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Darkness Visible, Part Eight

“Glad to hear that, English.” They both looked up to see Gunn standing in the doorway. “And are you going to get dressed any time soon or do I have to take you home in that pansy-assed robe of Angel’s?”

 

“I don’t think I have any clean…”

 

Gunn held up a bag of clothes and pointed in the direction of the bathroom. Wesley took them from him and then met the man’s eye briefly. “Thanks.”

 

Gunn waited until Wesley was out of earshot before saying conversationally: “Yes, I still want to stake you. No, I'm not going to. Yes, I know it was Angelus who did that stuff to Wes and not you. No, that doesn’t stop me wanting to stake you even though it probably should. Yes, we’ll be okay eventually. No, we’re not yet. Did I cover everything?”

 

Angel shrugged. “Pretty much. If you’d also mentioned my not being invited into the apartment you’re going to find for Wesley tomorrow I think that would have been everything.”

 

“That’s Wesley’s choice.” Gunn’s gaze didn’t flicker. “Sometimes Wesley makes bad choices. Part of being his friend is letting him do that. And you could hear everything Spike and I were discussing out there?”

 

“Vampire hearing, remember?”

 

Gunn looked a little uncomfortable. “So, all that stuff Spike said about how he always figured you and Wesley were…” He broke off. “Okay, as a vampire himself he really should have warned me you could hear that.”

 

“Or learn to keep his big fat mouth shut.” Angel continued to gaze levelly at Gunn. “And I may be an alpha male macho prick sometimes but I can assure you with my hand on the dried up walnut that used to be my heart that none of my fantasies have ever included forcing Wesley to have sex with me against his will. Okay? In fact my fantasies about Wesley – and I’ve had them while under the influence of starvation and soul-stealing monk magic so I know of what I speak – involve us both being friends and equals and him getting a square meal. Okay, and me saving him from spikes coming out of the walls in a kind of Indiana Jones adventure pastiche. But definitely no beating him, torturing him, or doing…stuff to him against his will.”

 

Gunn didn’t so much as blink. “You know that Red Dwarf episode where they visit the physical manifestation of Rimmer’s twisted psyche? Let’s never go to yours.”

 

“Hey, my hunger-induced hallucinations involved candlelight dinners for all, you included, so don’t knock my twisted psyche.”

 

“Angel, we’ve all met your twisted psyche, remember?”

 

“He’s not my psyche. He’s…”

 

“Locked up tight and never getting out again.” Wesley emerged from the bathroom, this time wearing corduroy pants and a smoke-blue jumper over a plain white t-shirt. His hair was almost dry and although there was nothing to be done about the bruises he did look a lot more like himself – especially as he frowned at Angel in characteristic mild reproach: “‘Indiana Jones adventure pastiche’?”

 

Angel shrugged. “I'm not going to be held accountable for my subconscious.”

 

“Yes, but spikes coming out of the walls? Which you rescued me from? I really don’t appreciate being the damsel in distress in your fantasies, Angel.”

 

Thinking of the times he had rescued Wesley in real-life, Angel would normally have pointed out that Wesley had been the damsel in distress of Angel Investigations more than once in reality as well as fantasy, but, that was definitely a no-go area today. “There were ribbons with bells. You touched one with your lantern… Never mind. It’s not important. It was about killing the Beast and…getting Cordelia back from my son so we could…you know… and bonding with Connor, and you doing some translating work which you did really well, although you did get a spike through your hand…”

 

“What’s with Wes and the phallic spikes in your fantasies, Angel?” Gunn demanded.

 

“They weren’t ‘phallic spikes’, they were ordinary spikes.”

 

“So, not long and pointy then?”

 

“The point of the fantasy wasn’t to do with Wesley and spikes, okay? It was to do with defeating the Beast and…”

 

“Fulfilling all your innermost desires by the sound of it.” Wesley looked thoughtful. “Which for some reason in between the bonding with your son, killing the evil lava monster, and finding perfect happiness with Cordelia, seems to also involve me and spikes.”

 

“You and my what?” Spike enquired from the doorway, lighting a cigarette.

 

Wesley contemplated the peroxide vampire for a moment. “Nothing, I sincerely hope.”

 

“Definitely not,” Angel insisted. “They were ordinary Saturday Morning Pictures spikes. They were there because it was an Indiana Jones pastiche and I evidently have a low budget sub-conscious that wouldn’t shell out for the big rolling ball thing.”

