(no subject)
As he and Angel showed him around the house, Giles was watching Wesley carefully, trying to marry up this thin serious little boy with the man who had so exasperated him on his previous stay in Sunnydale. Cordelia was shrieking with laughter in another room with Willow and Tara, who seemed to be playing dress up with her using Dawn’s old clothes. Gunn was giggling away on the sofa with Dawn over a cartoon; the giggles occasionally turning into gurgles and yells as she evidently tickled him, just because.
Giles looked at Angel. “Do you mind Dawn doing that to your colleague?”
Angel shrugged. “Everyone has. Us included. MiniGunn’s too cute not to tickle.”
Giles noticed that as they passed the stairs, or rather the cupboard beneath them, Wesley flinched and pressed closer to Angel.
“Wes,” said Angel gently. “You’re not really a kid, remember? You’re still you. This isn’t going to be a replay of your childhood.”
“I know,” said Wesley faintly, but he sounded less than convinced to Giles.
Giles frowned at him. “Would that be such a terrible thing, Wesley?”
Wesley pressed even closer to Angel who put a protective arm around his shoulders. “Once was enough,” Wesley whispered.
Angel sank down on the floor and took the little boy by the shoulders, turning him to face him. “Wes, it’s not the same. No one did a time spell. You’re you. You’re just temporarily…little.”
“I'm a child, Angel,” Wesley said quietly, his small face serious and intent. “Soon, I’ll probably forget what being an adult was like, and more importantly you’ll forget I was an adult too. It won’t be relevant any more anyway as that won’t be what I am any more. You’ll respond to me as if I were a child. The way people responded to me when I was a child…”
Angel’s eyes widened in comprehension and his fingers tightened on the boy’s shoulders. “That is not going to happen.”
“I’ll be the way I was.” Wesley hung his head.
“There was nothing wrong with the way you were.” Angel shook him gently. “Wes! Look at me.”
The boy did so, facing him squarely.
Angel reached up and cupped his face with his hand. “There was nothing wrong with the way you were,” Angel repeated gently. “Just with the people you were with.”
Wesley looked at the floor. “It’s natural to love your children, Angel. It just happens. Unless the child is fundamentally unlovable…”
“Or the father is fundamentally incapable of showing affection to any one or anything.” Angel rose to his feet, taking Wesley’s hand in his. “You’re tired and you’re hungry. Things will look better in the morning.”
“They’ll still all be taking place several feet above my head,” the boy said quietly.
“We come bearing food!” Xander erupted into the hall in a wave of spicy foodsmells, he and Buffy both weighed down with bags leaking sauce, and pizza boxes smelling deliciously of melted cheese.
“We’d better lay the table.” Wesley flashed Angel a guilty look. “We should have done it while they were out.”
“We don’t live here,” Angel shrugged. “Tara and Willow should have laid the table, so they’re bad witches but we’re in the clear.”
Wesley managed a faint smile that Giles was relieved to see and then Gunn was thundering into the hall, shouting “Food! Food!”
“Your friend certainly seems to have regressed quickly,” Giles observed.
“It may be because the spell hit him first,” Wesley explained.
“What regression?” Angel countered. “He sounds the same to me.”
Gunn ran up to Wesley and grinned at him, holding up his arms. “Hey, English. Pick me up.”
“You’re too heavy,” Wesley told him but picked him up anyway, grunting as he hauled the small boy up.
“Why are you making Wesley pick you up when every girl in the place is dying to give you a cuddle?” Angel enquired.
Gunn looked at Wesley fondly. “Because Wes is picking me up because of who I really am not because of what I look like now.”
Angel shrugged. “Told you he hadn’t regressed. But you’re going to put Wesley’s back out again.” Angel plucked Gunn from Wesley’s arms and put him on his hip. “Wes, want to see if you can find some cushions to put on the chairs for ShortGunn and MiniCordy?”
