Chapter Three: Things Fall Apart. And now I commence twisting the plot until it bleeds.
A tired but happy smile creased Angel's face, mirrored on Doyle's as his lover collapsed, panting, on the covers next to him. "We're gonna kill ourselves with this one day. Oh wait, we're already dead. Nevermind."
Laughing, Angel summoned up the energy to smack him on the back of his head. "Wiseass." Doyle lifted his head and grinned at him, and his laughter faded as he stared into his eyes. "C'mere," he whispered, and tugged on Doyle's arm until the half-demon rolled on top of him, stretched out across his stomach with his chin resting on his hands and his elbows propped on Angel's sternum. Angel stretched lazily, then folded his hands behind his head and just looked up at his lover.
"I love you," he said, and part of his heart just sang at the brilliant smile Doyle gave him. He'd never been able to say the words before, not with that casual expression of caring, not even with Buffy. With Buffy it was fight and slay and angst and when the moment needed it desperately, he could drag the words from the depths of his tortured heart. With Doyle, it was… easy. It was right.
"I love you too," Doyle said softly, and then leaned down to ease his mouth over Angel's. They stayed like that for a long, timeless moment, just one long melding of their lips and hearts. Then Angel heard the distant shrilling of the alarm just before Doyle jerked back and looked down at him with a sad smile. "That's your cue to wake up, Angel." When a protest rose at the back of Angel's throat, Doyle pressed one long finger over his lips to silence him and then kissed him quickly. "Wake up, love."
Desperately, Angel wrapped his arms around Doyle and drew him close, trying to keep the alarm- and the rest of the real world- at bay. "Don't want to wake up," he murmured into Doyle's throat, "Don't want to ever wake up."
But then Doyle simply melted away, leaving his arms empty and a broken look in his eyes before they snapped open to see Doyle's pale green ones staring down into his own. Awake. He was awake. God, he wished that he didn't have to ever wake up, not if the waking world was the one where he couldn't touch his lover. He couldn't touch him, could only watch him for as long as Doyle let himself remain visible. He could look but not touch, and it was killing him.
"Are you alright?" Doyle asked him, worry in his voice and eyes, and Angel made an effort to pull it together.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just not really ready to wake up yet. Long night last night."
"Tell me about it," Doyle said with a smirk, and Angel had to laugh before shaking his head and swatting an extra pillow through Doyle's chest. "Tickles, dammit!" the ghost complained, as usual, and Angel chuckled.
"Was talking about the demons last night, actually, as you well know. I'm still not sure my hand has regained feeling yet." He splayed his fingers as wide as they could go, and then curled his hand into a tight fist. "Yeah, feeling back again," he said. Doyle laughed, and Angel poked one finger at him. "Move your ass, ghost boy. I need a shower."
Doyle snorted rudely. "I will never understand your obsession with showers," he said. "You take at least three a day, sometime more. It's just not normal." But he shifted to the side and then floated up to attach himself to the ceiling so he could watch as Angel stumbled into the bathroom. Fading out of visibility, he slid though the wall and watched with interest as Angel climbed into the shower and cranked the water over to broiling hot. Satisfied that his lover would soon be awake enough to function decently, he sunk down through the floor and landed neatly on his feet on the lobby floor, turning himself visible as he did so.
"Morning Doyle," Wesley said, not even blinking at the maneuver. But then, he and Cordy had had weeks to get used to it. Gunn still jumped sometimes, but then Gunn wasn't around as much.
"I'm out for a while," he told the two of them. "I should be back in a couple hours. Anyone want anything for lunch?"
"Turkey," Cordelia said, just as Wes said, "Ham." Doyle waved a friendly hand to show that he'd heard, already on his way out the door.
"Angel's gonna be pissed when he comes down and you're already gone," Cordelia told him. He shrugged.
"Not gonna be gone too long," he said. "I'll make it up to him tonight."
"Stop it, stop it, stop it," Cordelia chanted, covering her ears with her hands. Doyle laughed and sauntered through the door, losing visibility as he did so.
"I wonder where it is he goes," Cordelia mused. Wes looked up from the book he was reading.
"Doyle?"
"Yeah," she said. "He keeps leaving. I wonder where he goes when he does."
"Caritas," Wes said. She shot him a surprised glance. "What? He told me a few nights ago. He likes to sing, and it's also a good place to mingle. He's old friends with Lorne, too."
