Title: Everybody Says Don't
Author: Tev Ye
Spoilers/Timeline: Set during "Calvary".
Summary: He wasn't always right and he wasn't always nice. Wes reflection.
PG-13: One single bad word (otherwise PG)
Feedback: Yes, please. Criticism welcomed.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. All hail Joss, Joss is God.
Note: I love the new Wes (loved the old Wes too), haven't been so thrilled with his actions towards Fred. This is me warming too them.
- + - + - + - + - + -
Everybody was saying don't. With their eyes, with their gestures, with the unease they displayed around him. They were all warning him . . . don't act like that, don't demand to be acknowledged, don't cause a stir. They were begging him . . . go back to being the Wesley we knew. Looks heaped condemnation upon condemnation upon him because he refused to slide nicely and unobtrusively into where they needed him.
Nor was the reproach solely external.
He could hear his parents' voices whispering. With his head bent rigidly over the manuscript, the portion of him that was forever fourteen listened intently to the litany of his screw-ups, while the rest of him, his fake self, tried desperately to focus and drown out their reprimands with the ancient guttural tongue before him.
Failure, as always.
The voice of his mentor, which always lay at the back of his mind pronouncing aloud the glyphs that lay before him, was stubbornly silent. As though deferring to the elder Wyndham-Pryce, much as the old man himself had.
His father was in rare form tonight. Sitting here at this desk brought back that conversation almost two years ago, when his father had neatly expressed his opinion that Wesley's promotion was simply temporary. And like a curse, the words haunted him, chasing him, as though from that moment the way had been paved for his downfall.
Yet even so, the tirade lacked impact. Like a routine gone through too many times, it had become stale, allowing Wesley to let his mind wander. Words that had once cut so deep were merely glancing blows against his scarred over emotions. If it had just been his father, he could have worked.
It was the new voice that distracted him. Fresh and sharp with disappointment, his mother's soft reproach paralyzed his thoughts, as he tried to defend his actions. She, who had never chastised, never punished, never pushed him to exceed his grasp, but simply been exceptionally careful to raise a son who would never be his father. All she had ever wanted from him was propriety and gentleness.
He had given it to her in spades.
Until he had nothing left to give. Until he had faced a choice, become so proper and gentle that he was whitewashed out, left to the background, ineffective in the fight, or come to terms with the fact that the world was grey, improper, and oh-so-very rough. He had chosen effectiveness over propriety, only to lose both. Mother would never forgive him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the movement of his erstwhile lover, as she stalked through the hotel causing as much discord as possible, so that she could be comfortable. Lilah functioned best with that perfect blend of competition, distrust, and need. It had made her perfect in Wolfram and Hart. It had made her better in his bed.
Unconsciously, he let his gaze caress the curve of her leg as his mind simultaneously appreciated the feline-like way she moved, and the mystic-like self-awareness. In the back of his mind his mother screamed.
It wasn't right.
He wasn't about to argue. Lilah marked a simultaneous high and low point of his life. A period when the cause mattered a little bit less, and he mattered a little bit more. Originally he had pulled her into his bed out of desperation, determined that if he was to drown he'd take her with him --- a last service to the world. He kept her out of necessity, an anchor to human contact, and a reminder that there were still things to fight, even if he was fucking one of them. Until necessity changed to luxury, a personal indulgence, his way of taking a pound of flesh from this world. It had never cared if his punishments were right, why should it give a damn about his rewards.
Lilah was an intoxicating. Liberation from self-imposed expectations.
If the beast had never come, never manifested into a cause that demanded all of him, so that there was nothing left to set aside, would they still be together? Still cling to each other in a desperate attempt to live? Very possibly.
His mother's scream grew louder.
People didn't look kindly towards impropriety, she always reminded him. Even as they engaged in their own debasements behind locked doors and lowered blinds, they would pass judgment on ones that were brought to light. Turn their heads away to avoid being offended, even as out of the corner of their eye they absorbed every detail.
No doubt, this band of wilted heroes would be no different. Each dealing with their own fall, they would welcome the revelation that he had fallen far lower because it meant that they had not yet hit bottom. Well, let them. After all if they tried to turn their heads any further from him . . . they'd snap their necks.
He had almost convinced himself that he didn't care. Almost bolstered himself for Angelus's eventual revelation. With the vampire, it was not a question of if, merely when.
Almost . . .
Fred scurried into the office, careful to avoid his gaze as she exchanged one evidently useless volume, for another hopefully more forthcoming one. He quickly dropped his eyes, as at the very last moment she threw what he supposed was meant to be a surreptitious glance over her shoulder.
Almost . . . but not quite.
His mother's scream faded into quiet disappointment that he found harder to ignore. Lips still tingling with that stolen kiss, heart skipping several beats over glances she didn't think he saw, his imagination ran wild with wanting.
It wasn't nice.