As Wesley obediently went off to do so, Giles realized that this really could be the future for these three. If they couldn’t find a way to reverse it then they were going to have to go through the whole process of growing up again.
“I'm taller than you,” Gunn pointed out to Angel.
“Not now you’re not. You’re shorter than everyone. Which is probably character building for you.”
“I can reach your hair from here.”
“Touch it and you die.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“I used to eat babies. Try me.”
Giles left Angel and Gunn wrangling and passed the room where Tara and Willow were still plaiting Cordelia’s hair with little shells wound into the braids, something he was quite sure that the adult Cordelia would never have allowed them to do. “Supper has arrived,” he told them and then went into the kitchen.
He somehow wasn’t surprised to see that Wesley was conscientiously arranging cutlery on the table and had already placed cushions onto two chairs in readiness. “I couldn’t find any napkins.” He looked at Giles a little fearfully, as if the man was going to scold him for that oversight.
Xander dumped another bag of food onto the table and opened a drawer for Wesley. “They’re in here.”
Giles saw the look Xander darted at Wesley as the boy collected the napkins and was surprised by the level of unhappiness in Xander’s eyes. It wasn’t as if he’d ever liked Wesley. In fact he’d probably liked him the least out of all of them. Xander plastered a smile onto his face with difficulty as Wesley turned around. “Do you want to sit with Gunn and Cordy, Wesley? Or do you want a break from them?”
“I’ll sit with them.” Wesley solemnly placed a napkin by each place setting. “It’s probably a bit strange for them to not be able to reach things. Especially Gunn.”
“Can you see okay without your glasses, Wesley?” Buffy asked gently in between putting food onto plates.
He looked at her in mild confusion, clearly wrong-footed by her being nice to him. “No. Everything’s blurry. But Angel said someone might be able to get me a pair that fit tomorrow.” He grunted in surprise as Gunn, unwisely released by Angel, charged into him and grabbed him around the waist, knocking him against the chair. Xander caught Wesley by the shoulders and held him up.
“Go, easy,” he told Gunn. “You’re going to knock him over.”
“You’re a really skinny kid, Wes,” Gunn observed.
“And you’re a really bratty one,” Angel pointed out.
“He has the cute factor,” Dawn explained. “He can get away with anything.”
“He may be surprised,” Angel told Gunn grimly.
Gunn immediately held up his arms to Wesley again. “Pick me up.”
“No.” Angel grabbed him before Wesley could and hauled him up quickly enough to make Gunn gasp and then giggle. He deposited Gunn on the chair with the cushion and looked at Wesley. “Do you want a break from the brat?”
Wesley smiled. “I owe the brat. I’ll sit with him.”
“Wes!” Cordelia charged into the room barefoot but now wearing what seemed to be a fancy dress costume of an angel, complete with lacy wings, and her shell-braided hair. “Look at me!” She did a perfect pirouette and Wesley, Angel, Buffy and Xander dutifully applauded.
Giles looked down his nose at Tara and Willow as they came into the room. “Someone’s been having fun.”
“Well, it’s years since Dawn was little enough to let us dress her up,” Willow pointed out.
“You look lovely,” Wesley told Cordelia quietly, indicating her chair. “I put you a cushion.”
“Great, now we look like we’re not just small, we also all have haemorrhoids.”
“Bet you can’t spell that now,” Gunn observed to her.
“Bet you never could.” She turned to Wesley. “I'm not sitting next to Gunn now he’s a little brat.”
As Gunn reached across to hit her, Wesley caught his arm and folded it carefully across his chest. “Don’t hit girls, Charles. You’ll only feel bad about it later. I’ll sit in between you. Try not to knock anything over.” He moved the cushion onto the next chair and took the one in between them.
“You’re the one who knocks things over,” Cordelia reminded him, depositing her tulle and winged body onto her chair with surprising grace.
“I know. And that can only get worse now I'm a child again.” Wesley looked as if he were carrying all the burdens of the world upon his shoulders.
