(no subject)
Childish Things, Part Sixteen
As they walked wearily back into Buffy’s house, Xander’s jaw dropped as he took in Wesley’s appearance. “Man, you look like...”
Cordelia glared at him. “And the First Aid kit isn’t in my hands right now because…?”
Xander jumped and positively scurried to get it. Cordelia pointed after him and turned to Willow. “You see? They can be trained. A little firmness, that’s all it takes.”
Cordelia grabbed Wesley’s arm as he swayed, while Angel quickly took him by the shoulders and gently steered him into a kitchen chair. “Did you crack any ribs?” Angel asked.
Wesley darted a look at Cordelia. “No.”
“Pretend Cordy’s not here, Wes,” Angel said patiently.
“Man, he’s got a bad case of the deer in headlights.” Gunn bent down to gaze at him. “Wes? How bad are you hurt?”
“Just bruised.” But he was still looking at Cordelia warily.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh for goodness sake! You got beaten half to death by a cult of crazed vampires and you’re scared of me?”
“Actually...yes.”
“Oh.” She considered that for a moment and then preened. “That’s kind of cool. But silly. Wesley, I'm not angry. I just want to know how badly you’re hurt so we can fix it.”
“You sounded angry,” he said tentatively.
“I'm over it now,” she assured him. “Just lift up your shirt. Let us take a look.”
As he still warily did so, they all took one look at his multi coloured ribcage and breathed in sharply, even Angel, who didn’t need to.
“Wes, I told you not to take off alone.”
“English, what the hell were you thinking?”
“Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, you are totally grounded!”
Xander paused in the doorway. “Oh, great bedside manner, people. Harangue the beaten up guy. That’ll fix his cracked ribs, black eye, multiple bruising, split lip - What the hell happened to you, Wesley?”
“He saved a lot of people’s lives at the risk of his own,” Giles put in quietly. “That often comes at a price. When his associates stop beating him up for getting beaten up I'm sure they’ll remember to mention to him that they’re actually rather glad he’s still alive. And not a vampire, which he most certainly would have been if he hadn’t acted the way he did.”
Cordelia glared at Xander and snatched the First Aid kit from him. “Give me that.” She sloshed antiseptic onto a piece of cotton waste and dabbed it to Wesley’s cut cheekbone gently. “You’d tell me if you had double vision, right?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you’d tell me or yes you have it?”
“Yes, I’d tell you. No, I don’t have it.”
Angel was gently feeling his ribs. “There’s a lot of heat here, Wes. Did you hear anything crack?”
“Above my whimpers of pain, you mean? Not really.”
Gunn ran a sponge under the cold tap, squeezed it out and then held it to his black eye, putting Wesley’s hand over it to hold it. “You missing that wheelchair, English? Trying to get yourself one permanently?”
“It just felt like the right thing to do,” he protested weakly.
“It was,” Giles told him. “You did absolutely the right thing, Wesley. Your associates are just unreasonable, over-protective, and borderline paranoid.”
Wesley brightened in relief. “That explains so much.”
Cordelia very gently cleaned out a cut on his face and then said, “And in a few days Giles will still be here in Sunnydale and you’ll be home with us - your unreasonable, over-protective and borderline paranoid associates - in LA. Think about that, Wesley.”
Wesley slumped back in his chair in defeat. Cordelia continued to gently clean his wounds, surprising those who had known her back in Sunnydale with how expertly and carefully she was doing so. “So, Wesley…?” she said with deceptive kindness. “Next time you’re in that situation, what do you do?”
He looked up at Angel, Gunn and Cordelia and sighed. “Um…Well… I don’t actually know, Cordelia.”
She gazed into his face intently. “Whatever you damned well want, dumbass! You’re the boss, remember? Just bear in mind that if doing what seems best to you gets you beaten or killed, you’ll be hearing about it from me for the foreseeable future.”
Xander looked at Giles. “I don’t think I ever appreciated Buffy’s style of leadership enough. She is nothing like as scary as Cordelia.”
