FicWad

Wesley used to stop every morning at a coffee house across from the Hyperion that was filled with potted plants and that smelled like moss and orchids aside from coffee. Now it's out of the way; and Wesley stops at a sandwich shop between his apartment and Wolfram & Hart that only smells like bread. Wesley had been away for four months before this morning, an over-bright Monday morning, when Wesley woke with an ache for black spice tea from an old neighborhood.

Kandance is talking to a customer when Wesley walks in, gesturing widely with her slim long-fingered hands. She has long dred-locked hair and a pale, pretty face, and she used to come out from the back when Wesley came in, to fix his tea and smile and make shy comments about his accent. She looks up at him when the bells on the door jingle.

"Hi, I'll be with you in just--" She squints. "Wesley?"

Wesley smiles. "Hello, Kandace."

"Hey! Um--" she hands a cup and a napkin to the other customer and says, "your muffin will be right out." She turns back to Wesley, startled smile. "Hey. You've been gone forever."

Wesley comes up to the counter. "I have, I apologize. I've moved across town."

"Don't apologize," Kandace says. Her tone is light but she's looking at Wesley, and he's suddenly conscious of his face being thinner and more pinched, his expressions less fluid than they were four months ago. He remembers that the strap of his gun holster is just visible under the collar of his shirt, and he tugs the collar up under the guise of rubbing his neck.

"Is everything okay?" she asks, smile fading.

"Yes, of course." What could he tell her? He clears his throat and says, "A tall spice tea and a chicken salad, please."

"Right," she says, and stoops below the counter for the tea. She moves around without saying anything; but when the tea is ready she pours it into a cup and hands it to Wesley-- then looks out the window and spots his company car, a cherry red Lexus parked in front of the building. "Is that yours?" she says, but frowning, not intrigued, not pleased. She turns to him with that look on her face.

Wesley says, "Yes, it is."

Kandace nods and turns around, fishes among the folded paper bags. She opens one and stuffs in Wesley's sandwich and a handful of creamers. "Okay, well." She hands it to him and smiles politely. "Take care, okay?"

Wesley nods and looks down, watches his scarred hand wrap around the paper bag. "Certainly."


*


"Fred," Wesley says, shutting his office door behind him. 'Is everything alright?"

Fred lifts her head from the arm of the couch and looks over her shoulder. "Wesley!" She sits up. "I fell asleep, I was waiting for you." Wesley walks over and crouches next to her.

"Is everything alright?"

"Yeah." Fred smiles sleepily and rubs her eyes. "No, yeah, I brought some stuff to show you. uh--" She looks around, down at her feet, on the other end of the couch, a folder of papers, and says, "oh, here," and hands it to him. "It's just diagnostic reports on the maps we found . . . I thought you might want to examine them, for, I don't know." Fred smiles and the sunlight from the window laminates her teeth, her whole face.

Wesley smiles back. "I would like to do that, yes. Thank you." Then he frowns and says, "Have you been here all night?"

"In here?"

"In the building."

Fred shrugs. "I worked late, it's okay." She pulls her legs up on the couch and tugs the hem of her skirt down. "My team is getting very close to having the whole building scanned for intradimensional portals."

"Still," says Wesley reproachfully, hand resting on the cushion next to Fred's leg, "it's nice to see the walls inside other buildings sometimes. And even the sky, Heaven forbid." Fred opens her mouth but Wesley says, "I brought you a sandwich," and hands her the bag. She takes it and peers inside.

"Oh, chicken salad, yay." Fred reaches out to squeeze Wesley's shoulder. "Thank you."

Wesley smiles and stands. "It's not good for you to spend all of your waking hours in this place."

"like you haven't been pulling mucho overtime."

"It isn't good for any of us." He opens the folder and moves to his desk, leans against it, thumbs through the papers.

"I guess you're right. We should make a point of getting out of here." She chews and swallows a bite of her sandwich. "Hey, we should go out for dinner tonight."

Wesley pauses and looks up. "I'd like that."

"I noticed a couple of weeks ago there's a new Mongolian buffet thing place on Taloma. We should go there."

Wesley closes the folder. "We could do that tonight."