Gunn seemed full of enthusiasm for the plate of food Buffy put down in front of him and reached for the knife and fork, dropping his napkin on the floor heedlessly. Angel sat on the other side of him while Tara grabbed the chair next to Cordelia a second before Willow got to it, giving her a sly smile of triumph. Wesley got down from his chair, picked up Gunn’s napkin and put it back on his lap. Gunn beamed at him and then held out his knife and fork. “Can you cut up my pizza for me?”
Wesley nodded, took the knife and fork from him and began to saw the pizza into bite-sized pieces.
“I want Wesley to cut up my pizza,” Cordelia pouted.
“Let me do his first, he’s smaller than us,” Wesley said gently.
Tara quietly asked Cordelia if she couldn’t cut her pizza up for her and after another pout from Cordelia she agreed. Buffy passed the water jug around and Giles tried to make small talk to cover the way they were all watching Wesley gamely sawing through Gunn’s pizza for him while his own cooled rapidly.
“I can do that for him, Wes,” Angel said.
“No, you can’t.” Gunn shook his head. “You don’t even eat food.”
“I'm eating food right now,” Angel pointed out.
“Angel’s a very good cook,” Wesley added in between cutting. “He makes the best eggs I’ve ever tasted. Is that small enough for you, Charles?”
“Yes.” Gunn took the knife and fork back from him. “Thank you.” He took one bite and then said, “Do you still have your scar?”
Wesley looked at him in surprise. “I don’t know.”
“Let me see.” Gunn reached across and pulled up Wesley’s shirt.
“Don’t.” Wesley grabbed his hand. “There are ladies present.”
“But you’re just a little kid now so no one cares.” Gunn pulled his hand free and yanked up the shirt to peer at Wesley’s abdomen with close attention. “Wow. It’s smaller but it’s still there.”
“Oh, let me see.” Cordelia craned her neck to look while Wesley gently but firmly pushed them away and pulled down his shirt.
“Can we please eat supper now?” he enquired. “I'm hungry.”
“Wesley’s right.” Angel glared at Gunn ominously. “Eat now. Irritate people later.”
“Who knew Gunn was such an annoying little brat?” Cordelia observed conversationally.
“Who knew you were such a spoilt princess?” Gunn countered. “Oh, that’s right - everyone.”
“Don’t fight,” said Wesley wearily, a moment before Angel could. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“Not having your glasses is giving you a headache,” Cordelia told him. “On a scale of one to ten how blurry am I to you right now?”
Wesley looked at her for a moment and then shrugged. “Very.”
“So, how much was it worth when you told me I looked lovely then?”
“Let Wesley eat, Cordy,” Xander said. “Christ knows he looks as if he could do with a square meal or twenty.” As everyone looked at Xander he winced apologetically at Wesley. “Sorry.”
Wesley shrugged resignedly. “I don’t mind. It did take me a little longer than the other boys at my school to fill out.”
Cordelia snorted. “Wes, you still haven’t filled out.”
“Yes, I have.”
“No, you haven’t.” Cordelia rolled her eyes. “You just learnt to wear more layers and clothes that are too big for you. That isn’t filling out. That’s covering up.”
Wesley sawed off a piece of pizza then said quietly, “I have muscles now.”
“You’re skin and bone,” she assured him. “And I still think we should be paying you in food instead of money that you just squander on books.”
Gunn had motored through his pizza in the time it had taken Wesley to saw off a piece of his own and carefully chew and swallow it and now turned to him again. “Will you cut up my taco?”
“No.” Angel firmly took the knife and fork from Gunn. “I’ll cut up your taco while Wesley eats. Stop being a brat.”
“I like being a brat,” Gunn explained. “And I didn’t get to be one when I was this size the first time around because I was the eldest. Now I'm the youngest and everyone has to look after me. It’s kind of cool.”