“But I have a role model now.” Buffy had found a bag of fries and was eating them ravenously. “I’ve studied Cordelia’s technique. Now, no one is safe.”
Dawn arrived in the kitchen at a run. “Is everyone okay?” Her gaze went first to Buffy then to Gunn before screeching to a halt on Wesley. “What happened?”
“We found the nest of vampires,” Giles explained. “Or rather Wesley did. He kept them busy until reinforcements arrived. They’re all dead now.”
“We kicked ass,” Buffy added in between another mouthful of fries. “Is there pizza?”
“There’s food?” Gunn looked up with interest.
Buffy offered him some of her fries while Cordelia continued to tend to Wesley with a gentle concern that entirely belied her bullying manner with him earlier. Angel was strapping up his ribs with the efficiency of someone who had strapped up his own many times in the past.
Buffy gratefully accepted the pizza box that Tara handed her, propping it open on the table between her and Gunn so they could share. “So, does Wesley get beaten up this often at home or is this unusual?”
Gunn considered the point in between mouthfuls of pizza. “Well, I’ve known the guy less than a year and he’s been in Intensive Care twice.”
“Wow,” Buffy glanced over at Wesley. “Careless.”
Gunn nodded at Giles. “So, is it a Watcher thing or is Wes a unique case?”
Buffy considered the point while still sharing her fries with Gunn. “Come to think of it, Giles does get knocked unconscious a lot. Really, a lot.”
Gunn shrugged. “Must be a Watcher thing.”
“Or an English thing.” Buffy held out the pizza box. “Could be that.”
“That fancy private school education.” Gunn gratefully took a piece of pizza. “Maybe getting beaten up a lot is part of the curriculum?”
“I imagine it’s pretty much mandatory.” Buffy chewed on her pizza ravenously. “What is it about staking vamps that gets one so hungry?”
“Not to mention horny,” Gunn nodded, then, noticing everyone looking at him, winced. “Did I just say that out loud?”
“You did.” Giles rose to his feet. “And thank you so much for sharing.”
“You’re leaving?” Wesley flashed Giles a desperate look. “Now? Leaving here?”
Giles looked at Angel and Cordelia. “I imagine that your friends don’t need me to remind them that in view of your numerous injuries you deserve to be treated with some kindness and sympathy.”
“But Cordelia doesn’t do kindness and…” Wesley hastily swallowed the end of his sentence. “You’ll come back tomorrow?”
“To say goodbye.” Giles nodded.
“They’re leaving?” Buffy looked between Angel and Gunn. “You’re leaving?”
“They have their own battles to fight, Buffy,” Giles said gently. “As do we.”
“But, it’s nice having them here,” Dawn said tentatively.
Giles sighed. “And where do you propose that they sleep? It’s too late for Tara and Willow to go back to their room at the college now so that’s one bedroom spoken for and you have something of a full house.”
Dawn opened her mouth, remembered Gunn snuggling up in her bed as a four year old, Cordelia sharing with Willow and Tara, and Wesley curled up against Angel’s chest, and closed it again. She exchanged a glance with Buffy. “Um…that could be a problem.”
Buffy looked across at Tara. “Tara...? You’re the sensible member of the family. What do we do?”
The witch said tentatively, “Couldn’t Dawn share with you, and Cordelia have Dawn’s bed? Gunn gets the couch and…” She looked at Wesley. “I don’t want to be melodramatic, but Wesley could be concussed so someone should stay with him anyway. Could Angel...?”
Angel nodded. “Yes, no problem.” Gunn sniggered and Angel glared at him. “What?”
“It’s just that the next time you sing, Lorne’s going to know you spent a week sharing a bed with Wesley.”
“And the next time you sing he’s going to know you spent a week sharing with a fourteen year old girl. Gee, seeing as how Lorne thinks Wesley is cute, and paedophiles are bottom feeding scum suckers, I wonder which of us he’ll think is the most pervy?”