"Well well well," Cordelia said. "You learn something new every day. Doyle likes to sing?"
"Gorgeous tenor," Wes said. "Make him sing when he comes back. It's worth listening to, believe me."
"Huh," she said. "Never would have thought it. I mean, Doyle? Not exactly someone I pictured being able to sing anything besides drinking songs."
They fell into their usual companionable silence for a few minutes until Angel made his way down the steps, looking marginally more awake than he had when Doyle had left him. "Where's Doyle?" was the first thing out of his mouth, and Cordelia and Wes exchanged speaking glances.
"He already left," Wes said. "He said he'd be back in a couple hours."
"Oh," Angel said, in a small voice, and his shoulders slumped. Sighing, he went into his office and shut the door, but Wes and Cordy could see him settling into the familiar "brood" position. Both of them sighed simultaneously, and after exchanging another look, Wes went back behind the counter for a whispered conference.
"He's going back to the way he was before Doyle showed up," Cordelia hissed. "Except he's worse. Every time he finds out that Doyle's left for a while, he goes in there and broods, which is quite a lot since Doyle's been gone more and more recently."
"It's not Doyle's fault," Wes said quietly. "There's something wrong between them, though I'm not entirely sure what it is. Doyle won't tell me, but I think it has something to do with Doyle's state."
"What do you mean- oh," she said, getting it. "Ghost, can't touch. Bet it's driving Angel crazy."
"Doyle's not too happy about it either," Wes said. "That's why he's always leaving. When they're together during the day with no evil fighting to distract them, it hurts them both to not be able to touch. And it hurts a lot."
"Neither of them is really happy anymore, Wes," she said quietly. "What are we supposed to do?"
"What can we do?" he asked helplessly. "They're never going to be happy as long as they can't touch, and I can't just magically make Doyle tangible, so there's nothing…" His voice trailed off and the two of them stared at each other, a sudden idea sparking in both their eyes.
"Did you just get the same Eureka that I did?" Cordelia asked.
"If your Eureka was about finding some sort of spell to turn Doyle tangible, then yes, I did. I'm not sure it's ever been done before, but I could check a few sources for ideas… the scrolls of Elysium, or Borkkog texts, or…" He trailed off into silence, his lips moving as he mentally tallied various difference sources, and then he scrabbled for pencil and paper. Cordelia, anticipating him, silently handed them to him and watched him with interest as he scribbled several titles in a barely legible handwriting, then handed the list to her.
"Check for those in Angel's personal library," he said. "I'm fairly sure that those will be there. And I'm going to go call around to look for the rest."
"Why are you calling? Why aren't I manning the phones and you going through the dusty books? Because I'm usually phone-girl."
"I can pronounce the titles. You can't. But hopefully, you can look at the covers and the list in your hand and be able to see the similarities between them."
"Oh," she said, and then ignored the insult- true though it was- and moved on. "You want me to tag Gunn on this too?" she asked. "He's pretty good at tracking things down."
"You can if you want to," Wes said with a fair attempt at indifference. Something else lurked in his eyes, though. "I'm going to go start calling now."
She sighed- the two of them were the most stubborn males she'd ever met, and she'd known quite a few- and went into the back room to start going through books.
Doyle walked through the door, then called out, "Wes, Princess, lunch is sitting on the doorstep. Kinda warm out there, might want to hurry up or it's gonna start cooking."
He got no response, so he went in search of the two of them. He didn't feel like going to the trouble of opening and shutting the door, because it took a lot of energy that he didn't have at the moment. The two of them would have to get their own lunches, but he wasn't kidding when he said that they were going to start cooking. Not that he could actually feel the heat, but he'd taken a look at a thermometer a while ago and it was pretty up there. Not to mention the humidity.
He found Cordelia in the room that Angel had designated for his library, thumbing through a small book and squinting to read the cramped handwriting. He stood there, silent and invisible, for a few minutes, just watching her read. Then he moved closer and peered over her shoulder, trying to figure out what she was reading.
It was the diary of a Valkesh demon who'd turned away from his heritage of maiming and killing and became a scientist. Thinking hard about what he'd learned about that particular Valkesh, he felt a chill rush down his back.
