Rated: PG-13, pre-slash, angst
Spoilers: This spoils the ep "Untouched" majorly if you try reading it
without seeing the ep, and you'll be all confused if you read this
without seeing the ep.
Summary: The night after the events of "Untouched," Wesley sends an
e-mail to an old friend newly on-line.
Warnings: OK, I pulled this off in almost exactly one hour, so it's
been proofed and beta-read by my own lovely wife atara while she's sort
of sleepy like. Any roughness is my own fault and the fault of my
Wesley!Muse who so rudely shoved my Qui-Gon!Muse out of the way and just
took over. These Muses, I swear.
Thanks and love to atara and Mike both for loving me and putting up with
me.
***************************************
Alone in a closed shop, a man reads an e-mail, the first one he's
received marked "Private" since he's become part of the virtual world.
I would bet dollars to doughnuts (that *is* the expression isn't it?)
that he thinks I do it to impress Cordelia, that my rash moments of
competency are some sort of strange modern courting gesture. Some
combination of hair-pulling pissing contest. My, some Oxbridge educated
twit I sound like now. Too wordy for LA and far too LA for England.
Funny how it seems to work here . . . at home. Not my flat, dull and
boring as it is, but this huge monstrosity that we call now home.
I hated this place at first, still do in a way. It's not all vibey as
Cordelia would say, although having the former owner call me paranoid
did get my blood up a bit. A little to close to the red, really. I
*am* paranoid, but not in the way most people are. Life, or the loss of
it, doesn't *truly* scare me. It used to but I learned too much from
Angel's faith and your stubbornness and Buffy's strength and Faith's
repentance . . . Well, too many people have taught me that life is
about getting up each day, doing the best you can and end up still
standing at the end of it.
So what am I paranoid about? That's easy. Here I am, acting as some
sort of perverted Watcher to a vampire, *the* Vampire, the famous one,
and I'm afraid he'll discover the true moments behind my rash moments of
competency.
It was funny, in a not at all funny sort of a way, to have Cordelia, of
all people, stick up for me when Angel sent me home last night. (Oh, I
haven't mentioned that, there was an incident involving Wolfram and Hart
sending a telekinetic girl after us, well, after Angel really; she
shoved some rebar through his chest, then threw me against a wall and
Angel into the sunlight when I mentioned her father. It's a little more
complicated than that, but I can explain some other time). But it
wasn't as touching as that one moment when he thanked me. Such an off
handed sentence, acknowledging that I had done something useful and
dangerous at the same time. That I had acted like he would want me,
expect me, to act. Or is it the way I think he would want me to act?
They've all been so confident in the past, his . . . lovers. Well,
maybe not Drusilla, but that was more about taking Spike's woman away
than any depth of emotion for said woman. There *was* depth of emotion
with Spike, all you have to do is be in the same room with them to feel
it pulling at him and to feel Spike willing it to pull at him. Spike,
so scary, so tough . . . and all he wants is his Daddy back.
And Buffy. Well, that serious emotion was involved was obvious to
everyone, even Wesley the failure. And that she made him happy and
cursed him for it . . to be honest I don't know what to make of it. I
hate her for it sometimes, making him that much more out of reach. But
I could kiss her (imagine that thought for a moment and try not to laugh
too hard) for giving him some happiness.
And now the would-be lover, pathetic me. Trying to get myself banged to
hell and back to prove myself worthy of his love, or even his touch,
just a moment of notice behind that, "Wesley, we need more than that."
You know what I've been building up to ever since you started reading,
hell, ever since he and I met for all I know. I just can't hide it
anymore. I can't tape him up and send him off to his horrible nights
and not tell *someone* that . . . Oh God help me, I've fallen arse over
teakettle for a vampire. That there is little, if anything, he could
ask of me that I wouldn't do. I Love Him. There, all amateurish and
childlike in "big letters" for the world, or even just you, to see.
My mother, poor thing, used to say that true love was loving someone, in
spite of their faults, that Love (all capital L and everything) was pure
and selfless. That may be the reason she never left Father and never
forgave me for leaving. How ironic to know that I love so hopelessly,
so selflessly as she did all those years while she pretended that the
world was a fine and grand place and that all was well within it. "Your
Father's had a hard day of it," she'd gently warn and then expected me
to what? Run and hide? Be the perfect child as she was the perfect
wife?
And yet now, while he dreams with Darla's name on his lips and his
blankets tented at an impressive level, I pretend I don't know something
is wrong. I pretend that, Cordelia is right and I, as a man, have no
intuition, can feel no "vibes" and cannot see that all is not well in
Angel's world.
Neither she nor Gunn sit near his door at night and hear the moans of
passion that sound like cries of pain and terror as he dreams of her.
Oh, to go in there, just *once,* and sacrifice myself to give him a
decent, dreamless night of sleep. You know I went to a "top" school,
you know that pleasing someone under the covers, silently, sightlessly,
soundlessly was one of the lessons I learned. One I was glad to learn;
look everyone, they fight over *me,* the boy whose father mocked him.
Blast it all, I'm babbling; e-mail does seem to encourage that, doesn't
it? It's strange though, to find you on-line now. Hope the shop is
going well and all that. I must tell Cordelia to order through you when
we're not on a "need it now!" situation.
No, what I must tell *you* is that I don't know how to live like this.
To think I once had the gall to casually march in and tell you that you
were "too attached" to your Slayer, that you had the nerve to think of
her as your own child. And now look at me, "too attached" to the
enemy. The demon with the face of an Angel. Oh yes, we both know that
he has a soul now, that he's sworn to do good instead of evil, to help
those in need, but that terrifies me and keeps me at my fearful vigil.
But, Giles, is it really protection that makes me hate Darla and the
dreams and all those before me? Am I *really* paranoid to think that
some day, in someone's arms, he'll find happiness, true happiness, again
and we'll be forced to kill him? Or is it merely the arrogance of the
very stupid that makes me afraid that I'll be at his side, fighting off
Gunn and Cordelia, because *I'm* the weak one who made him happy and
that I'll be just like Spike and all those before, looking for a Master
in whatever form I can find one. And all because some part of me
believed Mother all those years ago. Some part of me believes love is
selfless and all forgiving.
Oh God, it's late and he dreamed of Darla *again* tonight. Again I
watched him twist under her imagined weight, moan that strange sound of
pleasure/pain, bare his soulless face and fangs to the night and to my
vision.
Giles, you *must* help me. I quite simply do not know what to do
anymore.
Yours truly,
Wesley
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