More dribbles

[thebratqueen]

The path back down to the dungeon felt comfortable and familiar to him. More like coming home than entering the Council walls could ever hope to be.

A week. One could become entirely used to a new life in a week, Wesley thought. He'd been gone for that long. He'd grown used to a life he'd hated.

Which, all things considered, hadn't been that much different than the one he'd left behind.

A familiar voice floated out through the crack in the open door, and Wesley found he wasn't at all surprised.

"Joshua," he said, striking a faux casual pose in the doorway. "What a pleasure. You may leave now."

Joshua turned and looked at him. Eyes which were far too beady for Wesley's taste glittered at him from over a clipboard. "I'm doing your job."

"Much obliged," Wesley said. "You may leave now."

"Happy to," Joshua said. He came forward and thrust the clipboard out, handing it over with more force than was necessary in the obvious hope it would make Wesley flinch.

Wesley didn't flinch. He'd watched Lawrence of Arabia far too many times for that.

"It doesn't talk, you know," Joshua said, making the words into a snear.

In the corner a shadow unfolded itself and stood to its full height. "It talks," Angel said, the words quiet and full of a power that only a being with hundreds of years could have, "just not to you."

"This is going in my report," Joshua told him.

"By all means," Wesley said, holding the door open for him. He closed it behind the retreating figure. "Prat."

Angel remained where he was, his arms folded across his broad chest. "You went away."

"Indeed," Wesley said. He came forward, tossing the clipboard aside for the utterly useless record that it was. "Just got back this morning. Took the red eye. Dreadful - "

"You left," Angel said, and Wesley faltered. The vampire's tone hadn't change, and now the contempt that had been aimed towards Joshua had been redirected towards him.

Wesley felt a flare of anger. Angel dared question him? What was he, some sort of beholden pris -

Wesley aborted the word before he could finish thinking it and felt deeply ashamed.

"I'm sorry," he said, rapidly abandoning the temper-tantrum like argument he'd been about to launch about Angel's possessive feelings towards his time. "It wasn't my intention. They forced me."

The tension in the air dropped with a nearly audible pop. Angel came towards the bars. "They did?"

"To offer me a job," Wesley told him.

Now Angel looked curious. "Don't you - "

"A - " Wesley hesitated over the word "promotion" " - transfer."

"Oh," Angel said. His brown eyes remained as mysterious as they ever did.

Wesley rested his hands against the bars. Angel kept his at his sides. "A reward, for all my good work."

Angel smirked at that. "Really."

"Rupert Giles has been sacked," Wesley said, feeling this detail needed to be gotten out into the open as rapidly as possible.

Angel was taken aback. "What? Why?"

"He has a father's affection for the Slayer," Wesley said.

Angel nodded, unsurprised. "Sounds like him."

Wesley felt a moment of dissonance. He became keenly aware that he was talking with Angel, the creature who had tortured Rupert Giles not so very many months ago. Rupert. His collegue, if not in any way, shape or form his bosom companion. Someone who had taken the same oaths that he had. Someone who had laid his own life down to protect the world.

Someone who was now merely a high school librarian, because he had grown too close to his charge.

Sometime during Wesley's reverie, Angel apparently managed to put two and two together. "You don't smell like - "

"They took me to Greece," Wesley said. "They know I like it. They pitched the job to me. Sunnydale. Two Slayers. All mine."

The silence between them stretched out for so long Wesley felt as though he were stuck inside of a nightmare. Not for the first time that week, he begged Fate to give him some sort of sign that he'd made the right decision.

Finally Angel asked, "You said - "

"No."

Again the room was quiet. Then Angel reached out, stretching the chain to its limit, and rested the tips of his fingers against the cage. A single vertical bar separated Wesley's hand from his.

"Good."

Wesley closed his eyes and enjoyed a moment of relief.