Fred wipes her mouth with her thumb, leans her gangly arms against her folded knees. "Do you know when Gunn is finishing with the Themiscyra case? He's sure to be done by eight, right?"

"Gunn?"

"Knox's shift ends at six today." Fred knots her hands together. "Maybe he could wait around. Do you think he would? I could ask him."

"Oh," says Wesley. "Yes. You should do that."

"Okay, yes, I'll go ask him. I'll call you and let you know!" Fred flashes another smile and leaves her shoes at the foot of the couch and the rest of her sandwich on one of its cushions, leaves.

Wesley turns and drops the folder on his desk. He squints at the glare of the city. "You should do that," he says. "You should do that, and perhaps someone in this god-forsaken town can have what they want."

Spike's voice says, "I'll take back that negligee then, shall I?"

Wesley touches a hand to the bridge of his glasses. He reopens the folder of papers.

"Pining after the brainy bint, Percy? All tortured and bent?" His voice moves closer, to just behind him. "You're pathetic."

"I'm not Angel."

There's a pause-- then Spike's voice sounds impressed. "I'm tellin' your boss man you said that."

Wesley closes the folder and drops it into a basket of papers on his desk. "I meant that I'm not your ready antagonistic flirt partner." He turns and Spike takes a step back. "I have work to do." Spike's mouth twists; but then Wesley looks down and his eyebrows raise and he says, "Nice pants."

Spike follows his gaze down to the glimmer of pink beneath the low black prowl of the leather duster. He shifts. Spike is wearing hot pink pants. There's an embroidered raincloud on one leg.

"I--" Spike says and disappears.


*


Wesley has dozens of people in his department, most of whom spend whole shifts bent over books, or else pools of water, or else rune-decorated sheets of human skin. There are some sorcerers, a few mystics, a handful of clerks who do the menial research and the data-entry, and two or three interns. Most of the department's current projects were in place when Wesley arrived and are ongoing (some, like the Turin Project, ongoing for centuries); he hasn't initiated any new projects, except for those incidental matters which arise in the Fight Against Evil; and mostly his job in overseeing all these strange solitary people is to make sure that the bloodletting is kept to a minimum.

Sometimes, though-- while he's wading through Wolfram & Hart's exhaustive archives, researching, writing brief reports-- it's almost like being a neophyte Watcher again, studying for the Council, for his father, spending long satisfying days in the service of god and country. But then the place in his stomach thrums where a bullet once lived, or he has to fire someone for including human sacrifice in their project outline, and he knows that it isn't like that at all. A weird moment of disorientation, followed by what?


*


Wesley taps the incoming call button on the phone at his desk but forgets to say hello. He's staring at a project report written in dialectic Sumerian.

"Wesley?" says Fred's voice, after a moment.

Wesley looks up. "Yes? Fred?"

"Wesley, it's me, I need to get Spike's necklace."

Over the speaker phone, Wesley can hear Spike say, "It's a magical Amulet, alright, not my bleeding necklace."

"It's in the artefacts library," says Wesley, "I can fetch it."

"Yeah, can you? I think something might be up. Have you, um. Have you seen Spike's pants?"

"Could we maybe not conference call this little matter, hm?" says Spike. There's the sound of movement, a muffled apology, then Fred says, "Can you bring it up?"

Wesley nods, then remembers to say, "I'll be right there."


*


Fred runs tests on the Amulet for almost an hour before Wesley looks over at Spike and says, "Wait, what happened to your coat?"

Spike looks diagonally up at the ceiling, his mouth a sour line. "It got lost."

"Lost?" Wesley looks at Fred, who is tapping her thumb absently against the lid of one of her odd, humming machines. "How could that be? Can you even take it off?"

"He manifested here without it," says Fred. "We don't know where it is." She flicks a nervous look at Spike. "We're afraid he might be-- fragmenting."

Spike stares at the ceiling.

"That doesn't seem very likely," says Wesley.

"No, it doesn't. And even if that were the case--" Fred lowers her voice. "Did you notice his pants?"

"Shut up about the pants," mutters Spike.