 

“There were big spikes and big balls?” Spike demanded. “Because right now I'm thinking you wouldn’t have to be Sigmund Freud to work out what that was all about…”

 

“No balls,” Angel said through gritted teeth. “Just spikes. The non-symbolic kind.”

 

“I'm not sure anything in a hallucinatory fantasy can be deemed ‘non-symbolic’, Angel,” Wesley said thoughtfully. “There was a sword as well, wasn’t there?”

 

Spike rolled his eyes. “Could he be any more obvious?”

 

“Did you get the part about the other fantasy where you were getting a really nice dinner?” Angel demanded. “And you were wearing great clothes too. Very stylish. And you were happy. We were all happy.”

 

“Was I there?” Spike put in.

 

Angel glowered at him. “No, you weren’t. Which would probably be one of the reasons why we were all happy.”

 

“Was Buffy?” Spike persisted.

 

“No.” Angel looked as if he would have liked to do some spiking of his own with a handy stake.

 

“But you were happy anyway?”

 

“I was with the people I thought of as my family.” He turned back to Wesley.  “You gave a toast to family. Everything was perfect. And it was what I wanted, more than anything, when I was under the sea.”

 

There was a pause before Wesley said gently, “That’s sweet, Angel. That I was around that dinner table in your hallucination, even after what happened with Connor.”

 

Angel sighed. “We never did get that meal, did we? With Cordelia and Connor and you and me and Gunn and Fred and Lorne. And now we never will.”

 

“No.” Wesley looked around at the others. “We never will. But we can order take out for those of us who are here. That Chinese place still delivers, doesn’t it? Do we have any money? Is Lorne upstairs?”

 

“I'm here.” Lorne entered the room cautiously, wincing in anticipation of what he had clearly expected to be some damaging aural activity. He seemed pleasantly surprised. “You guys really have cleared the air. Props to you.”

 

“Discussion of the Test Match,” Wesley explained. “That’s not much it can’t cure. And more proof, I think, of the overwhelming superiority of English sporting events over Americans playing with their oddly-shaped balls for the benefit of the advertising companies while wearing more protective covering than the Michelin Man.”

 

“Hey! You can’t diss…” Gunn looked around for support and then evidently realized he was the only American present. “Okay, how come I'm in Los Angeles and there are twice as many people from Merrie Olde England as there are from my home country? And how come the other people here aren’t exactly local boys either?”

 

“Think of it as a tribute to your open-mindedness, Charles.” Wesley held out the phone. “Or proof of your strange taste in friends. Either way, I can’t remember our usual order. Can you dial it in?”

 

“Fred always used to…” Gunn broke off and took the phone. “Sure.”

 

“I can sing the Star Spangled Banner if it will make you feel less of a stranger in your own land,” Lorne suggested kindly while Gunn dialled. “With no due modesty, I do sing it unfeasibly well.”

 

“He actually does.” Angel remembered.

 

Lorne looked around the low-ceilinged basement with distaste. “Of course, the acoustics here aren’t a patch on the Hyperion.” He glanced across at Wesley. “And no offence, crumpet, but I'm not offering to sing your national anthem – ever, because it is, let’s face it, a depressing miserable dirge with about as much life in it as – well, two fifths of our present company.”

 

Wesley looked as if he were going to protest and then conceded the point with a shrug. “I admit it’s not really a toe-tapping show stopper but I'm not sure how appropriate tunefulness is to something as solemn as a national anthem anyway.”

 

Gunn snorted. “You’re just trying to make yourself feel better about having such a dreary-ass anthem.”

 

Wesley turned to the other Englishman in the company for support. “Spike. Tell them.”

 

“Tell them what?” the vampire returned. “It is a depressing miserable dirge. Hate the bloody thing. And the same goes for Land of Hope and Sodding Glory. I’d rather we had ‘Greensleeves’.”

 

Wesley looked thoughtful. “It’s not very rousing though, is it? And do we want to be reminded of a previous monarch’s adultery every time we celebrate our national identity?”

 

“I just like the tune.”

 

“Do we want extra special fried rice?” Gunn enquired.

 

“Always.”

