elgrey: Artwork by Suzan Lovett (Fred)
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Spike’s Very Bad Day

 

Spike’s Very Bad Day, Part One

Spike had decided to sit in on the Monday morning How Do We Run This Big Evil Law Firm Anyway? meeting. Not that he was invited, but, as a vampire, one spent far too much of one’s unlife trying to wangle invitations, and he certainly wasn’t bothering with one now. Certainly, it had been easier in some ways when he could just walk through a wall, but even when it involved having to turn a doorhandle and take steps, it was still worth it for the look of irritation that washed over Angel’s face.

 

Personally, Spike thought he was doing everyone else a favour. Old Broodypants always got more self-conscious about his pontificating when Spike was there to point and jeer. In response to Spike’s arrival, Fred moved up on the couch to make room for him, Gunn shifted the big pile of legal papers that had been taking up more than his allotted share of space, Lorne paused briefly in his cellphone conversation to give him a nod of welcome, and Wesley sighed in a long-suffering manner but made no audible objection. Angel glowered horribly. Spike suspected he was still sensitive about having so recently been a puppet. Having recently been a puppet being enough to make anyone feel a bit of a tit, even when he didn’t have the whole brooding, king of pain persona to maintain.

 

“Go on…” Spike invited, popping the top off a can and beginning to swig. “You were talking about sacrificing children. Getting peckish, are we?”

 

Angel glowered, rolled his eyes and gave Wesley a ‘Do I have to put up with this?’ look that was rather entertaining. “We’re trying to stop the child sacrifice, Spike.”

 

“I’m still trying to find some wiggle room in our legally binding contract that permits him to perform the ritual here,” Gunn explained. “But Archduke Sebassis isn’t being very accommodating.”

 

Lorne said: “…I’m telling you, he can have as many reporters hexed as he likes, he still needs to stop banging underage Hsfita demons in his jacuzzi if he wants to be the next James Bond.” He switched off the cellphone and became aware of them all looking at him expectantly. “Actors. What can you do?”

 

Spike tried listening for a while, but realized that these meetings were actually pretty dull. Gunn kept offering legal reasons why they couldn’t stop the baby sacrifice the way Angel wanted to, and Wesley kept coming up with supernatural methods of preventing it that Fred insisted would have a negative effect on the laws of physics.

 

“…because if you take them out of that space-time continuum, even to sidestep Sebassis’ legal right to sacrifice them, you’re going to create ripples that could cause a tear in the fabric of this reality…”

 

“…so, we transport them, through a K’hlorak ritual, to a parallel dimension, thereby causing no rifts in the space time continuum, and collect them from there later, where, as temporary citizens of the Kalhamak realm, they must cease to become the property of Sebassis?”

 

“It could still cause a rent.”

 

Gunn looked up. “And subclause 174 stroke B-16 means that Sebassis owns any children he may have purchased for the purpose of sacrificing in any of the first seventeen dimensions that we’re capable of accessing through a K’hlorak ritual and if we use the eighteenth, where his legal ownership is a gray area, then we’re risking the soul of the spell-caster.”

 

Angel shook his head. “We can’t trade Wesley’s soul to an extra-dimensional demon mage, even to save some children, and there’s no one else in this building I trust to perform the ritual correctly.”

 

Wesley shrugged. “We could just open a portal and send Sebassis down it to a hell dimension inaccessible even by the Senior Partners, but I presume they would be against that?”

 

“It would contravene our contract in at least twelve different ways.” Gunn looked reluctant to have to admit it. “No one who is employed by the LA Branch of Wolfram & Hart, who would be considered sane by the Demonic Court of Nexus, can send Sebassis into a portal without us being legally responsible, and we’d be talking major retribution from the Senior Partners here. Sebassis is the kind of client we’re just not allowed to lose.”

 

Angel grimaced. “The Demonic Court of Nexus has a pretty broad definition of sanity.”