Fifteen minutes later, Fred says, "There's nothing wrong with the Amulet. I mean, there might be something wrong with it, but it hasn't changed, it's working just fine. I mean, I guess. The readings and test results are exactly the same. And the readings on Spike himself aren't any different either."

"So what could be causing his manifestation to fluctuate?"

"I don't know. If it's an influen . . " Fred looks at Spike and trails off. Wesley looks over at him; there's a white-haired monkey sitting on his shoulder. Spike hears the silence and looks at them. His brow pinches.

"What?"


*


In Wesley's office, Gunn screams when the monkey reaches behind itself and then flings a hand toward him.

"It's okay!" yells Fred, "it's astral poo!'

Gunn still takes a step backward and runs a disgusted hand over his suit. "fuck, I hate monkeys."

"Join the bloody club," yells Spike (the monkey is screeching), pressing a palm against his temple. "Fix this!"

"I can't fix it if I don't know what's wrong," says Fred. She's back on Wesley's couch, curled against the arm, barefoot. She pulls a hand through her hair and looks at Gunn. "Did you find out anything?"

"I checked, but the Cat doesn't care," Gunn says. Then, to Spike, "Listen, I don't support cruelty to animals or anything, but can't you just throw that thing out a window?"

Spike smacks a hand back at the monkey but it passes like mist. "Brilliant, except I can't bloody touch it."

Gunn laughs. Spike glares at him. "What?" The monkey throws astral poo at Wesley.

"Wait . . . " says Fred, leaning forward on the couch. "No, wait, that's it. It's symbolic."

Spike rounds on Fred. "It's not fucking symb--"

Fred holds up her hands and says, "No, listen." She presses a hand to her forehead. "You're not corporeal, you don't actually have a body; but you're not ectoplasmic either . . . you're not an, an imprint. Your physical manifestation is a tracing, a, an energy projection, of your spiritual self." Everyone waits. Fred lowers her hands and looks at Spike. "And right now your spiritual self is wearing pink pants."

"So, what," says Gunn, "Spike's having an identity crisis?"

"I ruddy well /am not/." But even as Spike crosses his arms over his chest, a ribbon of pink shimmers off his pants to curl around his wrist in a pretty plastic bracelet. "Listen, pixies," says Spike, "I've been wading through riots and battles and nasties longer than you've all been alive. I was exactly who I am, completely what I am, when you were all still hot knobs in your grandmums' saddles! I am not having an identity crisis!"

"You've experienced a series of drastic changes in the past few months," murmurs Wesley. Spike looks at him, face twisted.

Angel opens the door to the office and leans in. "What's going on? Who's yelling?"

Gunn points. "Spike can't touch his monkey."


*


For the majority of Wesley's life, there were no hijinks. There were some organized athletics and, after secondary school, some improper touching-- but mostly his life was studying and producing essays of thought-provoking but not radical content. No blood, no spunk. No monkeys. No twirling.

Later everyone's gathered for a debriefing when Spike appears next to Angel's desk wearing an oversized sombrero. No one says anything. Then Spike's gaze slides upward to the massive pink brim and he says, "god. dammit."

Lorne puts one hand against his mouth and the other against the hem of his own pink trousers, and gasps, "oh! I'm so embarrassed."


*


Wesley is going over project reports when he hears "HAH!" from the lobby. He looks out to see Spike standing near the open doorway of Angel's office. He opens his door.

Spike's pants are a pale washed-out denim now, ripped up; with a black tie over a white wifebeater; black combat boots; thick black leather bracelets on either wrist.

"Identity crisis, my pretty ass!" he says in the direction of Angel's office but maybe to no one in particular. "I know exactly who I am! Could take you sodding ponces in a heartbeat if I had one!" His profile is sneering.

Across the lobby, another door opens and Gunn pokes his head out. "Whoa there, Avril," he yells. "Some people here are trying to work."

Spike turns toward Gunn and spreads his arms. When he turns, Wesley's eyebrows lift. Angel appears in his office doorway.

"We don't really have a dress code policy here, Spike." Angel says, smothering his smile, mouth and brow pulled low. "But the back of your shirt says 'Property of Angel Investigations' and that makes me a little uncomfortable."