The Valkesh had researched ghosts. Looking almost frantically through the titles of all the other books stacked on the table in front of her, he found that every single one of them was related to ghosts in some way. So the Princess was reading up on him. The question that needed to be answered, at least by him, was why.
Not wanting to let her know that he'd seen what she was up to, he sneaked back to the doorway and made himself visible before calling out her name. Her head jerked up and she slammed the book shut, a blush forming on her cheeks, before she snapped, "What?"
"Lunch," he said mildly. "It's sitting outside. Come get it."
"Why's it sitting outside?" she demanded. "Don't you know it's in the upper nineties out there? Not to mention the humidity."
"Too tired to open the door," he explained. "I've been all over the freaking city in the last couple hours, Princess, and I don't have much left in me, okay?"
She drew back a little- the Doyle she'd gotten to know didn't snap. Hell, as far as she knew he didn't even have a temper at all. But she was seeing a little of it now, and it worried her. It worried her a lot, because it spoke all too eloquently of how bad things between him and Angel had gotten.
"Sorry," he said softly, seeing the look on her face. "As I said, I'm tired. It leaves me short of temper. I'm gonna go talk to Angel for a minute and then drop into the Dreaming. I'll be okay in an hour or so."
"Alright," she said, equally softly. She knew that slipping completely into the Dreaming, for him, was equivalent to sleeping for days. It was rare that he needed that kind of boost, and it really worried her that he needed it now.
"I'll just… go, then," he said hesitantly, and ghosted across the floor to Angel's office. The door was shut, but he just slipped through the wood and into the dark interior of his lover's room.
"Angel," he said quietly. "I'm back."
"I'm glad," Angel whispered. He pulled his feet off his desk and planted them on the floor, spinning around until he was facing Doyle. "I wasn't sure when you'd be back."
"I told Cordy and Wes I'd be back in a couple hours," he said, but then he saw the look on Angel's face. "You weren't sure I was coming back at all," he said slowly. "Why didn't you think I'd come back?"
"I don't know," Angel said, and his voice was distant, dreamy. "Everyone goes away in the end. Or I go away. Eventually, everyone gets lost to the demons..."
"Angel," Doyle said helplessly, reaching out a soothing hand. It stopped inches from Angel's skin, and he stared at his hand, tears of frustration in his eyes. "Angel, love, look at me. Angel," he said again, when his lover didn't look up, and still Angel didn't lift his head. Doyle looked around for something to lift and throw at him- there, a coat hanger, over in the corner. But when he tried to lift it he couldn't- he was too damn drained to lift a simple coat hanger. He glared down at his hand again, then abruptly slid into invisibility and zoomed up through the ceiling, then through the walls to Angel's room.
He stretched out on the bed, but he couldn't feel the smoothness of the satin sheets, or smell Angel's scent on the pillow. When he stroked a cautious hand over the wood, his hand went through, but he couldn't feel anything. He couldn't feel anything at all. It was as if he wasn't even there. As if he wasn't real.
He pulled his hand back out and stared at it despairingly. This was the source of all the trouble and pain. His touch, and the way he couldn't. He was a ghost. He wasn't tangible, he couldn't touch. Couldn't feel. He could observe the world around him, but he would never really be a part of it.
Hell, he couldn't even get drunk anymore.
Ghost-soft, ghost-quiet, he eased through the walls and down the stairs, keeping himself visible but barely so, just mist unless you looked a little closer. Except here everyone looked a little closer- this was Angel Investigations, and everyone had to look a little closer, or one day it could mean their lives.
Except Doyle, because he didn't have one. He was dead. Funny how the Fates had gifted him on that- he finally got what he wanted, only to find out that it was nothing at all like what he wanted, it only looked like it. He got Angel, and a best friend in Wes, and a life to be rebuilt after death, except, and here was the catch, ladies and gentleman, he couldn't touch anything. There would be no kisses from Angel, and none of the casual touches between friends bound a friendship tighter in some primal way. His skin burned to be touched, but there was nothing there to touch. Some days the only thing that kept him sane was the knowledge that people could see him, that they spoke to him and relied on him. Because of them, he was real. Without them, he would just fade away.
"Doyle?" Wes said from the foot of the steps. "Are you all right?"
"Yes. No. I don't know," Doyle said, and then he laughed, low and raw in his throat. "Oh who am I kidding. Of course I'm not okay. I'm not sure that anything is okay, not really."