 

Wesley was sitting back down again, Angel noticed. The idea of Gunn taking him home and watching over him evidently abandoned in favour of them all staying here, in Angel’s basement at least until the Chinese food had been consumed. He thought that was a good sign, the longer they could hang out together and try to repair the shattered trust between them, the better, and certainly the several showers Wesley had taken had stopped him smelling like a victim, and the clothes Gunn had picked for him had stopped him looking quite so much like one. He wondered if Gunn had deliberately picked out the kind of clothes that Wesley would have been wearing the first few times he saw him to make them both feel better, or if he’d just grabbed the first thing he found. They were the kind of clothes, Angel remembered, with a pang of loss, that Cordelia had never liked Wesley wearing. The kind that made her shriek about what a waste it was to have the kind of figure clothes just wanted to hang on and then hang that on it instead. She would have approved of the designer shirts from his Wolfram & Hart days, no doubt, although not his working at Wolfram & Hart in the first place. There was so much he hadn’t had a chance to talk to her about; her visit had been so brief. Of course, her visit had been a miracle in itself. He was still confused about how it had actually been done but he assumed she had traded off to the Powers That Be the rest of the life force that would have kept her in a coma in one last glorious splash to come and visit him when he needed her the most. And how he had needed her. He still did, of course, but that wasn’t an option any more. Just as Wesley still needed Fred and was having to get up every day and live through the day without her all the same.

 

They were still discussing Special Fried Rice, he realized, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened today.

 

“…I'm asking, Wes, because you always get me to order it and we never finish our ordinary orders, never mind the extra rice, so it’s always left over at the end and we end up eating it with everything, including our breakfast cereal, for the next three days.”

 

Wesley shrugged. “Well then, it’s a tradition, so we definitely need to have it.”

 

Spike looked between them in disbelief. “You two eat breakfast cereal? Would that be Shreddies, Weetabix or the one Tony the Tiger says is G-r-r-reat?”

 

Gunn looked at him contemptuously. “Whichever one has the coolest plastic toy, of course.”

 

“Do you know they don’t have Marmite over here?” Wesley observed to Spike.

 

Gunn rolled his eyes. “Wes, give it up on the Marmite. No one really likes Marmite. English people just pretend they do to drive the rest of us nuts. It looks like shoe polish. It tastes like shoe polish. It probably is shoe polish. So, next time you want some at three in the morning, don’t call me up to tell me about it, just spread some damned shoe polish on your toast and pretend it’s Marmite.”

 

Wesley winced apologetically. “I get cravings.”

 

“Kippers.” Spike sat down on the edge of Angel’s bed. “I miss those. Smoked and salt and full of all those little bones you have to pick out, which takes so long the damned fish is cold by the time you do it. And chip butties. You can’t have one of those with those stupid little skinny fries they call chips over here.”

 

“Actually they call crisps ‘chips’ over here,” Wesley pointed out helpfully.

 

“Because they’re chips of potato,” Gunn returned defensively. “And therefore perfectly named.”

 

“But chips of potato could be soggy. You don’t cover the crisp part of the snack.”

 

“Well, you don’t cover the salt, fat and monosodium glutomate part either,” Gunn retorted. “But I don’t see you nitpicking over that.”

 

Angel noticed the phone still in Gunn’s hand. “Have you finished ordering yet?”

 

Gunn started and reapplied himself to the phone. “Sorry. Had to consult with my… Yes. Extra Special Fried Rice.”

 

He held out his free hand to Angel who wondered, not for the first time, why he had to supply the bottomless wallet part of this particular dysfunctional family. He dug out the credit card he’d been given when part of Wolfram & Hart. Wolfram & Hart didn’t pay the balance when it turned up any more, unfortunately, but he had managed to cling onto that part of his new identity as a person in society. The old Cordelia would have been so proud. Handing it over to Gunn, he said, “Just this once, but you have to take out the garbage and clean your room.”

 

Gunn’s look would have withered entire fields of corn at a hundred paces. Angel decided to save the long-suffering father jokes for a more appropriate occasion when the demon inside him hadn’t been beating or raping anyone in the past few hours. Still looking at Angel as if he were something he’d scraped off his shoe, Gunn gave them the credit card number over the phone.

 

“We’re going to need booze with this.” Spike stood up. “Can’t eat a lot of Chinese food and not have something alcoholic to wash it down.”

 

Wesley looked up hopefully. “A bottle of wine would be nice.”

 

“You can’t drink alcohol with the painkillers you’re on.” Gunn finished placing the order, put down the phone and held up the pill bottle. “No alcohol. See?”

 

Spike took the bottle from him and peered at it. “Well, that sucks. People in pain are the ones that need their alcohol.”