Cordelia finished gently taping gauze over the cut on Wesley’s temple. “You are both losers of the first order. I spent the week sharing a bed with two lesbian witches so I get all the cool points in the world and you both suck and not even in an interesting gay way. End of discussion, I think.” She straightened Wesley’s collar. “There, now, and modelling this year’s ‘just mugged in an alley’ look is Mr Wyndam-Pryce.”
“Thank you.” Wesley felt the gauze taped to his cheekbone and temple cautiously and then ran a finger over the cut across the bridge of his nose. “It doesn’t look as bad as it feels, right?”
“That depends.” Cordelia shrugged.
"On what?"
"On whether or not it feels as if you just got hit with a wrecking ball."
“We’re going.” Xander jerked a thumb at the door. “Anya and I. Leaving for my place.”
“To have sex,” Anya supplied helpfully. “Which we like to do after we have been separated for some days. Sometimes many different times in the same night.”
Gunn gazed at her for a moment and then nodded. “O-kay.”
“Anya likes to share these things,” Willow said helpfully. “It’s a vengeance demon thing.”
“Ex-vengeance demon, Will.” Xander took Anya’s arm and led her away. “See you guys tomorrow.”
Everyone waved and made vague noises of farewell. Only after the front door had closed did Gunn say, “Even from an adult sized perspective, that is a scary chick.” He looked at Buffy. “Do you have beer?”
Giles glanced across at Willow. “Oh yes, that wouldn’t lead to complications at all.”
Willow nodded innocently. “Yes, indeed. Let’s get drunk with the guy we’re attracted to after we’ve both admitted we’re all post-battle horny. That would never lead to any kind of morning after embarrassment…”
“You could leave now,” Buffy told Giles sternly.
Cordelia frowned at Angel. “Wait. Lorne thinks Wesley is cute? Why didn’t I know this?”
Angel shrugged. “Angel Investigations according to Lorne: I'm sexy and cool, Gunn’s brave but stubborn, you’re a delectable hotty, and Wes is smart yet cute. You should pay attention.”
“Well, he got the delectable hotty part right, anyway.”
Buffy looked at Angel sideways. “You flirt with a red-horned empath demon?”
“I don’t flirt with Lorne - ”
Gunn snorted. “Yeah, you do.”
Wesley grimaced. “I think it could be regarded as flirting, Angel.”
Buffy looked at Willow. “It’s always the same with guys when they move to LA. West Hollywood all the way.”
“Yes, whereas changing your orientation in Sunnydale - that takes a little more class,” Willow nodded.
“He does flirt with Lorne, now you mention it.” Cordelia looked at Angel narrowly. “You start getting groiny with Wesley, I want a pay rise, because that would just be - disturbing.”
“Yeah, me too,” Gunn nodded.
Wesley looked up. “I would have thought the only person who deserved a pay rise under those circumstances would be me. What would you two be doing for the money?”
“No one is getting ‘groiny’…” Angel looked across at Buffy. “What do they mean you’re attracted to Gunn?”
Giles picked up his coat. “Well, good night all. Don’t let the bed bugs or any kind of slavering killer demon bite.”
Buffy darted a quick embarrassed look at Gunn. “They’re just - kidding around.”
“No, I was perfectly serious, I assure you,” Giles observed.
Buffy sprang to her feet and propelled him rapidly towards the door. “Good night, Giles.”
While Buffy and Gunn continued to consume the lion’s share of the food and to drink several bottles of beer that no one would own up to buying, Angel quietly got Wesley some painkillers while Cordelia made him a cup of tea. “It’s a comfort thing for him,” she explained to Willow.
“I know.” The witch nodded. “We have to make tea for Giles too. I think maybe their nannies used to give them tea cosies as comforters in their cribs. Or maybe just old tea bags to chew on when they were teething.” Cordelia didn’t fail to notice the way that, after about ten minutes of socializing with the rest of them, Willow slipped away to where Tara was waiting for her. They were kissing before they even started scurrying up the stairs. She guessed that having had her stuck in their bed for a week they were probably feeling a little in need of…well, having a bed to themselves for reasons other than sleeping, right now. She wondered how that worked. What exactly one did and who would…?