"Doyle," Wes started, but Doyle interrupted him.
"Am I real?" he demanded. Wes stared at him for a long moment, confusion in his dark velvet eyes. "Am I real?" he asked again, but this time his voice was softer. "You see me, right? You can hear my voice? I'm really here talking to you, so I must be real, no matter that I'm not really in this world, I'm just an observer, so does that make me halfway real?"
"You're real, Doyle," Wes said softly, soothingly, eyeing him as one eyes a particularly dangerous animal that just got loose from the zoo. "You're here, and I'm talking to you. Listen to me, Doyle, Cordelia and I are looking into a few things, and soon we may have a way to, to change your basic state, to make you solid, so that you can touch things, if you'll just give us a few days-"
"I can't listen to this now," Doyle interrupted, desperately trying to stop the flow of words. "I can't think about this. I can't be around here, not with Angel, it's killing me and I. have. to. go."
Wes watched sadly as he fled across the lobby and through the door. He closed his eyes, took his glasses off and gripped the bridge of his nose fiercely between his thumb and his forefinger. "I'm so sorry, Doyle," he whispered to the empty air. "But I have to try."
Distantly he heard Angel's office door opening, followed by the mingled sounds of Cordelia's heels and Angel's heavier booted tread. Both stopped a few feet away from him, and he raised a despairing gaze to Angel's face.
"He's gone," he said.
"He can't be," Angel said, and it looked like all the air he didn't need had been sucked entirely out of his lungs so his response came out as nothing more than a whisper. "He's gone for good?"
"I don't know," Wesley said slowly. "I really don't know."
"Can your kind get drunk?" a voice behind Lorne inquired.
"With enough alcohol to literally float a battleship, yes," Lorne responded calmly, not bothering to turn around. "Anything less just merits a pleasant buzz. What's wrong, Doyle?"
"I find myself in desperate need of getting drunk," Doyle responded, and slipped around from behind him and through the bar till he was standing where he could look Lorne in the eye. "Circumstances being what they are, though, I can't get drunk. Still, I thought that maybe if I hung around here long enough I could watch other people getting drunk and get drunk by proxy, sort of. Had to get out anyway."
"You've been doing that a lot recently," Lorne said quietly. "You always head here. Why?"
"Why which?" Doyle asked, staring with interest at the demon currently getting onto the stage. "He's gotta be a bass, with that huge chest of his."
"His singing is actually more along the lines of grunts, actually," Lorne said. "And why to both."
Doyle paused a moment to listen to the demon's "singing," and then shuddered eloquently. "I come here because I've known no one else in LA as long as I've known you. Besides, this place is all about escape and more about finding your way. And I had to get out because it's starting to kill me to stay there."
"Can't touch," Lorne said, knowing from weeks of a mopey Doyle in his bar what was wrong with his old friend. "Can't say as I blame you for wanting to get out of there."
Both of them winced in unison as the demon grated his way through the end of the song. "And now Wes is searching for a spell to turn me solid again. As if it wasn't enough of a mess as it was."
"I hate to tell you this, sweetie, but Wes looking for a spell to turn you solid isn't exactly a bad thing. It's more of a everything-you-want-possibly-coming-true thing."
"Exactly!" Doyle said, his eyes on the demon now lumbering off the stage. "Everything I wanted. So far, 'everything I wanted' has always turned into... not. Can't hope for that now."
"Listen," Lorne began, and then had to stop and turn to the demon that had just sang to give him the answer he needed. "Go home, kiddo," he told the hulking beast. "You know that your life partner wasn't actually cheating on you. Don't let your suspicions ruin a great thing you two have. You know that the whole rape and pillage thing isn't as fun without her by your side. Go home."
That settled, he turned back to Doyle, who wore a faintly amused expression on his face. "Listen, he said again, "You can't just keep yourself locked away like this. You gotta hope for something, even if your hopes usually get trampled on. If you don't you end up hurting yourself and everyone around you."
"Is that Lorne talking, or the Host?" Doyle asked curiously.
"I was speaking as your friend," Lorne said, "but get your sweet little ass onstage and I'll tell you what I see when you sing."
"Fair enough," Doyle said.
Wesley waited until he was well out of sight of the hotel before making a right turn and winding his way back towards Caritas. He didn't want Angel to know where he was going, but he needed to talk to Doyle, and he was fairly sure that Caritas was the place to find him. If it wasn't... then he had a very long night ahead of him.