 

“You’re in pain?” Angel looked at Wesley anxiously. “You didn’t tell me… Of course you’re in pain...”

 

“It’s okay, Angel,” Wesley reassured him quickly. “These are really good painkillers and I don’t really need any wine anyway. A cup of tea would be fine.”

 

“Let me make that for you, kitten.” Lorne patted Wesley gingerly on the shoulder. “The others tend to be a little heavy handed with the teabags. Would you like it made in a teapot? I’ll warm it first and everything. And tomorrow you get cucumbers sandwiches with the crusts cut off.”

 

“Really?” Wesley brightened at the prospect. “I didn’t know they had those over here.”

 

“We do,” Gunn admitted. “We just keep it from you so you don’t eat embarrassingly wussy sandwiches in front of clients we’re trying to impress with our demon killing abilities.”

 

“They have Lady Grey tea too.” Spike told Wesley. “I’ve seen it. They’re keeping that from you too.”

 

As Wesley looked at Gunn in accusation the man rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, do you blame us? You want to drink a tea called ‘Lady Grey’ in front of paying clients? We let you have English Breakfast tea. I think that’s pretty much a major concession.”

 

“So, it’s okay for Angel to drink pig’s blood but it’s not okay for me to drink Twinings tea?”

 

Gunn shrugged. “Hey, pig’s blood may be icky but at least it’s not wimpy.”

 

Wesley’s eyes widened. “You can get Marmite over here, can’t you?”

 

“No,” Gunn said hastily. “Definitely not. Never.”

 

“You’ve seen it and you didn’t tell me!”

 

“Shoe polish, remember? Look, Wes, it’s for your own good. I don’t blame you for not knowing any better. You’re British. You’re not responsible for the extreme…badness of your national cuisine. But you’re in a country with good food now and we want to save you from yourself.”

 

“You eat Twinkies! They have no recognizable ingredients!”

 

“Let’s get that kettle on, shall we, cherubs?” Lorne hastily headed into the kitchen.

 

“I'm buying booze.” Spike pulled on his coat. “Lots of it.” He held out a hand to Angel who rolled his eyes and reached for his wallet again.

 

“Fine, I’ll just subsidize everyone’s liver damage, shall I?”

 

Spike shrugged. “Sounds like a plan to me.” As Angel put a twenty dollar bill into his hand he continued to gaze at him levelly. Groaning, Angel handed him another one. “You were always tight,” Spike observed. He turned to Wesley. “Want to get some fresh air?”

 

“He needs to rest,” Angel said.

 

“Definitely,” Gunn added.

 

“Last time I checked, Wes here was over twenty-one. He’s only got to walk to the motor. We’ll be driving the rest of the way; all two hundred yards of it. You up for it, mate?”

 

Wesley nodded. “Okay.”

 

With Gunn and Angel standing at the foot of the stairs looking anxious, Spike and Wesley made their way back to the neon-lit night world outside the office. “Thought you might want five minutes away from Psychotically Over-Protective Gunn and Guilt Trip of a Lifetime Angel.” Spike held open the car door for Wesley.

 

“Thanks.” Wesley looked up at him in surprised gratitude as he slid himself carefully into the passenger seat.

 

“I’ll do your seatbelt.” Spike closed the door, went around to the driver’s seat and leant across to strap Wesley in. “You probably want to minimize on the twisty bendy stuff for a while. So, if you’re moonlighting at Minerva’s on your evenings off you may want to give it a rest for a while.”

 

“Minerva’s?” Wesley frowned. “Oh, I remember. That’s the other demon brothel in LA.”

 

“Yeah, the one with the humans for the demons as opposed to Madame Dorian’s which has the demons for the humans.” Spike started the engine. “You’re not, are you?”

 

“What?”

 

“Moonlighting at Minerva’s?”

 

“No.” Wesley shrugged. “Well, only a little escort work.” As Spike gave him a look of shock, Wesley smiled slyly. “April Fool.”

 

“It’s August.” Spike pulled out into the traffic. “Remind me again which side of the road is it over here?”

 

“Hah hah, and I forget.”

 

“Just wanted to see how you’re really doing?”

 

Wesley picked at a loose thread on his sweater. “Okay.”

 

“Pretty impressive what you did.”

 

“Getting beaten up? Yes, I am pretty good at that. Years of practise. But there’s surprisingly little training required.”

