Title: Sun and Shadow
Section: Los Angeles II
Part: 14/What Happens in a Day
Author: Arsahi
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is property of Joss Whedonvand Mutant Enemy. Angel the Series belongs to Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, and Mutant Enemy.
Distribution: Eh...gonna be stingy this time and say ask first. You can find my email address on my author profile.
Dedication: The normal people, you know who you are.
Rated: PG-13
Notes: This is my first crossover, folks. Be warned. Also, this focusses mostly on Spike, Fred, Gunn, Wesley, and Faith. Angel and Cordelia are in it a little. Mostly mush. Originally titled "You Are Who You Eat", but changed because of severe subtext that bordered on text in that title.
Timeframe: Post-Gone for BtVS and post-Dad for Angel.

~*~ What Happens in a Day ~*~

Wesley stepped into the curtained cubicle where Fred sat, drugged up on pain killers. "My back hurts," she told him quietly, seeing him out of the corner of her eye. "They won't give me any more pain medication, and they say part of the arrow head got lodged in my shoulder blade. They're going to have to operate on it."
"I'm so sorry, Fred," Wesley apologized. He walked to the edge of her cot, and took her hand. "I can bring some work for you to do during your stay. Or I could buy you a science volume. Teach you how to translate, perhaps."
Fred glanced down at her hand and let out a deep breath, her cheeks coloring slightly red. Wesley always flustered her and sometimes made her heart skip a beat. She had no doubt that she loved Gunn enough for two people, but Wesley had somehow wormed his way into her heart. Not that she had heart worms in the literal sense. "It's okay, Wesley, it wasn't your fault. It's my own stupid fault for jumping in front of Spike. I don't know what I was thinking..."
"You have a good heart, Winifred Burkle. You were simply protecting a trusted friend. If it weren't for you, we would have lost a valuable teammate, or more. Even if he doesn't seem to recall anything from the past four years," Wesley frowned and shook his head. "Instead, we only have one critically injured teammate." He blinked and looked up at Fred when she laughed. "That sounded much more comforting in my head."
Fred smiled, but the smile quickly disappeared into a grimace. "Um, Wesley," she said uncertainly. She didn't know whether or not she should confess to him or not. She sighed.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Um...could you...explain to Spike that...well...he's my best friend, but...that doesn't give him the right to kiss me," Fred winced again as the pain lanced through her torn muscles and shoulder blade.
Wesley blinked rapidly, removed his glasses from his face, and began to clean them on his shirt. "Did you say Spike...kissed you?"
"Yeah. I think he's a little deluded," Fred sighed. "Could you just...talk to him, please? Explain to him what's really going on."
"Yes, of course," Wesley nodded. "In fact, I'll do so now. You try to get some sleep."
"Thanks, Wesley," Fred watched him leave. She thought for a moment, then yelled, "Wesley!"
"What?" Wesley peeked back in.
"I feel like I'm abusing you so much, but could you call Charles and tell him I miss him and want him here?" Fred pouted.
"It's no problem," Wesley agreed. "I'll call him after I talk with Spike."
"Thanks again. I owe you," she promised.
"No, you're injured and incapacitated to do such things yourself. I don't mind doing it," he left the curtained cubicle. Suddenly the empty space around Fred seemed much emptier to her.

"Spike," Wesley pushed his glasses up slightly on his nose. "May I have a word with you?" he arched an eyebrow. Spike frowned and shrugged. "Over here."
Spike shook his head, "Whassa matter, Wesley? Is there summat wrong with Fred?"
"Sort of," Wesley led Spike into the men's room and checked to see if anyone was in the room with them. "You see, Spike, I respect you enough to be blunt with you. Fred is not your girlfriend. You do not get the privilege of kissing her."
Spike grabbed Wesley by the collar of his shirt and slammed him up against the side of one of the stalls. He scowled at Wesley. "Don't tell me that. She is how I supposedly go' over Buffy. She is my girl. She is mine."
"That's just it, Spike," Wesley answered. "She's not yours."
"Whose is she then? Yours?" Spike gave him a little shove.
"No," he coughed. "Gunn's."
Spike shook his head. "No. No, she's mine. She took an arrow for me."
"She's your best friend," Wesley sighed.
"If she's not my bird, why do I love her?" Spike looked Wesley up and down, analyzing just how long it would take to kill him if he ever let anyone know that he had just admitted he was "in love" with Fred.
"It's the love of a friend, Spike. The woman you love is Buffy Summers."
Spike shook his head. "Whatever. Sod off, Watcher Boy," he stormed out of the men's room.
Wesley took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Now to call Gunn down, before Spike took advantage of Fred again.