Cordelia gave her head a quick shake. “I need some sleep. Are there any studies on sleep deprivation making you gay?” She looked at Angel with his moussed hair and stylish coat and Wesley with his plaid and corduroy clothing. “Look who I'm talking to. Okay, guys, I'm out of here. Gunn, don’t do anything stupider than you have to. Buffy, thanks for the rescue and all but your taste in men - not getting any better. Wes, if you could go one day without someone beating you up, I think we’d all appreciate it. Angel, I have nothing to say to you except for a very coherent and well reasoned argument about how you making us into kids should mean we get more comp time but as Wesley is in charge of the agency now I guess I can’t use it. Night all.”
“Goodnight, Cordelia…” Wesley watched her go in confusion. “Do you think the visions could be affecting Cordelia’s sanity?”
“I think it would be hard to tell,” Angel admitted.
After drinking his tea and swallowing his painkillers, Wesley kept protesting that he was fine and perfectly able to walk upstairs to bed unaided until it came to standing up, whereupon every bruise in his back decided to lock hold of a muscle and twang all the way up his spine. “Ow…”
“Here you go.” Angel looped Wesley’s arm around his neck, put his arm around the man’s waist and supported him across the room. “We’re going to bed,” he told Gunn and Buffy, while still regarding them with suspicion.
“Okay.” Buffy took another piece of pizza.
“Where are you putting all that food?” Gunn demanded. “You got hollow legs or something?”
“I can eat you under the table any day,” she told him.
“Do you think you should be drinking all that beer?” Angel enquired.
Gunn and Buffy gave him a dismissive look and clinked their bottles together.
“He is such a killjoy,” Buffy observed.
“Always is,” Gunn agreed. “Just cause he can’t get laid he doesn’t think anyone else should have any fun either.”
“I'm standing right here,” Angel pointed out.
“Oh.” They both swivelled their heads round to look at him. “We thought you’d gone to bed,” Buffy explained. “With Wesley.” She giggled helplessly as Gunn also snorted in merriment. She made an effort to collect herself. “Sorry. It’s just...First a Slayer then a Watcher. You do realize the only next logical step would be Quentin Travers?”
“Wes and I are not...” Angel broke off. “Okay, fine. We are. That’s what we’re going to go and do right now. The next sound you hear will be our headboard banging.”
“It will?” Wesley looked at him in shock.
Angel hauled Wesley towards the stairs, muttering darkly under his breath about the kind of hangover he hoped they both had in the morning.
“It’s just that my back really hurts,” Wesley explained. “Not that I'm not flattered but...” As Angel looked at him, he grimaced. “Just - winding up Buffy and Gunn, right?”
“Yes. Because oddly enough, not being an evil soulless demon any more, I'm not actually in the habit of molesting my friends when they’re half-dead and doped up on painkillers.”
Wesley managed an apologetic smile. “Good to know for future reference. Or wait, do you mean that if I wasn’t half-dead and...”
“I mean your virtue is safe in my hands, Wes.” Angel grimaced. “Or rather not in my hands. Basically there will be no handling of any kind. Not the bad kind anyway. Or the good kind if you wanted to look at it that way - anyway - What was the question?”
Wesley gritted his teeth as they reached the top of the stairs. He hung onto the handrail. “Never mind.”
“So, you get that I won’t...?”
“No, I'm just in too much pain to care.” Wesley limped to the bedroom door and leant against it for a moment; wincing as he did so.
“We saved a lot of people today,” Angel reminded him.
Wesley groaned and rested his bruised forehead against the door. “I have a cousin - Roderick - nice fellow, didn’t become a Watcher, didn’t get coshed or tortured by his own Slayer, blown up, shot, or turned into a child. Instead he married a nice girl called Caroline whose father owns a good section of Sussex, and got down to the important business of breeding his two point four children. But I can comfort myself with the thought that I always got much better marks than him in school. Isn’t that special?”
