Xander assured her hastily. “I don’t know where you’re getting ‘skinny’ from. Wes is skinny. You’re so not.”
“So, now you’re saying I’m fat?”
Xander darted Giles a ‘help me’ look but the man shrugged. “You dug yourself into that pit all by yourself. You get yourself out.”
“Buffy, you’re a vision of radiant loveliness,” Xander said hastily. “And I worship at your feet.”
She smiled triumphantly. “That’s better.”
Buffy concentrated on Angel’s hair for a moment, eyes narrowed as she assessed it. Xander thought it was downright disturbing that Buffy had evidently memorized Angel’s hair so completely that she could not only picture it in her mind she could actually recreate it. Because that was what she was doing. Turning it back from scary wild hair into even scarier sticking up fashionably hair. She even had the mousse there ready, he noticed.
“So, you actually liked Angel’s hair then, Buff?”
She seemed surprised by the question. “There are people who don’t?”
Angel looked impossibly smug and Xander rolled his eyes. “Love really is blind, isn’t it?”
Willow was looking anxious as she worked on Wesley’s hair. “Gunn, do you remember what Wesley’s hair was like before?”
“Short,” Gunn supplied helpfully.
She gave him a panicked look. “That’s it?”
“Brown?” Gunn offered.
“Do you need mousse?” Buffy asked.
“Wesley’s doesn’t need to stick up.”
“To stop it sticking up.”
Willow looked at Wesley’s face. “It would look kind of cute if it did.”
Buffy also gazed at him for a moment. “It would look so cute.”
Giles rolled his eyes. “Oh for goodness sake, you two. Could you leave the poor man the tattered remnants of some dignity?”
“Later we get to buy him clothes.” Buffy apparently had no shame - or mercy. “And to make ‘aww’ing noises in the store where complete strangers can hear us.”
Xander took a swig of beer before giving Wesley a sympathetic look. “I bet that hell dimension’s not looking quite so bad now, is it?”
“You can’t take Wesley out the way he looks right now,” Angel said with authority. “Wait until the bruises fade or people will assume you’re perverted sadists.”
Xander looked at Gunn. “Buffy and Willow, Bondage Mistresses of Pain. I kind of like it.”
“I’m kind of right there with you,” Gunn admitted. “Do you think they have handcuffs?”
“Buffy did used to keep Spike chained up in her basement. I always suspected she was a spanker too.”
Gunn was looking at Buffy with renewed interest. “She did. Wow. That’s.... Is it me or did it just get hot in here?”
“I still don’t understand why I need more clothes,” Wesley put in plaintively. “Did you burn my clothes when I was away? Because some of them were very expensive.”
“No, we kept them, Wes,” Gunn assured him. “But the girls don’t want to dress you up in Ralph Lauren polo shirts. They want you to wear jammies so they can ‘aww’ over you.”
“We don’t really need Wesley along to buy those do we?” Buffy turned to Willow triumphantly. “We just buy ones in the right size and then make him wear them. Same with the robe.”
“But I’m convalescent now,” Wesley insisted. “I’m wearing normal clothes.”
“But you shouldn’t be. Because you still have all your owies.”
Giles ran a hand through his hair. “What is it about an attractive man having injuries that makes women respond to him as if he’s two years old? It is the most inexplicable phenomenon.”
“You think Wesley’s attractive?” Xander put his head on one side to look at Wesley. “Don’t you think he’s kind of skinny?”
“The girls at Wolfram & Hart all thought he was a looker,” Spike offered, coming in, sipping a cup of blood. “They were always saying what a pity Wes was gay.”
Wesley looked at him in shock. “I’m not gay.”
“Well, they thought you were.”
“Why didn’t you tell them I wasn’t?”
“How was I supposed to know? Every time I saw you, you were with Angel, and with him being such a big nancy I assumed you were too.”
“Sitting right here,” Angel pointed out indignantly.
“The girls said that ‘poor Nina’ was wasting her time with Angel because everyone knew he and Mister Wyndam-Pryce were an item, and what a pity it was that Mister Wyndam-Pryce batted for the other team when he had such lovely dress sense. I thought they had inside information.”
Angel and Wesley exchanged an indignant look. “Well, they didn’t,” Angel said shortly. “And where’s Illyria?”
Spike waved a hand. “Lorne’s trying to get her to dig Aretha - I tried to tell him he was wasting his time but he’s convinced she’s got to have some soul-sister vibe in there somewhere.”
“They did sound very sure,” Gunn admitted apologetically. “The girls in the office. A couple of times I tried to correct them on the whole Wes being gay thing but they just laughed at me and said I didn’t know what I was talking about. They said the only people who didn’t know Wes was gay were the men who wanted to sleep with him, which was when I started worrying about that time when we were wrestling and how I maybe enjoyed it a little bit too much.... And then I decided not to think about any of those things ever again.”
Wesley rolled his eyes at him. “Good move, Charles. Could you try not talking about them either?”
Spike held up a hand. “See, I knew Wes was gay straight off, so that proves I’m not one of the ones who wants to sleep with him. I knew Angelus was too. The first time I met him I thought ‘what an unbelievable ponce’ - I remember it distinctly.”