 

“I fear so, kittens.” Lorne looked extremely underwhelmed. “Jack the Ripper would probably be their poster child for good mental health.”

 

Fred stopped making calculations on her hand. “Would it be wrong to start looking around for allies who aren’t sane and don’t work for Wolfram & Hart but do understand extra-dimensional physics?”

 

Wesley looked up with interest. “The Watchers’ Council used to be full of them. Unfortunately that was before most of them were murdered by the First Evil. I could make some calls, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to get anyone here in time.”

 

Lorne sighed. “Angel, my cherub, we’re going to have to pay the Archduke a visit.”

 

Angel groaned and closed his eyes. “Not again. I have to be all…nice and tactful, and not kill him.”

 

Wesley shrugged. “Killing him would actually solve a lot of our problems.”

 

“Don’t set him off down that road again, cupcake,” Lorne said firmly. “I’ve only just got him house-trained around the clients.”

 

Gunn sighed, his knowledge as a lawyer and instincts as a fighter clearly pulling him in two different directions. “The only good news is that in the past Wolfram & Hart have always supplied the kids for the sacrifice, and as we’re not doing that this year, Sebassis may have his work cut out trying to find some in time. Especially as I got Rituals to sit on the paperwork telling him we wouldn’t be providing them until the last minute.”

 

Wesley glanced across at Gunn in approval. “How last minute?”

 

“He found out at midnight last night – the usual time when the children would have been delivered.”

 

“That will certainly have inconvenienced him, but I doubt it will cause the ritual to be cancelled.”

 

Gunn nodded. “I doubt it too, and the sacrifice is scheduled to happen in the next seven hours, Angel, so you’d better try something.

 

A lot of whining from Angel later, and he and Lorne were heading off to drive one of Angel’s shiny new cars to go and see the Archduke of Evil. Watching them go, Spike felt a bit of concern that they weren’t going to be able to pull this off – Angel having been off eating people when the tact and diplomacy classes were being held. That was one of the drawbacks to having a soul, that he couldn’t just go ‘Baby sacrifice – cool!’ as in the bad old days; he had to start worrying about stopping it, and thinking about how worried the mothers must be and how scared the babies would be, not knowing where they were, with none of the familiar sounds and scents around them, and there was all that stress and anxiety and the sense of the clock ticking, which he could really have done without this early in the morning.

 

Harmony bouncing in to say that there was a package for them at the front desk and they had to sign for it, didn’t do a lot to improve his mood.

 

Wesley said: “Which one of us needs to sign for it, Harmony?”

 

It was galling to notice that he used almost exactly the same long-suffering tone with Harmony – she of the two active braincells – as he used with Spike. There were times when Wesley was way too much like Giles for Spike not to want to swat him one.

 

“All of you.” Harmony noticed Spike there and gave him a little wave. “Well, not Spikey. The rest of you.”

 

“Aww, did Angel buy you all ‘Well done for not being corrupted yet’ presents?” Spike asked. “Supposing you’re not, which is debateable.”

 

“Harmony, why didn’t you bring this parcel with you?” Wesley asked her.

 

“Is it really big?” Fred asked eagerly. “And does it smell as if it has food in it? Because I know I just ate breakfast, but I’m hungry again.”

 

Harmon gave Wesley a ‘duh’ look: “Because if I brought it up here you’d just say ‘Thank you, Harmony’ and shut me out when you opened it, and I want to see what’s in it.”

 

“If it was something lethal, it would probably be aimed at Angel,” Gunn observed. “I don’t think we’ve got anything like as many clients pissed at us as he does.”

 

“I don’t really see the clients. I’m usually in the laboratory doing the research.” Fred jumped to her feet. “So, it could be a present from Angel.”

 

“I sincerely doubt it.” Wesley picked up his designer jacket and draped it tastefully over the shoulder of his designer shirt where it coordinated perfectly with his designer stubble.