“We like you,” Angel offered.
Wesley turned around carefully so he could rest his aching back against the door. “What?”
“Cordy and Gunn and me. We like you. Probably just as much as your cousin’s wife likes him. Just not in a breeding two point four children way. But, hey, you don’t have the in-laws problem.”
“True.” Wesley pressed a hand to his back. “Mostly because you ate your parents, Gunn’s were killed by vampires, and Cordelia’s father is in prison, of course.”
“But at least they’re not visiting every Sunday and forcing you to make small talk,” Angel held him up as he opened the bedroom door. “You’ve got to look on the bright side.”
He helped Wesley limp over to the bed where the Englishman collapsed, looking very woebegone. Angel found it odd to look at him now and still see in him the little boy he’d been only the day before. He gazed down at the pyjamas Lorne had bought for Child Wesley. They were still neatly folded on the bed from where Wesley had taken them off that morning. Wesley always folded his clothes. Angel had never realized that until now. He shook them out and hung the shirt on the back of any chair he could find, and folded everything else. Angel picked up the pyjamas now and looked at them.
“You’re not sorry?” Wesley asked tentatively. “That we’re adults again?”
“No, it’s just...” Angel put them down again. “It’s hard to believe how small you all were. Here, let me help you with that.” He pulled Wesley’s shoes and socks off for him and then helped him wriggle out of his corduroy pants; not without some embarrassed squirming from Wesley and some eye rolling from Angel. “Wes, I do know what a guy looks like under his clothes.”
“Yes, but my knowing that you know what I look like under my clothes doesn’t make it less embarrassing when you’re actually removing my clothes.” Wesley dug around in the bag Angel had packed for him and found a pair of sweatpants. “Can I have these?”
Angel shrugged. “Sure. Sleeping naked doesn’t bother me.”
Wesley blanched. “It’s going to bother me if we’re in the same bed.”
“Aren’t men who were brought up in dormitories supposed to be more laid back about seeing other guys naked?”
Wesley pulled on the sweat pants, hastily and not without some whimpering. “Just because I spent my formative years having to shower, dress, and sleep in the same room as a lot of other sweaty adolescent males doesn’t mean I enjoyed the experience.” He rummaged through the bag and found two other pairs of sweat pants. He gave Angel a narrow eyed look. “You knew they were there.”
Angel grinned at him and caught the pair Wesley threw him before picking up another pair, walking to the door and tossing them down the stairs for Gunn, calling to him as he did so. The grunt of reply from down below sounded as if Gunn had heard although whether or not he’d understood was debateable.
“He and Buffy wouldn’t really…” Wesley tried to wriggle out of his shirt. “They just wouldn’t, Angel. Don’t worry about it. Oh god… Just knock me out now, will you?”
Angel grimaced in sympathy. “Let me help.” He unbuttoned the shirt he had so carefully buttoned back up in the kitchen at Wesley’s insistence and then eased it off carefully. Angel’s strapping was supporting Wesley’s ribcage pretty well but there were still bruises clearly visible on his shoulders, back, and abdomen.
Wesley crawled across the bed, still making whimpering noises under his breath.
“The painkillers are going to kick in any minute,” Angel assured him. He picked up the child-sized robe Wesley had been wearing the night before and sighed.
“You do mind, don’t you?” Wesley said sadly.
“It’s not that.” Angel pulled off his own clothes with a complete lack of unselfconsciousness he only became aware of when Wesley gave him an aghast look. “Sorry.” He hastily pulled on the sweat pants and sat down on the bed next to Wesley. “It’s just...”
“What...?” Wesley looked at him sympathetically. He had tried very hard to be tougher with Angel since the vampire had come back to join them. He had taken his cue from Cordelia wherever possible, whose feelings had been the most hurt by Angel’s abandonment of them. But left to his own devices, he found it difficult not to slip back into their old relationship and that included a constant awareness on his part of how difficult a hand Angel had been dealt by fate and how well he usually shouldered the burden of it. Part of that burden, of course, being the fact that a man with as strong a parental instinct as Angel was never going to get to be a father.