No, there was nothing nice about his love for Fred, anymore than there was anything proper about his desire for Lilah. What had once been a sweet boyish kind of affection, transformed into something rawer, realer, and that much harder to ignore.
They seemed so very perfect for each other now. The tarnished hero and the world-wise ingénue, neither so pristine as they used to be, each still clinging to the tatters of their costume, her perhaps a little tighter than him.
If only he could get her to let go.
He tried to placate himself with the rationalization that he would never act this way if he and Charles were still friends, or even comrades in arms. It worked on some level, patched the little tears in his conscience when he found himself saying things that deliberately undercut the other man.
It might even be true. If he had not been so bereft of positive emotions in his life, he might not have latched so tightly on his feelings for the attractive scientist, might not have called on it so much that it lost the soft fat of sweetness, until all that remained was the hard core.
And now it was too late.
Now his love was too powerful to be reigned in, too hungry to wait for a more convenient time. No longer content with the tightly checked admiration, it wanted to feed on reciprocation, to glut itself on a hundred of her kisses, and if they happened to be stolen, happened to be rough, happened to make him a little mean. So be it.
Because in the end for him to be here and not home, for him be sacrificing his clothes to blood, rather than Lilah's enthusiasm, and catching scraps of sleep in one of the abandoned rooms, rather than in the lawyer's arms . . . he had to replace her. The cause was no longer enough; he needed the contact, the connection.
So he reached, first to Angel because of all people the vampire, who had the least reason to do so, seemed the most willing to reach back. And it had been enough for awhile, taken the edge off. But the memory of Angel's wary inclusion of him wasn't enough to live on now that only Angelus remained. So he reached for the next closest.
But he no longer knew how to reach for Fred any other way.
He could almost hear the other's thoughts --- their disapproval that he now allows his self-interest to encroach upon his duty. But he has to. They don't understand that. He didn't at one time, but he does now.
It was the lesson his mother never intended to teach him. The lesson he learned best.
She never let her personal wants or needs take precedence over her duty as wife and mother. Never let anything other than what others wanted, what her position demanded drive her. And he watched her die, bit by bit, piece by piece, eroded away by the monotony of life, growing weak from self-imposed starvation . . . eventually useless.
He couldn't afford to be useless, couldn't afford that kind of slow death, and whether the weary warriors just outside his door recognized it or not . . . they couldn't afford for him to fade away either.
So they'd just have to endure this new Wesley who didn't always do what was right and wasn't always nice.
Because he was alive and he was strong.
- + - + - + - + - + -
Thanks for reading.
Comments and criticism appreciated.
Author: Tev Ye
Spoilers/Timeline: Set during "Calvary".
Summary: He wasn't always right and he wasn't always nice. Wes reflection.
PG-13: One single bad word (otherwise PG)
Feedback: Yes, please. Criticism welcomed.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. All hail Joss, Joss is God.
Note: I love the new Wes (loved the old Wes too), haven't been so thrilled with his actions towards Fred. This is me warming too them.
- + - + - + - + - + -
Everybody was saying don't. With their eyes, with their gestures, with the unease they displayed around him. They were all warning him . . . don't act like that, don't demand to be acknowledged, don't cause a stir. They were begging him . . . go back to being the Wesley we knew. Looks heaped condemnation upon condemnation upon him because he refused to slide nicely and unobtrusively into where they needed him.
Nor was the reproach solely external.
He could hear his parents' voices whispering. With his head bent rigidly over the manuscript, the portion of him that was forever fourteen listened intently to the litany of his screw-ups, while the rest of him, his fake self, tried desperately to focus and drown out their reprimands with the ancient guttural tongue before him.
Failure, as always.
The voice of his mentor, which always lay at the back of his mind pronouncing aloud the glyphs that lay before him, was stubbornly silent. As though deferring to the elder Wyndham-Pryce, much as the old man himself had.
His father was in rare form tonight. Sitting here at this desk brought back that conversation almost two years ago, when his father had neatly expressed his opinion that Wesley's promotion was simply temporary. And like a curse, the words haunted him, chasing him, as though from that moment the way had been paved for his downfall.
Yet even so, the tirade lacked impact. Like a routine gone through too many times, it had become stale, allowing Wesley to let his mind wander. Words that had once cut so deep were merely glancing blows against his scarred over emotions. If it had just been his father, he could have worked.
It was the new voice that distracted him. Fresh and sharp with disappointment, his mother's soft reproach paralyzed his thoughts, as he tried to defend his actions. She, who had never chastised, never punished, never pushed him to exceed his grasp, but simply been exceptionally careful to raise a son who would never be his father. All she had ever wanted from him was propriety and gentleness.
He had given it to her in spades.
Until he had nothing left to give. Until he had faced a choice, become so proper and gentle that he was whitewashed out, left to the background, ineffective in the fight, or come to terms with the fact that the world was grey, improper, and oh-so-very rough. He had chosen effectiveness over propriety, only to lose both. Mother would never forgive him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the movement of his erstwhile lover, as she stalked through the hotel causing as much discord as possible, so that she could be comfortable. Lilah functioned best with that perfect blend of competition, distrust, and need. It had made her perfect in Wolfram and Hart. It had made her better in his bed.