 

“You know, if you stopped dressing like a male model, I might even stop calling you ‘Percy’,” Spike told him as he accompanied them to the lift. True, he hadn’t been invited, and, true, he had been categorically told that there was nothing in the mysterious parcel for him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t curious as well. “And if you stopped telling Angel how great he is all the time, I’d stop telling the girls in Transcription that you’re gay.”

 

Not looking at him, Wesley said conversationally: “And if you stopped doing both of those things, I’d stop telling everyone that, according to all the records I’ve been able to access, when you and Angelus used to have sex, he was always the one on top.”

 

Spike was grateful that vampires were biologically incapable of blushing bright crimson with rage and shame. There were some memories he had been blocking very successfully – until now. He held up a fist. “I’m not a ghost any more, you know, sunshine. And I don’t have a chip in my head either. I could punch your head in for that.”

 

Wesley gave him a brief, superior smile. “None of which alters the fact that what I said is true.”

 

“Well, if we’re talking about being a natural sub here, mate, I think you’ve got everyone beat.”

 

“No, archival evidence from the Watchers’ Council would suggest that you are still way ahead on points.”

 

“Right! Next time you’re drunk on suggestion, I’m so doin’ you. Then we’ll see who’s the…subbiest!”

 

Gunn and Fred exchanged a glance. “Yeah, cuz having sex with Wes will prove how straight you are for sure, Spike,” Gunn murmured.

 

“Look, the point is, that maybe with Angelus it was…like that, but it wasn’t with any of the other guys I’ve done, and it wouldn’t be with you, Percy, I can tell you that for nothing. Just ask any of…” Which was Spike realized that the point where he should have shut up was before he had opened his mouth.

 

Wesley said, annoyingly: “I see, so my never having had sex with any men, and you having had sex with lots of them, proves categorically, in your mind, that this makes me gayer than you? Well, that’s good to know.”

 

Spike stomped after them, sulkily, realizing, not for the first time, that sometimes Angel having a bad day didn’t automatically mean that he had a good one; which sucked. He couldn’t even wish that the parcel would vaporize Wesley, Gunn and Fred – which would have been a little bit satisfying – because he actually liked them rather a lot and still owed them big time from all the running around they had done trying to save him from Pavayne; yet another drawback to having a soul.

 

Harmony ran ahead to the desk to pick up the parcel and hold it out. “You have to open it here, so I can see what’s inside. It’s been tested for evil energy readings. Oh, and dibs on it if it’s a unicorn.”

 

“If someone is sending Wes and I unicorns, I’m going to be having words with the girls in Transcription,” Gunn assured her.

 

Harmony looked surprised. “I didn’t know you knew about those rumours. I keep telling everyone that Wesley can’t be sleeping with you or Angel because he has a thing for Fred, but they just laugh at me.”

 

Spike brightened up as he realized it was Wesley’s turn to look mortified and squirmy. He could turn very eel-like when embarrassed, and his body was now torn between wriggling away from Fred and towards her to offer her some kind of reassurance. He said: “Fred, I… That is… I’m sure they were just….”

 

What made it funnier was that Fred was clearly going through a phase of thinking that Wesley was sexy as hell – Spike suspected that too many blows to the girl’s head over the years of working for Angel would account for that – but Wesley was too dimwitted when it came to women to notice the way her pupils kept dilating with lust for him every time they were left in close proximity. So, now she was looking at him with dawning hope and goo goo eyes of crushiness, but he was too mortified to notice. Throw in some popcorn, and Spike could spend the next hour just watching those two completely failing to read each other’s signals right, and have a whale of a time. Taking pity on Wesley – and completely ruining Spike’s fun, the wanker – Gunn thrust the parcel at him. “Here, Wes, you open it.”

 

Wesley took the parcel and then came over all chivalrous and poncy and offered it to Fred. “Would you care to…?”