“But you did have sex with Angelus,” Giles pointed out. “On numerous occasions. There are several eye witness accounts - from survivors of your various massacres - of your Bacchanalian revelries after you’d all sated yourselves on the blood of innocents.”
Spike blanched. “That’s invasion of privacy, that is. I could sue. And you can’t believe eyewitness accounts anyway. Everyone knows people are too traumatized to remember anything accurately after a vampire attack. Me and Dru, and Angelus and Darla, that’s what they would have seen - they were just confused and probably hysterical.”
Angel grimaced apologetically at Wesley. “I did some bad things in my time.”
“Well, yes.” Wesley nodded sagely. “Darla for one, and Spike, apparently, for another.”
Buffy was still looking between Gunn and Wesley with great interest, apparently oblivious to the rest of the conversation. “You wrestled? Proper sweaty wrestling? Was there oil?”
“No,” Wesley protested. “We were fully clothed, unoiled, and under the influence of a spell of Lorne’s which made us think we were seventeen.”
“So, you used to wrestle with guys a lot when you were seventeen?”
“No.” Wesley gave Gunn a reproachful look. “This conversation is entirely your fault.”
“It’s one of Buffy’s core fantasies,” Willow explained. “Angel and Spike wrestling naked. There’s usually oil. Sometimes mud. Once…jello. It’s another of those mental images that occasionally makes me question my lesbian credentials, but only for a moment.”
Angel and Spike looked at one another before both scowling at Buffy who showed no signs of shame at all.
“Pervert,” Xander told her loftily.
“You and Angel are actually sleeping together,” Giles pointed out to Wesley. “Is it really so surprising that people might jump to…certain conclusions?”
“We’re only sleeping together in a non-sexual way,” Angel retorted.
“There’s a non-sexual way to sleep together?” Gunn enquired.
Spike gazed across at Buffy. “Yes, there is. And it’s the best way sometimes. Comforting. Makes you feel like you matter as a person. Like you’re someone.”
Xander looked at him sideways. “Man, Spike, you’ve been out of the dating game for a while, haven’t you?”
“Isn’t it ironic that with all this talk about sex there is no way any of us are going to be getting any from any of the people here?” Willow observed.
“You had to say that out loud?” Xander demanded.
“I could have said something about Buffy indulging in a naughty threesome with Angel and Spike, but I didn’t. That would have been wrong.”
“Angelus was always looking for a threeway with Faith and Wes,” Gunn observed conversationally.
“No, he wasn’t,” Angel said quickly.
“Oh, my mistake. That ‘It’s never just about you and me, Faith, Wes’ll always be in the middle’ was about something else, was it?”
“He meant as a bargaining chip in hostage negotiations.”
“Funny how Angelus always got a hard-on during the kind of hostage negotiations that involved pulling Wes in really tight against his body....” Gunn murmured innocently.
“Was that what that was?” Wesley looked at Angel in surprise. “I really did think you had a gun in your pocket.”
“I knew it!” Gunn punched the air. “The real reason Angelus never killed Wesley confirmed.”
Angel narrowed his eyes. “You’re so close to being dead right now.”
Buffy and Willow exchanged a guilty look. “You too?” Buffy offered quietly.
Willow nodded. “‘Fraid so.”
“What?” Xander enquired.
Buffy grimaced. “It’s just…Angel, Wesley and Faith…not entirely lacking in hotness as a concept. Not that I would.... There would be no peeking, of course, because that would be wrong but as mental images go….”
“It was Angelus, Wesley and Faith,” Angel pointed out grimly. “So step one in that little ménage a trios would have been Angelus turning Faith into a vampire, and step two would have been him doing lots of very non consensual things to Wesley, probably before peeling his skin off slowly with a razor blade.”
“You’re really killing the mood,” Buffy told him. “Let me have my fantasies and you have yours. It’s just that mine would be…better.”
Giles looked at her in disbelief. “Are there any males in this room you don’t want to see naked, covered in oil and doing something sticky to another equally naked and oil-covered male?”
“Well, you, of course. That would be squicky on so many levels.”
Spike shrugged. “I dunno. Giles and Wes - gotta lot in common, haven’t they? They’re both kind of boring and tweedy and a bit mentally unstable and don’t get laid very often. That would give them some common ground. I could see them as a couple.”
“Me too,” Willow admitted. As both men glared at her she amended quickly. “Not for the reasons Spike said. Just because…you’re both Watchers and…English so you could talk about…cricket together and things, and it would be sweet.”
“If this conversation doesn’t end now I’m going to put out my other eye myself,” Xander exclaimed. “No more of the homo-enough-already. You girls are sick!”
Buffy said: “I have four words for you, Xander - Willow. Kennedy. Tongue. Stud.” She snipped at Angel’s hair triumphantly, put down the scissors, picked up the mousse and ran her fingers through his dark locks with what looked like professional aplomb. Xander had to admit that the end result was Angel with the same scary hair he’d always had. She whipped off the sheet around his shoulders and invited applause. When no one did she rolled her eyes impatiently. “Come on. It’s a masterpiece.”