Angel picked up the book that lay next to the bed. “We never got to finish this.”
Wesley glanced across at the closed bedroom door. “I know.”
Angel also darted a look that way. “This wasn’t written when I was a kid. And we only had a couple of chapters left. Do the Dearlys realize Pongo and the others are Dalmatians under the soot or not?”
“It’s been a while since I read it myself,” Wesley admitted. “I'm sure it ends happily, of course, but I wouldn’t mind just being sure.”
“So, would it matter if…?” Angel held up the book. “I mean I could just read it myself but I was enjoying…”
“Pretend I'm still eight.” Wesley tugged the pillow into position. “Everything hurts and I would want my Mummy right now if that wouldn’t involve having to be in England and seeing my father and having a truly horrible time, so being read to would be a perfect way to achieve infantile regression without the need for a plane ticket or magical amulets of any kind.” He grimaced and tried to press his spine back into alignment.
“Okay.” Angel smiled and climbed under the covers next to Wesley. The man, of course, immediately became all British and elbows jammed into his sides about the fact there was another male in the bed with him. Angel rolled his eyes and mentally counted to ten before saying patiently, “Wes, it’s a big bed. We’re not touching at any point.”
Wesley darted him an embarrassed look. “You do know that Cordy and Gunn are going to tease us about this for months?”
Angel shrugged. “Let them.”
“It’s just that... What with the Anne Rice novels and the general decadent ambience that hovers around the cult of vampirism people might...”
Angel shrugged again. “Adds mystery.”
“I don’t want to be mysterious,” Wesley protested. “I want not to be called a pansy assed British guy every time Gunn and Cordelia have too much to drink.”
“Wesley,” Angel said firmly. “Stop being such an uptight British guy and the pansy assed thing will take care of itself. And, anyway, now you’re in charge of Angel Investigations I'm the one who would look bad for sleeping with the boss. Now, do you want to know if the Dalmatians get let back into the house or not?”
Wesley went to protest and then evidently remembered the cliffhanger at which they had been forced to leave the book at the end of the last chapter. Sighing, he conceded: “I want to know if they get back into the house. And if any of the puppies are Perdita’s. And I still only make it a hundred with the ninety seven pups and Pongo, Missus, and Perdita.”
Angel turned to the place where they had left the story. He arranged the pillows for Wesley so the man was in a position that didn’t make him constantly whimper with pain - as much for his sake as Wesley’s as he was going to be listening to him doing all that night otherwise - and shoved a pillow behind his own shoulders so he could sit up comfortably. “Chapter Seventeen: ‘Who Are these Strange Black Dogs?’.”
“Is there a picture?” Wesley asked.
“Couple of pages on, you have to wait for it.” Angel slapped Wesley’s hand as he tried to pull the book around to look at it. “I’ll show it to you when we get there. Sit still and listen.”
“Just remember to show me the illustrations when you get to them.”
Angel rolled his eyes. “Stop whining and listen. Okay, Chapter Seventeen it is. ‘The Dearlys, the Nannies, and Perdita had spent a sad Christmas Eve. They had all been very kind to each other. Perdita had washed the humans so much that they all had chapped hands and had to use gallons of hand lotion. Fortunately, Perdita quite liked the taste of this...’”
There was heat. Charles Gunn could not deny that there was considerable heat between this Slayer chick and himself, even though she was Angel’s reward and all that; even though every time she and Angel looked at one another it was like wailing violins started playing and a breeze blew in a bunch of roses still attached to their thorns. But, even though Gunn and her didn’t have the violins or the rose petals, they had heat. It was that post-battle, you look damned good to me right now, kind of heat, but that didn’t make it something that didn’t have the power to burn both of them if they let it.