It had been about four hours since Fred was first brought to the hospital, and Wesley was still there. He felt a partial responsibility for the girl, not to mention he had filled out the insurance claim forms and all else since he had a copy of the personnel files in his car. He also didn't want to face Faith, after the way he had almost kissed her. He had almost kissed the single woman he hated in the world. For the life of him, he couldn't understand why.
Fred had been asleep for the past hour. The nurses abruptly woke her up and called Wesley and Gunn in.
"We're moving her to room 309. You can go home, pack some things for her, and bring them here," one of them informed Wesley.
"I will. O-or rather, Gunn will. You know what she likes. I'm terrible at that type of thing," Wesley followed the cot into the elevator.
Gunn didn't like this. First Spike, and now Wesley was moving in on his territory. Trying to date the woman he had hardly been dating for two months. Well, fine. Gunn would just have to try and make a move on any female that caught Wesley's eye, beside Fred.

"Wesley, where's Spike?" Fred asked. "You didn't tell him to leave, did you? I didn't want him to leave, just not try to kiss me again. I mean, not that he wasn't a good kisser--not that I want to be kissed by him again, and I don't, but he wasn't a bad a kisser or anything--"
"I didn't tell him to leave, Fred," Wesley said, fluffing her pillows up. "I made it clear that you were Gunn's girlfriend and not his. That's all."
"I wish he would get his memory back," Fred sighed. "I don't like this Spike."
"Neither did anyone else," Wesley chuckled.
"I want Charles. Where did he go?" she asked.
"He went to get some of your things. You'll be staying here until you've had surgery and have had a full day or two of observation to make sure you don't tear anything again," he explained.
"When's my surgery?" she wanted to know.
"Three days. The swelling needs to go down," he answered.
"I want Charles. Where did you say he went?" she asked him, growing distressed.
"He'll be here in about fifteen minutes, Fred. He just went home to get a few things for you," he told her patiently.
"Oh. I'm sorry if I ask questions twice, Wesley, I can't hardly remember a thing because I'm so drugged up," she sighed. "Charles..."
"He'll be here soon, Fred, I promise," Wesley crossed his ankle of his knee and waited for Gunn to arrive, answering any question Fred asked him patiently. She asked again about her surgery, where Gunn went, what happened to her, where Spike went.
"Look what I have for my lovely, sweet goddess," Gunn said, walking in, carrying a burrito and a bag of Fred's things.
"Oh Charles, it smells wonderful," Fred gave him a dazzling smile. "Come here so I can kiss you without burrito breath."
Gunn smiled and kissed her. "I brought some of your stuff. Your bear, a burrito, some of your favorite books and magazines."
"You."
"What?"
"My favorite things you brought includes you."
Wesley yawned. "Well, I'll leave you two to yourselves. I'll go back to the hotel, see if I can get some work done, and then I'll come back and visit with you some more. If they ask for me, Gunn, you have my cell phone number."
Gunn nodded and watched him walk out of the room.

Faith had been researching one of Wesley's cases, trying to prove herself. However, the only thing she proved was that she wasn't cut out for research. Maybe it was something she had picked up from Buffy, but it found her sleeping on Wesley's desk. It had started out with her resting her head on her arm, slowly reading the titles of the monsters in the book, trying to match them with the description given by the client. She had let her heavy eyelids droop closed and that was that.
She jerked awake, hearing someone come into the office. But when she looked around, she was in a dark bedroom, a bed with red satin sheets sat off to the side. White roses and petals lay strewn about the sheets, sultry music drifted around her...
"Faith."
She quickly looked up at the source of the voice. His face was in the shadows, but he held a wine glass out to her. She blinked and took it. "Come out of the shadows, will ya?"
Wesley stepped out of the shadows and sat on the bed. He wore an open red silk shirt and black silk trousers. "Welcome home, Faith."
"Wesley..." he gently pulled her down on the sheets. "What's going on?"
"I'm through fighting what I feel for you," he told her quietly, straddling her legs and kissing her neck.
Faith exhaled slowly. "What do you feel for me, Wes?"
"This," he kissed her.
Faith moaned.