“You made it look like it did before,” Spike pointed out. “No one here likes the way it looked before except for you and Angel.”
“I like it,” Wesley said hastily.
“You’re just scared of Buffy,” Spike said.
“Yes,” Wesley admitted. “But at least I’m man enough to admit it.”
“Wesley gets a cookie,” Buffy said smugly. “Because sometimes it’s smart to be scared. No cookie for Spike.”
Xander held up a hand. “If I say that you made it look just the way it used to look and don’t add that I always thought Angel’s hair made him look like a complete freak, do I get a cookie?”
Buffy considered the point for a moment. “No. Will, have you finished?”
“I’m not sure.” Willow examined Wesley’s hair anxiously. “Do you think I could use a little spell to tidy it up?”
“How many ears does he have left, Willow?” Xander enquired comfortingly. “That’s the main thing.”
“Gunn?” Willow gave the man a begging look. “Does this look right?”
“Looks short and brown to me, Willow. I think you got it.”
Buffy gave Wesley a cookie and a mirror, putting the first into his hand and holding the other in front of him. “It’s perfect. It’s all interestingly tousled in an ‘I’m too cool and rogue demon huntery to run a comb through it or shave’ kind of way.”
Willow beamed. “That’s just the look I was going for.”
“Well, you’ve got it.” Buffy held the mirror up for Wesley. “Didn’t Willow get it right, Wesley? And remember who supplies the cookies around here.”
Wesley darted a fearful glance at his reflection and then looked relieved. “Oh. That actually looks like me again. Thank you, Willow.” He felt his chin. “And I do shave. Just…not every day.”
Xander nodded sagely. “Probably saw Miami Vice at an impressionable age.”
“I told Wes and Gunn that they looked like Crocket and Tubbs and they just looked blank,” Spike complained.
“We didn’t know what you were talking about. We still don’t. Gunn was fighting vampires from the age of twelve and I was studying to be a Watcher. We didn’t get a lot of time for popular culture.”
Willow turned to Buffy. “He even sounds just like Giles. Do you think we should matchmake?”
“Willow….” Giles warned ominously. “Remember I still have a direct line to a very powerful coven of witches.”
“That sounds very Devil Rides Out, doesn’t it?” Spike observed to Angel. “I can just see Giles summoning the Goat of Mendes while witches cavort around naked.”
“It’s not that kind of a coven,” Giles said wearily.
Xander sighed. “That’s a pity because the image of witches cavorting around naked…” Catching Willow’s eye he amended hastily: “…is just so stereotypical and wrong. I never believed those engravings. And the woodcuts on pages 57, 296, and 531 of that book of Giles’, I never believed those either on any of my numerous viewings of them.”
Gunn raised an eyebrow. “Having the Sunnydale crew to visit really does up the pervert ratio, doesn’t it?”
“The IQ level is taking a bit of a beating though,” Angel murmured.
“Oh, so you don’t think Giles is smarter than Spike?” Buffy demanded.
“The waffle iron is smarter than Spike. That isn’t the point. You and Willow may have aced your SATs but all you’ve done since you got here is fuss over Wesley like the poor guy is a cocker spaniel.”
Buffy pouted. “It’s fun.”
“Not for him.”
“He’s not here to have fun. He’s here to be fussed over - whether he likes it or not. And anyone who gets between me and my fun gets no cookies and possibly a stake in the heart. Is that clear?”
Angel and Spike exchanged a worried look. “Very clear.”
“Couldn’t be clearer.” Spike gave Wesley an apologetic look. “Sorry, mate, you’re on your own.”
“But I’m better now. I’m well again. I’m....”
“Still owied up.”
Wesley looked at Buffy in disbelief. “You can’t possibly think that’s a verb?”
She folded her arms. “Let’s recap, shall we? Who in this room has Slayer strength and who has lots and lots of bruises?”
“Angel....” Wesley cast a begging look at the vampire who automatically took a step forward.
“Buffy, couldn’t you let him…?”
“No. He has to do as he’s told and be fussed over until he’s better. It will be character building for Wesley and fun for me and Willow.” She pointed at Wesley imperiously. “You need to go to bed now and rest, and Willow and I need to buy you jammies.”
Wesley looked up at the ceiling and sighed in resignation. “Does anyone know how to open a portal to a hell dimension?”
“You do need to rest,” Angel told him gently.
“Nonsense, I’m…” Wesley got to his feet and swayed, face paling to an even whiter shade. Buffy caught his arm at once. “Perfectly well,” he finished unconvincingly.
“Wes, Angel has more colour than you do and he doesn’t have a pulse,” Gunn pointed out.
Angel was already looping Wesley’s arm around his shoulders and supporting him with an arm around his waist, expression anxious. “Are you getting that sloshing sound in your ears again? Do you need glucose? Iron?”
“Lying down isn’t sounding like such a bad idea,” Wesley admitted faintly.
Angel helped him up the stairs while they all watched their slow progress. Xander shook his head and took another swig of beer. “It’s all fun and games until someone breaks a nail.”
“See, still convalescent,” Buffy said triumphantly. “The man needs jammies.”