“And you’re going to get kind of smothered if you don’t knock it off,” Angel assured him.
“You and Wes are the ones who opened your stupid parcels and turned us into munchkins.”
Wesley winced guiltily. “Gunn has a point, Angel.”
“Gunn’s the manipulative bratspawn from Hell, Wesley. Ignore him.”
“And you have no idea where the amulet and orb came from?” Giles enquired.
Wesley finished chewing and swallowing before politely saying, “No idea at all. We didn’t recognize the handwriting.”
Xander said crossly to Giles, “Don’t ask Wesley questions when he’s eating.” He turned back to Wesley. “Is that pizza hot enough for you? I can put it in the microwave?”
Wesley looked surprised at the question. “It’s fine, thank you. Very nice.”
“You can eat with your fingers if you like, Wesley,” Buffy offered. “I am.”
Wesley looked even more surprised at the suggestion. “I don’t think I should in front of Gunn in case he stays little and has to grow up all over again.”
“Where did you learn to be the perfect older brother?” Cordelia demanded. “You’re like the dictionary definition of an only child.”
Wesley sighed and went back to cutting up his pizza while keeping his elbows into his sides. “From Angel.”
“I think of myself more as the father figure,” Angel admitted, finishing cutting up Gunn’s taco and giving him a warning look that told him he’d better not ask for anything else. “Of course, it was nicer when there were just the two kids around. Gunn so wasn’t planned.”
“I wasn’t planned either,” Dawn said to Gunn. “We often turn out best.”
“You’re going to give him a complex,” Wesley told Angel.
“I'll make him pay for my therapy,” Gunn assured Wesley. “Can I have a glass of water?”
Wesley looked at the heavy water jug and the breakable glasses and winced. “You’d better ask a grown up.”
“You’re a grown up.”
“My motor skills aren’t though.”
“I’ll do it.” Xander hastily got to his feet and picked up the water jug. “Just keep eating, Wesley.”
Xander poured water for everyone and placed the glasses where they could reach them, still watching Wesley out of the corner of his eye to see if he was eating. Giles could sympathize. Wesley was meticulous about cutting up his food with his knife and fork held just so, his elbows into his sides so there was less danger of him spilling anything, chewing everything very carefully with his mouth closed and then swallowing. He suspected that for Wesley meal times had always been formal occasions and eating with the fingers or talking with one’s mouth full had been strictly forbidden.
Before Xander had got all the way around the table with the water jug, Gunn had accidentally joggled his elbow into his own glass and knocked it over, causing a gushing of water onto Angel’s plate and accompanying shattering of glass.
In the moment of shocked silence, Wesley said hastily, “He didn’t do it on purpose, Angel. It was an accident.”
Angel had turned to Gunn with what definitely looked like annoyance on his face but at the sight of Wesley’s worried expression said, “It’s okay. Accidents happen.”
“My food’s wet!” Gunn’s wail didn’t sound manipulative to Giles, this time. More like a four year old shocked by a breakage and the possibility of a scolding narrowly averted. The way Gunn immediately climbed onto Wesley’s lap seemed to prove it. Wesley sighed and sat Gunn down more comfortably, then put the forkful of food he had been about to eat in front of Gunn’s mouth instead.
“It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.” He looked at Angel again. “Shall I mop it up?”
“I’ll do it.” Angel got to his feet. “You look after the brat.”
“My sleeve’s wet,” Gunn said mournfully, wringing it out.
“I can change his clothes!” Dawn leapt to her feet at the prospect. “Oh! He should have a bath!”
“I don’t think he’d like to be bathed by a girl,” Wesley said gently to Dawn. “No offence.”
“I don’t mind.” Gunn looked up mischievously. “I’ve been bathed by girls before.”
Wesley sighed. “But if you turn back into an adult, Dawn will still be fourteen and you’ll feel like a pervert.”
“No, I won’t,” Gunn insisted.