Wesley watched Faith sleep, one eyebrow raised, and an albeit small smile. That is, he smiled until she moaned his name. That made him sit down and look through one of the case files he had managed to salvage from the Faith Drool.
"Wesley..." Faith murmured. Her breath caught in her throat.
Wesley raised his eyebrows nearly to his hairline and gulped. He had an idea of what she could be dreaming about, but he hoped he wasn't right, because that would force him to acknowledge how warm and fuzzy his cold and icy hate had grown over the course of the past day.
"Mm..." Faith moved her leg under the desk and banged it on the corner. She jerked awake and blinked at Wesley. Her cheeks turned cherry red as she wiped her mouth. "Er...uh...hi Wesley!"
"Hello," Wesley replied, nodding slightly. He took the greatest pains not to look at her.
"Uh...yeah. I...got a little bit done on one of your cases. How's Fred? She feeling better? She's gonna need surgery, right? When is that?" Faith asked quickly.
"Fred's still in pain, yes she needs surgery, and it's in about three days."
"Good. I think."
"Indeed."
"Right."
"Very much so."
Faith ran out of things to say then and looked down, playing with the pages of the book she had fallen asleep on. "Um, I talk in my sleep. Did you hear me say anything?"
Wesley coughed and shook his head guiltily. "N-no."
"You liar," Faith accused. "You heard me. Oh god. What did I say? Wait--I don't wanna know."
"It was...interesting...I'm trying to figure out why I was in your dream," he raised his eyes to her.
"Oh..." her cheeks flamed. "I'm going to go see if Fred's okay," and she ran out of the office.
Wesley watched her go. When she almost reached the front door, he put on his resolve face and said, "Faith, wait."
Faith paused. "What?"
She felt his arms encircle her waist. "Come on. We have to talk," he propelled her towards his office. "In."
"Yes sir," she mocked.
"Don't do that," Wesley sighed.
"What do you want?" Faith leaned back on his desk, studying him, her cheeks no longer feeling the need to be her body's central heating system.
Wesley had the incredibly kinky urge to answer that question with "you". However, he took a more tactful approach. "Do you feel it?"
"Feel what?" she asked.
"This...whatever it is between us. Your dream. My..."
"Pants?"
Wesley flushed. "Well, actually, yes. Let me present it to you this way. You want me. I want you."
"Let's act on it?"
"Precisely."
Faith flung her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately.

Cordelia was minding her own business, when another vision slammed into her. This one was far more powerful, far stronger, and too long compared to the other visions. Even compared to her last vision. This one was just random images though: of Spike attacking Fred in the hospital, Spike reading a letter, Fred kissing Wesley, Fred after the surgery with her monitor flat-lining, Sahjhan becoming solid, Holtz releasing an arrow from a crossbow and landing it directly on Angel's heart, a grave with her name etched into it. Then there was darkness as she collapsed by Connor's crib.
Angel had been looking for something and talking light-heartedly with her. She hadn't made a peep during the vision, and the only clue Angel had to her vision was the thud of her hitting the floor. "Cordy?" he frowned. He walked around to the other side of the crib and pressed his lips together, lifting her and setting her on the bed. It was times like this he could use Riley or Harmony or an extra person. "Cordelia?" he tried to shake her a little. She limply lied there. "Dammit...dammit."
He picked up the telephone by his bed, jammed the cord into the jack, and dialed Gunn's cell phone number.
:Gunn here. Fred, stop.:
"Gunn, can you come to the hotel? There's kind of been an emergency."
:Again? What happened now?:
"Cordelia had another vision."
:Of what?:
"I have no clue. The vision knocked her out before she could say anything to me. She didn't even scream. So I need you here at the hotel to watch over Connor and her so I can go to the Conduit and demand some answers."
:Yeah. Yeah, no problem Angel. I'll be right there. Fred will be fine here.:
"Thanks. You're the only one I trust right now with them, and the only one capable of protecting them if anything should happen."
:No problem, man. I'll be over in just a minute.:
"Right." Angel set the receiver back in the cradle. "Cordy, sweetheart, I promise you. I'll find a way to make this stop," he took her limp hand and kissed the top of it. He felt so helpless in this situation. He knew the visions were killing her. He needed to find a way to get her visions to stop. He would take them himself if he had to. He didn't want her to die.
Angel didn't know how long he sat there before Gunn came in and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Go, man. She doesn't look so good."
Angel just nodded and left.
"All right, Cordy, let's see how long I can stay up before I need to take a nap."