 

“Yes!” She pounced on it eagerly, tugging at the brown paper eagerly and gabbling on about there being a three point something or other percent likelihood of it being food, and a sixty point something or other percent likelihood of it being mystical, and a seven point something or other percent likelihood of it being intended to blow up the building or suck it into an inter-dimensional void. Spike wondered if he should take it as a compliment that she was still excited by mysterious parcels, given that he was what had popped out of the last one. He decided that he might as well, as no one else seemed in a hurry to pay him any.

 

Edging a little closer, he saw that the brown paper was wrapped around a small wooden box, which Fred opened while Gunn and Wesley peered curiously over her shoulder. Spike craned his neck, and saw a pale froth of tissue paper into which Fred delved eagerly, only to snag something gold and shiny and…

 

“Don’t touch that!” Spike warned, experience having taught him that gold, shiny things were the most treacherous and deadly.

 

But they were already clustering around it, gazing at the inscriptions on its shiny inviting surface. “Equations!” Fred said in excitement.

 

“Demon law,” said Gunn.

 

“A spell,” said Wesley.

 

As they all reached for it at the same time, Spike was still shouting: “Don’t touch the bloody thing!”

 

The flash of light came a millisecond later and Spike stopped in his tracks. “Bollocks,” he said with feeling.

 

The only consolation was that their clothes had at least shrunk with them.

 

***

 

The only people in the cavernous foyer of Wolfram & Hart who seemed utterly unfazed by Wesley, Gunn, and Fred being turned into small children in the blink of an eye were…Wesley, Gunn, and Fred. They all looked at each other in their new four year old forms, looked down at themselves, and then giggled, Fred cramming tiny fists against her mouth to try to stem her semi-hysterical laughter. Wesley was gazing down at his newly miniaturized designer shirt in surprise and pleasure, while Gunn reached out and prodded Wesley in the stomach to see if he was real. On discovering that he was, Gunn giggled again – not a sound that Spike had ever expected to come out of his mouth.

 

“All right, no one panic,” he said, panicking. “This is some mojo from the amulet and we can reverse it by getting…” Wesley to do a spell. Fred to do something scientific. Gunn to talk to the thing in the White Room. He looked back at the giggling little people in front of him. Or not. The amulet glinted up at him from the ground where the three children had dropped it in the shock of their transformation. Incomprehensible equations shimmered across it. The kind of equations that Fred would be able to understand effortlessly. Okay, she was a tiny person now, but perhaps she was mentally still the same….

 

“Candy!”

 

Spike found that Fred was tugging urgently at his coat with one hand and holding out the other in the manner of a hungry fledgling seeking worms. “Candy, please?”

 

Spike darted a panicked look at Harmony. “You got any sweets?”

 

“I’m very hungry,” Fred said plaintively. She was undoubtedly the most sickeningly adorable child Spike had ever seen in his long and chequered life; all huge brown eyes and a flow of soft brown, wavy hair. She also had perfect tiny little hands which were now clutching his coat in a way that was almost too cute to bear. She was the kind of child it was almost impossible to look at and not say ‘awww’ about, even if one was a vampire. Luckily for Spike, he was a particularly cool vampire with heroic self-control, who –

 

“Awww.” He clapped a hand to his mouth as a doting coo, more appropriate to an adult Fred beholding a puppet Angel, escaped from his larynx. “I didn’t just say that,” he assured Harmony quickly.

 

“They’re kind of icky, aren’t they?” Harmony said in wonder.

 

Spike felt something fiercely protective flare in his breast. Oh, hells bells, now he had to come over all paternal. He tried to tread it down. Without success. “They’re children, that’s all. There’s nothing ‘icky’ about them.”

 

“But they’re wearing the same clothes. Gunn has a little lawyer suit on. And Fred still has her little white coat. I think they’re scary little munchkins and someone should stomp on them.”