Unconsciously, he let his gaze caress the curve of her leg as his mind simultaneously appreciated the feline-like way she moved, and the mystic-like self-awareness. In the back of his mind his mother screamed.
It wasn't right.
He wasn't about to argue. Lilah marked a simultaneous high and low point of his life. A period when the cause mattered a little bit less, and he mattered a little bit more. Originally he had pulled her into his bed out of desperation, determined that if he was to drown he'd take her with him --- a last service to the world. He kept her out of necessity, an anchor to human contact, and a reminder that there were still things to fight, even if he was fucking one of them. Until necessity changed to luxury, a personal indulgence, his way of taking a pound of flesh from this world. It had never cared if his punishments were right, why should it give a damn about his rewards.
Lilah was an intoxicating. Liberation from self-imposed expectations.
If the beast had never come, never manifested into a cause that demanded all of him, so that there was nothing left to set aside, would they still be together? Still cling to each other in a desperate attempt to live? Very possibly.
His mother's scream grew louder.
People didn't look kindly towards impropriety, she always reminded him. Even as they engaged in their own debasements behind locked doors and lowered blinds, they would pass judgment on ones that were brought to light. Turn their heads away to avoid being offended, even as out of the corner of their eye they absorbed every detail.
No doubt, this band of wilted heroes would be no different. Each dealing with their own fall, they would welcome the revelation that he had fallen far lower because it meant that they had not yet hit bottom. Well, let them. After all if they tried to turn their heads any further from him . . . they'd snap their necks.
He had almost convinced himself that he didn't care. Almost bolstered himself for Angelus's eventual revelation. With the vampire, it was not a question of if, merely when.
Almost . . .
Fred scurried into the office, careful to avoid his gaze as she exchanged one evidently useless volume, for another hopefully more forthcoming one. He quickly dropped his eyes, as at the very last moment she threw what he supposed was meant to be a surreptitious glance over her shoulder.
Almost . . . but not quite.
His mother's scream faded into quiet disappointment that he found harder to ignore. Lips still tingling with that stolen kiss, heart skipping several beats over glances she didn't think he saw, his imagination ran wild with wanting.
It wasn't nice.
No, there was nothing nice about his love for Fred, anymore than there was anything proper about his desire for Lilah. What had once been a sweet boyish kind of affection, transformed into something rawer, realer, and that much harder to ignore.
They seemed so very perfect for each other now. The tarnished hero and the world-wise ingénue, neither so pristine as they used to be, each still clinging to the tatters of their costume, her perhaps a little tighter than him.
If only he could get her to let go.
He tried to placate himself with the rationalization that he would never act this way if he and Charles were still friends, or even comrades in arms. It worked on some level, patched the little tears in his conscience when he found himself saying things that deliberately undercut the other man.
It might even be true. If he had not been so bereft of positive emotions in his life, he might not have latched so tightly on his feelings for the attractive scientist, might not have called on it so much that it lost the soft fat of sweetness, until all that remained was the hard core.
And now it was too late.
Now his love was too powerful to be reigned in, too hungry to wait for a more convenient time. No longer content with the tightly checked admiration, it wanted to feed on reciprocation, to glut itself on a hundred of her kisses, and if they happened to be stolen, happened to be rough, happened to make him a little mean. So be it.
Because in the end for him to be here and not home, for him be sacrificing his clothes to blood, rather than Lilah's enthusiasm, and catching scraps of sleep in one of the abandoned rooms, rather than in the lawyer's arms . . . he had to replace her. The cause was no longer enough; he needed the contact, the connection.
So he reached, first to Angel because of all people the vampire, who had the least reason to do so, seemed the most willing to reach back. And it had been enough for awhile, taken the edge off. But the memory of Angel's wary inclusion of him wasn't enough to live on now that only Angelus remained. So he reached for the next closest.
But he no longer knew how to reach for Fred any other way.
He could almost hear the other's thoughts --- their disapproval that he now allows his self-interest to encroach upon his duty. But he has to. They don't understand that. He didn't at one time, but he does now.
It was the lesson his mother never intended to teach him. The lesson he learned best.
She never let her personal wants or needs take precedence over her duty as wife and mother. Never let anything other than what others wanted, what her position demanded drive her. And he watched her die, bit by bit, piece by piece, eroded away by the monotony of life, growing weak from self-imposed starvation . . . eventually useless.
He couldn't afford to be useless, couldn't afford that kind of slow death, and whether the weary warriors just outside his door recognized it or not . . . they couldn't afford for him to fade away either.
So they'd just have to endure this new Wesley who didn't always do what was right and wasn't always nice.
Because he was alive and he was strong.
- + - + - + - + - + -
Thanks for reading.
Comments and criticism appreciated.