Them both having got drunk as skunks wasn’t really helping the situation either. They stumbled out into the hall together, ostensibly to listen to see if everything was okay upstairs, but their inebriated condition meant that it was necessary to hold onto one another to stay upright. Touching, after the fighting, and the looking, was a little like adding a lighted match to gasoline. Thinking of that made Gunn wince, because that was what Angel had done, not so long ago, to people who had got him pissed. He caught Buffy by the elbow when she stumbled and she gave a little inhalation of breath, evidently feeling the heat of his fingers through the thin silk of her blouse, and he couldn’t help seeing the way her nipples were erect through that thin silk, and how if he just bent his head and...
“Gunn! These are for you!”
A pair of dark blue sweat pants thudded dully onto the stairs and then slithered down into the hall. Gunn and Buffy sprang apart. Gunn managed some kind of response, not actually using human words, but a sound denoting acceptance or agreement or pants acknowledgement of some kind. He and Buffy looked at one another and she said breathlessly: “I just broke up with someone. He left me.”
“That sucks.” He gave her a sympathetic grimace. “No one in his right mind would leave you.”
“Angel left me.” She looked young when she said that. Not so much Slayer as lost little girl. It made him want to put his arms around her, but if he did that then her breasts would be touching his body and other parts of him would be touching her body and there would be general body contact and that was going to lead to lip contact if they weren’t very careful indeed.
“Proves it,” he returned. “Angel’s never been in his right mind.”
She looked up the stairs. “You don’t really think he and Wesley would...? They don’t usually, do they...?”
Gunn wondered how big a blow your self-confidence had to have taken when you looked like Buffy and were threatened by, of all people, Wesley. “Well, if they do, they’ve been keeping it damned quiet.”
She listened intently. “Not that quiet. The bed is sort of creaking.”
“No, I mean in LA. I mean...” He also listened. “It’s the wrong kind of creaking. That’s just getting comfortable creaking. Not...the other kind. That would be rhythmic.” He found he and Buffy were gazing into each other’s eyes again, she looking up at him and the breath from their mouths making a heat against the other’s lips. So he must be bending down to be this close to her. Must have his head bent the way you did when you were going to...
She started, looking up the stairs. “That could have been a rhythmic creak.”
Gunn closed his eyes and thought about rhythmic creaking in relation to Buffy. In that storage closet. Or on the couch. No. No. No. Angel’s chick. Angel’s chick. Angel’s chick. Angel being a potentially psychotic vampire lest anyone forgot, who might rip his head off and then say ‘Oops! My bad!’ afterwards. Damn, if Wes took the son of a bitch back into the fold after he’d done that Gunn’s ghost would not be happy with him. He needed to think about something ughy and fast so he stopped thinking about - erect nipples visible through thin silk blouse, erect for him, and that smell of half-dissolved perfume and still warm oddly fragrant sweat of woman after exertion, which meant their skin tasted slightly salt when you licked it... Wes and Angel. Wes and Angel. Wes and Angel. Doing rhythmic squelchy ughy stuff upstairs. If that wasn’t a passion killer, he didn’t know what was. Except damn - Angel had better not be. That would just be taking advantage of Wes’s skinny white inability to stand up to the guy; not to mention him probably being all confused and easy pickings from his boarding school education. And being British. That put him at a disadvantage in the straight stakes right from the off. And who could tell what a vampire was going to do next? One minute they were helping the helpless, the next minute they were locking lawyers into wine cellars with crazed vampire bitches from hell. And didn’t they have those mindwhammy abilities to make people invite them in when they didn’t even want to and maybe to get virgins to offer them their necks and stuff? Not that Wes was a virgin because of Virginia. And perhaps even people before Virginia. Please God let there have been women before Virginia because otherwise that was just too sad for words. But then there was that whole Vampire Lestat thing to worry about. Maybe Anne Rice had done her homework.
There was another bed creak from upstairs. Could just be a guy with a bad back trying to get comfortable. Could be Angel putting the moves on a doped up Wes. He and Buffy exchanged another glance.
“That undead son of a bitch had better not be...” Gunn exclaimed.