 

Gunn and Fred exchanged looks and she began to pull off her white coat, while he yanked at his tie. Wesley watched them out of eyes that seemed too big for his face, his hair still carefully tousled although he had now, of course, lost all his designer stubble. Usually, his essential runtiness was concealed by good tailoring, but as a child he was a scrawny little stick with big blue eyes, which he now rubbed with a teeny bony fist. Embarrassingly, Spike wanted to pick him up and cuddle him. Gunn looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, with a sweet face in which big brown eyes could not have looked more innocent, and, having pulled off his jacket and tie, was now sucking his thumb. As Fred tossed away her white coat and gazed up at him, her hair tumbling around the shoulders of a silly little frock that was so sickeningly adorable it made him want to upchuck, Spike wondered if it was possibly to die from toxic cuteness.

 

Trying to keep his urge to dote and coo under control, Spike crouched down level with them. “Listen to me, you three, everything’s going to be okay so I don’t want you to worry –”

 

Fred pointed straight past him to the front desk. “Juice!”

 

With the speed of circus performers, they rushed towards the desk upon which Spike could see that Harmony had a cooling beaker of blood. While he was still telling them not to worry about anything because they would soon have this sorted out, Fred had kicked off her teeny weeny high heels and Gunn and Wesley had laced their child-sized hands together to give Fred a step up. Not the heaviest of people, even as an adult, Fred apparently now weighed about as much as a cupcake, as even their runty little child-sized bodies proved capable of hefting her up to desk level with very little problem. Before Spike could even think about reacting, she had snatched up the cup of blood, taken a big gulp, and then spat it out all over an envelope with ‘Hand-Signed Documents Enclosed – Very Urgent & Important – Any Damage Will Be Punished By Ritual Dismemberment’ printed in big red letters on the front.

 

“Ugh!” Fred spat out the last few vestiges and dropped the mug on another pile of papers, where it spilled freely. “Yeuchy!”

 

Spike realized that his superior vampire reflexes should be useful to him, but he seemed somehow welded to the spot. Harmony wailed in horror. “That was for the Rituals & Incantations Department! Oh, you nasty little creatures!”

 

“They’re Fred, Gunn, and Wes, Harm,” Spike pointed out.

 

“Not any more. Now they’re horrible little gremlins. Who do you think is going to get ritually dismembered if this isn’t delivered?”

 

“Go and mop the blood off it, I’ll take care of them.” Spike reached out to grab Fred’s hand but she skipped out of the way as lightly as thistledown.

 

Trying to sound calm and soothing, Spike followed her, saying: “Come on, Fred, take my hand, and we can all go up to Angel’s office.”

 

Fred said: “Let’s play Hide and Seek!”

 

Gunn shouted: “Cool!”

 

Wesley said: “Super!”

 

And they all ran away.

 

In completely different directions.

 

Spike started after Fred, turned to go after Gunn, spun around trying to keep an eye on the direction Wesley was taking, and when he twisted round to look for Fred found that she was now out of sight and he was quite dizzy. Seeing other Wolfram & Hart employees standing around looking gormless, he said in exasperation: “Well, catch them, can’t you?”

 

On another day, he might have enjoyed the sight of a bunch of evil lawyers running around like headless chickens, while small children skipped out of their reach, ran through their legs, and darted under tables, forcing men in thousand dollar suits to crawl gingerly after them. Today his pleasure was spoiled by his concern for the three children in question and the adults they had once been, and by the thought of what a hideously protracted and sickeningly painful death Angel would inflict on him if any harm came to these three.