Luckily, he hadn't guessed wrong. Doyle was just getting on stage when he entered the bar, and he immediately ducked into a shadowy corner so as not to distract his friend. Hearing Doyle sing was pretty much always a pleasure, and he didn't want to do anything to make him not sing.
He closed his eyes when Doyle stepped up to the mike and started singing. He didn't recognize the song, but Doyle's crooning tenor made the bittersweet lyrics, about lost loves and past regrets, wind tendrils of pain around his heart. He didn't open his eyes once until the very end of the song, when Doyle's voice trailed off into a whisper, then into nothing, and then his eyes snapped open and his gaze focused on the Host, leaning against the bar with something very like sorrow on his face. It hurt Wes even more to think about it, because he knew the Host didn't sorrow lightly, and that he did now only because of what he read in Doyle during the song.
Doyle walked slowly off the stage amid splitting whistles and cheers, and made his way over to the bar and the Host. "So?" he asked, his voice striving for lightness, but failing. Lorne shook his head and just rested one hand in the air just above Doyle's shoulder, not able to convey his empathy through contact but wanting to show how much he wished he could.
"You're in a world of pain, boyo," he said softly. "I didn't realize till now just how much. I can't tell you much, but there's real happiness in your future. I don't know when and I don't know how, but the answer will come to you like a bolt of lightning." When Doyle still looked doubtful, Lorne smiled at him. "It'll get better, you'll see," he said. "Trust me on this one. Have I ever led you wrong?"
"No," Doyle said with a smile. "And in the meantime, let's see about this getting-drunk-by-proxy thing."
"Doyle?" a voice questioned from behind him, and Doyle spun around to face Wesley. Immediately his eyes shuttered over, and Lorne gave a sympathetic smile to Wes.
"I don't want to talk about it," Doyle said. "You know I don't want to talk about it. And I can't go back, not now, maybe not ever."
"I didn't come here for that," Wes said. "You should know me better than that by now. I'm just here as your friend, you know. I don't want to talk about magicking you solid, or about making you come home because Angel's miserable. Which he is, by the way. I just came to talk about anything you want to talk about, and nothing at all if that's what you'd like."
"Will you get drunk for me?" Doyle asked. "I'm hoping that if I can watch someone getting drunk, I can pretend I'm drunk too."
"I would love to get drunk for you," Wes said gravely, but with a small spark of humor in his eyes. Yeah, things weren't all wrong yet. Somehow, they'd get better.
"Like a bolt of lightning, as I told Doyle," the Host said, and when Wes shot him a startled glance he just shrugged. "You were humming."
"I need a drink," Wes said, and slid onto a barstool. "Quite possibly several drinks."
"I knew you were good folk," Doyle said happily, and settled on the barstool next to him. "So, what do you want to talk about?"
"You're drunk," Cordelia told him when he stumbled into the lobby of the hotel. He looked at her with a puzzled expression on his face.
"I know," he said. "What time is it?"
"It's about three o'clock in the morning," she said. "Why are you here, and drunk?"
"You see, I was just trying to figure out if it really is as odd that you're here as I though it was," he said. "And it is, but then again, we work for Angel, so maybe the odd really is normal after all. What was the question?"
"Why are you here, and drunk?" she repeated. "I mean, I don't really care why you went and got drunk, but why did you come back here instead of your own place?"
"Have you ever tried to drive a motorcycle drunk?" he asked her. "Disaster. Here was closer. I was hoping that closer meant I was less likely to hit something and kill myself."
"Well, did you?" she demanded. "Not kill yourself, because it's obvious you're alive, but hit something." Suddenly she peered closer at him and laid two fingers across his throat. "You are alive, right? A pulse and everything? You didn't get all vampy and soulless or anything, did you?"
He batted her hand away. "Yes, I'm alive," he said irritably, "and no, I didn't hit anything. Now, all I really want to do is curl up and sleep it off, if you don't mind."
"I do, actually," she told him. "I don't trust you drunk. Even if all you intend to do is sleep. I should get you home, where I can watch over you."
"Oh, for Christ's sake," he said in irritation. "I've been drunk before, you know. Amazingly, I can fall asleep without supervision. What am I, six?"