Faith woke in her bed, thinking she was alone at first. Then she rolled over and found Wesley sleeping next to her, both of them quite naked. She smiled, noticing how handsome he was without his glasses and with the mussed up bed head. She found herself falling in love with him. What had started as a spark had roared into a bonfire, and Faith felt secure for the first time in forever snuggled in its warmth. While she had been daydreaming, Wesley had waken and watched her. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled closer to her. "Good...afternoon, love," he murmured.
"Oh, I got called 'love' by the Brit who doesn't use slang," Faith smiled. "I feel special now."
"I shouldn't wait so long again to do this," he kissed her a couple of times.
"I'm thinking any longer than five minutes without kissing you is too much," Faith snuggled.
"I agree," he...agreed. "However...I hate to ruin the moment but...you do know that nobody can know about this?"
Faith propped herself up on her elbows. "What?"
Wesley sat up. "I don't think any of the others should know just yet. I mean, with everything going on. Also, how would they look at me if they found out we were sleeping together?" He rolled out of the bed and put on his pants.
Faith glared at him. "That's all you care about? How they're going to look at you after sleeping with me? What happened to Mr. Snuggle Butt?"
Wesley turned and raised an eyebrow at her, pulling his shirt on over his head. "Mr. Snuggle Butt?"
"Yeah. The one who just called me 'love' and the one who just said he shouldn't wait so long," Faith's glare hardened as she got dressed. "Dammit Wesley--don't tell me you just used me. Because I swear, therapy or no therapy I will stab you with a stake."
"I wasn't using you, Faith," he took her hands. "I just think it's too soon to tell anyone. I don't know if I could handle the way they'll look at me when we burst in and announce that we're lovers."
"Damn you, Wesley," Faith shook her head in disgust. "I never figured you for the love-'em-and-leave-'em type."
"Faith," he said helplessly.
However, she had left the room. Wesley followed her. "Faith, listen to me. I enjoyed it just as much as you did, but think about it! I'm at least five years older than you. You're what, twenty-one? Faith, I'm twenty-seven. That's a six year difference."
"Angel's 247. Cordelia's twenty-one," Faith thrust that in his face and continued down the stairs.
"That's different! Angel's forever frozen at that age."
"Six years isn't a lot of difference. Wesley, you could be thirty-seven and I wouldn't care. I'd still feel the same things towards you. I'd still be the same twenty-one-year-old woman sleeping with you."
"I'd actually be rather unattractive at thirty-seven."
"You don't get it! You don't get it. I'm going to go now. You can stay here and mull over whatever you want to mull over. Just don't follow me."
Wesley tried to grab Faith's arm as she left, but she twisted out of his grasp, held his arm behind his back, gave him a shove, and left. Wesley rubbed his forehead and sighed. He should have known sleeping with the Slayer would have been a bad idea. But his hormones had thought otherwise.

Angel stood before the Conduit, in the same circular pit that he had received his permanent soul in. This time though, the Conduit was pissed with him. "Why is it here?" they whispered, throwing him around. "What does it want?"
Angel dug his heels into the sand. "It is here because you're killing its mate."
"It has no mate," they whispered. He was thrown into the opposite side of the pit.
"Yes, it does. It has a mate named Cordelia Chase, who is dying from the--" he was thrown upside down into the wall perpendicular to him, "--visions the PTB gave her. She is human. Dammit, she can't die! I won't let her!"
"It is noble," the voices mocked. "It is a fool."
Out of sheer anger, the domesticated demon inside of him burst forth. "Damn you! Let her give the visions to me, then! Fix her! Don't...she can't...you can't let her die, not yet!"
"It is desperate," they sounded surprised. "It loves her."
"Yes, I do. I love her more than my own life."
The voices whispered amongst themselves for a moment and stopped playing ping-pong with his body as the birdie. "It has three options."
"What? What are they?"
"It has three options," they repeated. "It can give up its soul." They paused. "It can allow her to die."
Angel frowned, his game face going back to his human visage. "And the other one?"
"It can make her a creature of the dark."
Angel sat down. Either go back to being Angelus or make Cordelia a soulless creature?
"It will share the visions if it decides to make her a creature like itself."
"What if I give up my soul for her?" Angel whispered.
"It will give her painless visions."
"Will they be painful if we share them?" he wanted to know, his voice cracking.
"It will share the pain."
Angel closed his eyes. Either way, he would have to give up his Cordelia to save her life. He wouldn't be able to keep her. "My entire soul? Or just the part that allows me happiness without turning back into Angelus?"
"Its entire soul."
The answer was obvious to Angel.
"Can I at least tell her goodbye?"

He stood over his bed, watching her sleep as Gunn stood off to the corner with Connor. "Cordelia," he whispered. He bit his lip, lifting her hand. He kissed each of her knuckles before setting her hand back on the bed. "Cordy, I hope you can hear me, because...this is the last you'll see of me until Willow gets here with the Orb of Thesula and the curse. I...I love you more than anything, Cordelia, besides Connor. I love you both the same amount. I love you so much I'm giving up my soul for you to live with painless visions..."
"Love you too," Cordelia murmured. One of her eyes was barely open. "Thank you."
"To save your life," he kissed her and suddenly found himself in the Conduit's pit. He looked around. "No...that...that wasn't enough time."
"It was hoping to make love?" they asked sarcastically.
"At least a goodbye kiss," Angel scowled at the voices.
"She will die if it does not choose now."
"Take my soul. If she gets to live, healed, no visions...that's worth more to me than a permanent soul."
Angel collapsed then, a ball of blue light surrounding him. It faded just as quickly as it got there. When he rose, his game face was on full force. "It's been too long."