 

A lawyer who had been reaching under a table, yelped loudly and snatched his hand away. Furiously, he said: “She bit me!” He grabbed under the table and yanked Fred out by her hair. She screamed in shock and pain, causing Gunn and Wesley to scramble out from where they had been hiding and run straight at the lawyer holding her. Wesley kicked the man smartly in the shin, making him yelp again, and lash out at Wesley with his free hand, catching him a glancing blow that knocked him down. Gunn promptly jumped up as high as he could, grabbed a letter opener from the table top and, as he landed, stabbed it down hard into the man’s foot. The lawyer’s shriek of distress was music to a now furious Spike’s ears. The lawyer let go of Fred, who sat down on the floor and cried piteously. Wesley immediately scrambled over to her and sat down next to her, tentatively putting an arm around her and then petting her with more confidence when she immediately turned into him and cried on his shoulder.

 

As the lawyer snatched the letter opener out of his foot and went after Gunn with it, limping painfully and breathing terrible threats, Spike picked him up by the collar, turning into game face as he snarled horribly: “Touch any one of them again and I’ll rip out your intestines and make you eat them.” He threw the man hard into the wall, and hoped that snapping sound he heard, amidst the falling plaster, was his neck.

 

Slipping back out of game face, he crouched down next to the crying Fred and comforting Wesley and said in his best talking-to-Xander voice: “If you come with me, you can have chocolate.”

 

Fred stopped crying in a single breath and gazed up at him out of huge, teary brown eyes, but her expression was hopeful: “Chocklit?”

 

“Lots of chocolate,” Spike told her invitingly. “Sweeties too. And juice.”

 

“Sweeties!” Fred’s face lit up in pleasure and the last few tear drops stayed twinkling on her ridiculously long lashes.

 

Spike picked her up quickly, judging that Wesley and Gunn would stick with her out pint-sized chivalry, although he managed to catch hold of Wesley’s hand as well, just to be sure. Gunn hung back a little warily and Spike suspected he would have liked another letter opener to hand, just in case.

 

Fred had her arms around Spike’s neck and her legs wrapped around his body; despite her nasty experience with the lawyer, she was apparently naturally trusting. He felt his protective instincts crank up to a scary degree. When he glanced down, Wesley was gazing up at him fearfully, blue eyes looking enormous. “It’s okay, Wes,” he promised. “Everything’s going to be fine.” Wesley didn’t look entirely convinced, but a glance up at Fred, who had her head on Spike’s shoulder and was humming quite happily, seemed to reassure him slightly. Spike turned with difficulty – Fred was clinging on tightly – and saw that Gunn was still looking undecided. “Come on, Gunn,” he said in his best encouraging voice. “Let’s go upstairs and get chocolate on Angel’s cushions.”

 

He walked quite slowly towards the lift, which lawyers, glancing across at their fallen comrade – the guy hadn’t moved, so Spike reckoned he was either unconscious or dead and was hoping for dead – hurried to hold for him. If he’d been human, he would have been holding his breath, hoping that Gunn would follow. It was a relief when he heard a tentative footstep and then another, and then a little patter of them as Gunn caught up. He hung back again as Spike stepped into the lift and Wesley looked torn between staying with Fred or stepping out of the lift to be with Gunn. Tightening his grip on Wesley’s hand, he said: “Gunn, want to press the buttons for me, mate? I’ve got my hands full.”

 

Gunn seemed to come to a decision, and stepped bravely into the lift. He had to jump to reach the buttons, but did so, stabbing the one for Angel’s floor before landing squarely on the soles of his tiny hand-made leather shoes, looking ready for all comers. The doors swished close, shutting out the curious faces of the lawyers and leaving Spike alone in a fast-rising lift with three children who were looking at him with various stages of trust or wariness.

 

Holding onto a toothpaste commercial smile with some difficulty, Spike wondered how the hell he was going to reverse a spell involving complex equations, mystical incantations and demonic law when the three experts on those subjects were currently more interested in Ribena and Twinkies than restoring themselves to their normal size. Something would come to him, he told himself firmly. He would get hold of Knox and that other guy, that total wanker who had stood in for Wesley when Wes was off breast-beating about shooting his old man, and in a building full of lawyers, someone must know how to read what had so fascinated Gunn about that amulet. Somehow or other he was going to fix this: keep these children safe, restore them to adult size, and absolutely not get himself horribly killed by Angel.