 

“Getting up again afterwards. That’s the hard part. And then there’s the really hard part, which is the getting up again the next day and the next day and the…”

 

“I'm not planning to kill myself, Spike. Even if I wanted to, it wouldn’t be fair to Angel.”

 

Spike braked so hard that the car behind almost went into their rear bumper. There was a blare of an indignant horn and then the Chevy was pulling out past them. Spike said quietly, “Fuck Angel, Wes. This is about you.”

 

“It’s about both of us,” Wesley returned calmly. “We were both victims of Angelus.”

 

Spike made a rude gesture at someone else who was blaring his horn at him and then put the car back into drive. “You scare me, you really do. I don’t know if you have so many screws loose you’re actually unhinged or the sanest person I’ve ever met.”

 

“If you ever work it out let me know.”

 

Spike sighed. “All I'm saying is that if the open windows start looking too inviting…”

 

“I promise,” Wesley nodded. “I’ll tell someone.”

 

“You don’t strike me as a guy who’s any too good at asking for help.”

 

Wesley looked out of the window. “When I was growing up there was no point in asking for help. My father thought self-reliance was very important. He just didn’t think that it went hand in hand with being able to make decisions for yourself.”

 

Spike frowned. “So, how does that work…?”

 

“You do exactly as you’re told at all times without argument or you get sent to bed without supper or locked under the stairs but if you have a problem you have to solve it yourself. If you don’t solve it the way Father thinks is appropriate you get told how stupid you are and what bad judgement you have and you get sent to bed without supper or locked under the stairs.” Wesley shrugged. “Perhaps Doctor Spock wouldn’t strictly approve but as a system it did have a certain admirable simplicity.”

 

“I don’t remember my dad.” Spike pulled into the kerb in front of the liquor store. “He died when I was a baby. But my mum was nice. We were happy. Lived a nice quiet little life. She was dying – TB, but it was a slow death and she wasn’t really suffering. She liked my poetry. She wanted me to marry a nice girl before she died. Maybe have a couple of grandchildren for her to coo over. But the girl I loved didn’t want me. Not just because of the poetry. She thought I was a wimp. Drusilla wanted something of her own and I was the first thing she saw. There wasn’t a rigorous selection process or anything. She was just lonely and wanted a playmate and there I was…” He shrugged.

 

“Thank you,” Wesley said quietly. No one needed to say aloud how difficult it was for either one of them to share with another.

 

Not looking at him, Spike took the keys out of the ignition. “You’re welcome. I know I'm not part of the family…”

 

“You’re part of Angel’s family.”

 

“No.” Spike shook his head. “Angelus and William the Bloody shared a family with Darla and Drusilla. Angel and I – it’s all new for us. Just part of the whole bitch of being ensouled. You’re not who you were. Not any of the different people that you were. Not Liam. Not William. Not Angelus.”

 

“You still call yourself Spike.”

 

“I don’t feel like being William. Someone uses that name it has too much power. You’re a magic-dabbler. You know about the power of names.”

 

“No one ever called me ‘Wes’ until I came here. At first I thought it was a way of taking something away from me. Making me half of what I was. That’s how it sounded when Faith or Buffy said it. But when Angel said it…it felt like who I was.”

 

Spike sighed. “Look, I know we bitch and fight, Angel and I, but I recognize he’s trying to be a good guy. But it’s a constant struggle for him, and I know you know that. Probably better than any of us right now. It’s good you follow him. It’s good that you’re his anchor to humanity. I know he needs that. Although I’d argue that he needs me to remind him of what he used to be almost as much as he needs you and Gunn to remind him of what he’s fighting for. But I need to know that you know where the off ramp is?”

 

“I won’t follow him to hell, Spike,” Wesley said gently. There was a long pause before he inclined his head. “Well, not unless I was fairly confident of being able to bring us both back.”

 

Spike rolled his eyes. “Wes, mate. I’ve got a horrible feeling you may be the dictionary definition of a lost cause. Just remember that if you follow him into hell there’s a damned good chance that Gunn and I are going to follow along right behind you to get you back. And you can’t imagine how pissed we’re going to be with you once we’ve done it.” He got out of the car. “You’d better wait here.”

 

“I can walk,” Wesley protested.

 

“I know you can. And cast spells. And fight. Saw you do it. Not the point.” Spike pointed at the road. “I'm in a no parking zone. Need you here to stop me getting towed.”