Dawn grinned delightedly and looked at Buffy. “Can I give Gunn a bath and read him a story?”
“Ask Angel,” she said.
Dawn gave Angel a begging look and the vampire looked up from his mopping to shrug. “Sure, knock yourself out. Or knock him out, which would probably a better idea.”
Gunn stuck his tongue out at Angel. “I knew there was a reason I always liked Wesley better than I like you.”
“Yes, he’s a pushover and I'm not.” Angel nodded to Dawn. “His stuff is in the suitcase in the bedroom next to yours. His are the cartoon animal pyjamas and the red toothbrush.”
As Dawn scooped up Gunn and whisked him away, making him giggle hysterically as she evidently tickled him all the way up the stairs, Wesley gave Angel a reproachful look. “I don’t think you’re taking your parental responsibilities very seriously where Gunn’s concerned.”
“He’s a brat!” Angel countered.
Wesley said quietly, “A brat whose parents had their throats ripped out by vampires when he was twelve and who had to stake his own sister last year, remember? Don’t you think he’s entitled to act up a little?”
Giles winced and looked at Angel for confirmation. The vampire sighed. “Okay, I’ll be endlessly patient. But I don’t see why he’s making you run around after him as well as me.”
Wesley bent back to his pizza. “He ran around after me enough when I was in a wheelchair and I couldn’t get up any stairs or in and out of a car without him carrying me.”
“I carried you too,” Angel said quietly. “And you were only in that wheelchair because you took a bullet that was meant for him.”
“You were shot?” Xander looked at Wesley in shock. The Wesley he had known had been such a physical coward and had made such a fuss about even the prospect of pain that he would have expected him to tell them about it the second he was over the threshold. But this Wesley, despite being twenty years younger than the other one in appearance, seemed to have undergone some significant period of growing up.
“By a zombie policeman. There was blood everywhere.” Cordelia pushed her plate away. “I don’t want to eat any more.”
Wesley murmured to her, “Buffy and Xander went out and got that food especially…”
“It’s okay,” Buffy said quickly. “No one has to eat if they don’t want to.”
“Except for Wesley, who does,” Xander insisted. As all the adults looked at him he rolled his eyes. “I'm sorry but the kid is thin.” He glared at Angel. “What do you pay your people in anyway, buttons?”
“I'm not in charge of the agency any more,” Angel shrugged. “Wesley is.”
Giles felt as if his world had slightly tipped off its normal axis. “You work for Wesley?”
“Yes. He’s the boss. He says where we go, and what we do when we get there. It usually involves Cordy having a vision of a smelly demon with attitude, Wesley identifying aforementioned demon through research and coming up with a strategy for tackling it and then me, Gunn and Wes going in there and hacking.” Angel shrugged. “What it may lack in subtlety it makes up for in simplicity.”
“Angel went all dark side and loonytune on us and fired us,” Cordelia explained helpfully. “So we had to set up by ourselves. We elected Wesley to be leader because we…” She looked at Wesley for a moment. “Why did we do that again?”
“I have no idea,” he returned equably. “Too much tequila?”
She held up a small finger. “Oh no, that’s right, it was because when I got a vision when were all totally junk-faced and incapable of walking a straight line, you were the one who took charge and saved the girl from being eaten by a demon.”
“Yes, by the very cunning ruse of letting it bite me until Gunn killed it.” Wesley took a sip of water. “Another great plan from the man who brought you the ‘let’s stop Gunn getting beaten up by the police by being shot by them’ strategy.”
“You delivered a rousing speech in that alley which I don’t actually remember right now but I know it made me climb up a very dirty drainpipe to a place where I knew there was a big scary demon with teeth and claws so it must have been pretty damned good.”
Wesley frowned. “I don’t think you can say ‘damned’ now you’re six. You probably have to say ‘dashed’ or ‘dratted’.”
“Oh, can I say ‘fuck’?”