 

***

Date: 2007-10-06 06:06 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Fred stopped making calculations on her hand. “Would it be wrong to start looking around for allies who aren’t sane and don’t work for Wolfram & Hart but do understand extra-dimensional physics?”

Wesley looked up with interest. “The Watchers’ Council used to be full of them. Unfortunately that was before most of them were murdered by the First Evil. I could make some calls, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to get anyone here in time.”


I love it when writers reference a more interesting side of the Watchers' Council; it's one of the Buffyverse institutions of which we saw only small glimpses on BtVS and AtS. The Council mostly seemed to operate on terms of either criminal indifference or brutality, but I'd like to have seen more besides flip-a-coin bureaucratic buffoonery or paternalistic violence.


A lot of whining from Angel later, and he and Lorne were heading off to drive one of Angel’s shiny new cars to go and see the Archduke of Evil. Watching them go, Spike felt a bit of concern that they weren’t going to be able to pull this off – Angel having been off eating people when the tact and diplomacy classes were being held. That was one of the drawbacks to having a soul, that he couldn’t just go ‘Baby sacrifice – cool!’ as in the bad old days; he had to start worrying about stopping it, and thinking about how worried the mothers must be and how scared the babies would be, not knowing where they were, with none of the familiar sounds and scents around them, and there was all that stress and anxiety and the sense of the clock ticking, which he could really have done without this early in the morning.

This paragraph reminds me of one of the aspects of AtS season 5 I liked best: in BtVS season 7, Spike attributes the atrocities of his bad old days to a predator mentality, but in "Damage" he finally grasps a sense of responsibility for those victims. What a great Spike voice - funny and caring at the same time.


I didn't notice whether Wesley uses the same tone of voice in addressing Harmony and Spike - I'd like to think Wesley is a little more patient with Harmony (I can't remember if he was the one who hired her out of the secretarial typing pool) - but how hilarious!


Wesley picked up his designer jacket and draped it tastefully over the shoulder of his designer shirt where it coordinated perfectly with his designer stubble.

“You know, if you stopped dressing like a male model, I might even stop calling you ‘Percy’,” Spike told him as he accompanied them to the lift. True, he hadn’t been invited, and, true, he had been categorically told that there was nothing in the mysterious parcel for him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t curious as well. “And if you stopped telling Angel how great he is all the time, I’d stop telling the girls in Transcription that you’re gay.”


Harmony ran ahead to the desk to pick up the parcel and hold it out. “You have to open it here, so I can see what’s inside. It’s been tested for evil energy readings. Oh, and dibs on it if it’s a unicorn.”


Unicorns! Hee. These two passages are solid gold.


Harmony's reaction to the kid versions of Fred, Gunn, and Wesley is so great.


Fred said: “Let’s play Hide and Seek!”

Gunn shouted: “Cool!”

Wesley said: “Super!”

And they all ran away.

In completely different directions.


This is adorable.


Slipping back out of game face, he crouched down next to the crying Fred and comforting Wesley and said in his best talking-to-Xander voice: “If you come with me, you can have chocolate.”

Oh, hee, talking-to-Xander voice! Awesome.


Something would come to him, he told himself firmly. He would get hold of Knox and that other guy, that total wanker who had stood in for Wesley when Wes was off breast-beating about shooting his old man, and in a building full of lawyers, someone must know how to read what had so fascinated Gunn about that amulet. Somehow or other he was going to fix this: keep these children safe, restore them to adult size, and absolutely not get himself horribly killed by Angel.

Pitch-perfect chapter ending!

Date: 2007-10-06 07:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] elgrey.livejournal.com
Wow!What absolutely amazing feedback. Thank you so much for reading and for taking all this time and trouble to leave such detailed comments. It's incredibly kind of you and you've given me a wonderful start to my day.

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