Across the lobby, Gunn reads Spike's shirt and says, "HAH!"


*


When Wesley first arrived in California, he called his mother every other week to let her know he was fine and to ask about her health and his father's health. A month after the Watcher Council fell he called every few days; but after that month the calls declined steadily. She calls him now, but only every now and then, and he never knows how to answer her questions. She asks how his friends are and how work is going. He tells her that they're fine and that it's fine. After a pause she asks if he's happy and he doesn't know what to tell her; the question has no context anymore. He tells her that he's fine. The silences stretch. A few months ago, the true and accurate things he could say to her had dwindled to two-- "I love you" and "I'll call you soon"-- and now there's just the one.


*


Wesley meets the group in the lobby; Angel, Fred, Gunn, Lorne, and Knox. Wesley hands Fred her shoes, which have been in his office all day. She glances at Knox and they both laugh.

"There's some trouble in my department," says Wesley. "I'm afraid I won't be able to join you for dinner."

"You have to go," Fred says, with her hand wrapped around Wesley's forearm, balancing herself while she slips on her shoes. "This was your idea."

Wesley smothers his grimace. "You all should go. I have so much work to catch up on."

"But--"

"Come on, kitten." Lorne takes Fred's other hand and twirls her, drawing her away. "Your dance card is full anyway." He ushers the group toward the elevators but glances over his shoulder at Wesley. Wesley smiles at him.

Back in his office, Wesley sits at his desk and draws a nest of papers to him. From a thatch of shadows in the corner of the room, Spike's voice says,

"I thought you and your prat squad were going to dinner."

Wesley sighs. "The prat squad is on its own tonight." He shuffles the papers into stacks, then thumbs through the first stack.

"Well, don't mind me," says Spike. His voice is coming from somewhere low, he's sitting somewhere against the wall. "I'll just sit over here and concentrate on not existing."

"One thing about people who don't exist is that they're very quiet."

Spike snorts. He doesn't say anything.

Some time passes. Wesley traces the vertical rows of characters with a fingertip, and with the other hand he massages his temple under the arm of his glasses. When he reaches the fourth page, he realizes he doesn't remember what the first three said. He closes the folder and looks up into the half-light of the room.

"Angel and Angelus are completely separate personalities," he says slowly. "And all of the changes that occur in him are shunted into one of those two distinct categories. When he does change, he becomes someone who is different absolutely; but other than that he doesn't."

Wesley draws off his glasses and sits there for a moment. Then, "Doesn't that sound nice?"

"despite popular rumour," says Spike from the corner, "I'm quite happy not being Angel."

Wesley stands and walks over to the shadows in the corner, sees Spike sitting there, and tucks his hands into his pockets.

Spike is wearing a collared shirt under a twill vest and strange cropped tie of dull red, and brown trousers, an English university student displaced in time. He looks up at Wesley. He's wearing glasses. His hair is ungelled and longer, falling into his face, a more natural shade of blond; and none of those small scars on his face.

Wesley sits down next to him.

Spike closes his eyes and slowly brings his hand to the glasses resting on his nose, carefully, concentrating, pulls them off his face. He drops them on the carpet and they make a solid sound. His hand comes back to his face and rubs tiredly at his eyes.

Wesley reaches forward, but his fingertips pass through Spike's knee. He says, "Ought I call you William now?"

Spike's mouth curls. "Ought I call you Percy?"

Wesley pulls his hand back, rests it on his own knee, which is solid. "That's not my name."

"And that's not mine."

Spike leans his head against the wall-- it doesn't sink through, just like he doesn't sink through floors or couches-- and Wesley can see a tiny pulse beat in his throat. His chest rises with breath. He looks younger than Wesley now, more human, a hint of five o'clock shadow along his jawline.

"This is a good look for you," Wesley says.

A ghost of a smile passes over Spike's face. He and Wesley sit in a shadowy corner of an evil lawfirm on the west coast of America, one hundred and twenty three years from Spike's death and one hundred thousand miles from what Wesley's life was probably supposed to be. There's a smudge of astral poo on Spike's shoulder. Wesley's heart is a little fast.

Spike tilts one shoulder against the wall and says, "It'll have to be."