Wesley grinned at her. “Almost certainly not, I’d say. Besides, I don’t think Willow knows words like that. Probably best for her not to learn them.”
“Hey!” Willow looked up. “I so do know words like that. I'm just not allowed to say them in front of Dawn. Or you now. So, stop saying them too.”
Tara whispered to Cordelia, “She doesn’t know words like that. Wesley was right.”
Cordelia beamed up at Tara, revealing a slightly goofier version of her adult thousand watt smile. On the adult Cordelia it had always been impressive but even Giles had to privately admit that on a six-year-old Cordelia it was quite simply adorable. Cordelia addressed the table, “Does anyone know if it’s still cool to be raised by a single sex couple or is being brought up by lesbians out of fashion again?”
“You want Willow and Tara to adopt you?” Angel demanded in a hurt voice.
Cordelia shrugged. “Look at this way, Angel. If Willow adopts me, I get Tara as a stepmom. If you adopt me, I get Darla. Who would you choose to be wrapping your presents on Christmas Eve?”
“I was hoping to keep the family together.” Angel shrugged. “But, hey, if you want to have to wear hippy clothes like Willow and spend your time breathing in scented candles and feeling the aura of crystals you go right ahead and heartlessly abandon me and your brothers.”
“I don’t wear ‘hippy clothes’,” Willow protested.
Cordelia looked at her. “Yes, you do. Angel has a point.”
“I’d miss you,” Wesley said. “You know how to stop Angel getting cranky.”
“Yeah, I rule at that. He’d always be yelling at you boys.”
“I would not yell at them,” Angel retorted. “Well, okay, I’d probably yell at Gunn, but I wouldn’t yell at Wesley.”
“Good, because I’d bite you if you did.” Cordelia flashed her smile at him again. “And I have really good teeth.”
“You can’t yell at Gunn,” Buffy said in horror. “He’s like the UberCute. He’s the essence of cuteness that other cute kids just aspire to reach.”
“You noticed that when he was breaking your glassware and drowning my food, did you?”
Buffy shrugged. “You have to admit he did it really cutely.”
“You’re going to get such a shock when he’s returned to normal,” Cordelia shook her head. “Because then he’s just six feet four of twenty-something demon killing male with a slim but buff body, boyish good looks and the kind of smile that makes strong women…” She broke off. “Okay, I'm not saying it would entirely be a disappointment for the non-lesbian contingent but it would still be a shock.”
Buffy looked worried. “You don’t think this spell could just wear off by itself, do you? Because Dawn is bathing him right now…”
“Well, that would certainly save you having to make any of those tedious birds and the bees explanations, Buffy,” Giles observed.
“I'm thinking we should keep him.” Buffy popped some pizza into her mouth. “It sounds to me like a win-win scenario. We either get the cutest kid on the planet to play with or a really hot guy to…whatever.”
“Pervert,” Xander told her.
“I was just thinking aloud.”
“No one is getting my kids,” Angel said firmly. “The family that slays together stays together. And even if we can’t reverse the spell, give it twenty years and I’ll still be this age and Wes and Gunn will be useful demon killers again. Of course, you’ll all be old and wrinkly…”
“Let’s pelt him with bread rolls?” Buffy suggested.
Wesley looked across at Giles for the first time, squaring his narrow shoulders as he did so. “Do you think you can reverse it, Mr. Giles?”
Giles decided to be honest. “I don’t know. I haven’t encountered a spell like it before and my initial research suggests that a successful age reversal spell is a somewhat rare occurrence, but I'm sure that if I have a few days to study the amulet and the orb I will be able to make some progress, and I can promise you that I won’t give up until I’ve found some kind of explanation for what happened to you.”
Wesley nodded. “Thank you. Perhaps, tomorrow, if someone could get me some glasses that fit, and if my brains haven’t entirely turned to mush, I could help you with the research?”
Giles thought about it and then inclined his head. “Thank you, Wesley. I’d appreciate the help.”
Part Four