“Oh, come on,” Buffy hissed at him as they made their way a little unsteadily and very unstealthily up the stairs. “It would be Wesley giving Angel the big blue poor ickle me eyes if it did happen. Angel was always a sucker for a damsel in distress.”
“Wes is not a...”
“I know,” Buffy conceded with a sigh. “He’s very brave and manly and all the rest of it. But I don’t see why he had to get all…pretty as soon as he was in LA. Couldn’t he have become all rogue demon hunter guy while still looking like a dork?”
“Look, there is no way...” They were upstairs now and both shushed each other with exaggerated finger to lip gestures. Gunn couldn’t help noticing how plump and kissable Buffy’s lips looked when she smushed them up with her finger like that. He had to give himself a mental shake before getting back to the urgent issue of whether or not Wesley’s virtue was in danger. They tip toed along the hallway to the right bedroom and Gunn pressed his ear to the door, listened intently and then looked at Buffy in confusion.
“Are they asleep?” she whispered.
“Angel’s reading a kid’s book to Wes.” Gunn raised an eyebrow. “Man, those two are weird.”
“They’re not having sex then?” Buffy pressed.
Gunn looked at her as if he had never entertained the idea for a minute because how dumb would that make him? “You seriously jealous of Wesley because I got to tell you for a girl who looks like you that is so out there as to be - ” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the sky. “I can’t even see it any more it’s so out there. NASA couldn’t even track it with their great big telescopes in space it’s so not even slightly here any more.”
“No. Don’t be silly. Of course not.” Buffy listened at the door. “But do you really think Wesley’s straight? Because when he was in Sunnydale no one thought he was. I know I didn’t. And we never really did find out why it all went wrong for him and Cordelia because they were going great guns at the Prom and then suddenly it’s all ‘bye’ and ‘write to me from England’ so I wondered if maybe he’d realized he was… Was that a rhythmic creak? I thought that sounded rhythmic.”
“Remember what brought us down here in the first place? Wes is a kid substitute, remember? Not a…Slayer substitute. Anyway, didn’t you see the state of Wes’s ribcage? No way is that boy having sex for a month. Vampire mindwhammy or no vampire mindwhammy.” That actually made sense. If he’d though of that downstairs, they’d still be…downstairs. Together. Standing very close. Instead of here, outside Angel and Wesley’s bedroom, standing very close. Gunn listened again. “Oh, turns out Cruella DeVille’s furs got shredded. Serves her right if you ask me. That broad was a B-I-T-C-H.”
“Why are you spelling it?” Buffy hissed.
“I don’t want Dawnie to hear.”
“So, you and me trying to work out if Angel and Wesley are doing…squelchy stuff is okay for her to hear but that isn’t?”
Gunn pressed his ear to the door again. “Oh, the cat’s going to stay with the Dearlys too. That’s nice.”
“I love that movie.” Buffy sighed. “I should have watched it while you were all little kids and pretended I was just babysitting.”
Gunn got a sudden embarrassing flashback of being four years old and being tickled by Buffy. Going by the expression on her face she seemed to be getting the same mental image. Him sucking his thumb. Her sticking a finger through the gap in his pyjama jacket to tickle his tummy while making cooing noises at him and telling him he was the cutesie wutsiest ickle boy in the whole wide world. They exchanged a horrified glance and then both took a step away from one another.
“Well, goodnight then,” Buffy said breathlessly.
Gunn nodded. “You too.”
“I hope you find the couch comfortable.”
“I'm sure it will be fine. Night.”
“Night.”
She backed into her room, fumbling for the doorhandle as she did so, while he made his way downstairs, despondently picked up the sweat pants and trudged into the sitting room. Upstairs there was another slight creak from the room Angel and Wesley were sharing. Gunn kind of wished he was sharing with them too now. Certainly, the possibilities for sex would have been non-existent unless someone first sucked out his brains through a straw and brainwashed the big empty cavity that was left for a month. But that way at least he would have gotten a bedtime story.
Part Seventeen
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