"I'm calling Gunn," she said. "Since even drunk you're stronger than me. Which is sad, by the way. That you, of all people, are stronger than me. It's also rather depressing."
"Thank you oh so very much," he muttered, and then shot a lethal glare at her. "And you are not calling Gunn."
"Well, no one else will be able to bully you," she pointed out. "I mean, Angel could, but he's already asleep."
"And so is Gunn, I'm sure," he said with a faint tinge of desperation. "So no need to call him. Just leave me alone, and I'll go to sleep and not trouble you further."
"He's doing sweeps," she told him. "Only a couple blocks away. He'd be happy to."
"You know better than that, Cordelia," Wes said quietly, suddenly sounding entirely sober. "You know that every time we're in a room together we end up at each other's throats. What on Earth could induce him to babysit me, especially when I don't need to be babysat?"
"He'll do it, Wes," she said. "I promise."
"I don't want you to promise, Cordelia," he told her. "I don't want you to call him at all. I just want you to leave me alone to sleep." She looked at him for a moment, a peculiar look in her eyes, and he groaned as he recognized it. "And I don't want you to play matchmaker," he said. "Now go away and let me sleep."
"Your neck's going to hurt tomorrow," she warned. "Don't come crying to me."
"Cordelia," he snapped, and she held up her hands.
"No need to get all huffy about it," she said, slightly offended. "I was just trying to help."
"Don't try so hard," he said with a sigh. "I don't think I can survive you trying to help me. I've got enough problems at the moment."
"Doyle?" she asked, dropping her offended act and coming over to sit next to him. "That's where you were, isn't it?"
"I was at Caritas, yes."
"How is he?"
"He was trying to get drunk by proxy," he said with a faint tinge of amusement. "He told me that maybe if he could watch someone getting drunk, he could pretend that he was drunk too."
"Which explains the you being drunk part," she said, smiling. "Did it work?"
"Not particularly," he sighed, "but it was worth it anyway. It was nice to see him smile again."
"It has been a while," she said, and they sat in silence for a moment. Finally she shook her head and stood up again. "I'm going home, finally," she said, and looked down at him with a question in her eyes. "You're sure you don't want me to-"
"Don't call Gunn," he interrupted. "I'm sure. Thank you though, for your concern."
"What are friends for?" she asked flippantly, but she smiled at him and rested one hand on his shoulder for an instant before leaving, shutting the door with a quiet click behind her.
He sighed and stretched out on the couch, staring up at the dark arch of the ceiling. Doyle... there really wasn't anything he could do to help his friend except try to find the spell he wanted, but he wasn't sure it could be done. And even if he could find it, convincing Doyle to let him do it would be a considerable challenge, since the ghost was so afraid to hope for anything to go right. Doyle may have found peace with himself, but he was still himself, and he wasn't perfect, no matter how much he seemed to be, some days. He was still Doyle with Doyle's imperfections, and that was what made him so endearing to everyone around him. But right now those same imperfections might very well rip his unlife wide apart.
The front door creaked open and he shot to a seated position before he made out the outline of Gunn's smoothly shaven head against the moonlight spilling out from behind him. He relaxed back against the couch cushions, his heart still pounding wildly, and said, "What are you doing here?"
"Cordelia called me, told me you were drunk and needed someone to make sure you didn't get hurt or something."
He sighed and let his head loll back till he could stare at the ceiling again. "I'm not that drunk," he said. "And I can handle myself drunk, you know. I'm thirty years old, and I've been drinking beer most of my life. I told Cordelia not to call you, and then I told her again, and when that didn't sink in I told her again, and-"
"And she promptly went outside and called me," Gunn said. "Relax, English. It's not your fault. She worries about you. It ain't exactly a bad thing, you know. Relish the worrying that you can get."
"I know," he said with a sigh. "And it's good having her look after me- most of the time. This is not one of those times." He lifted his head up to stare at Gunn. "You don't need to stay here, though. I don't want to keep you." A little stiffness had crept into his voice, no matter how hard he'd tried to keep it from getting there. He was so used to the way that he and Gunn clashed every time that they were together that he couldn't help getting a little defensive in preparation for whatever verbal darts Gunn had in store this time.
"You're not keeping me," Gunn said easily, and stepped out of the doorway, into the room. He propped his battleaxe against the wall and shut the door behind him, then moved silently across the lobby floor to sit on the couch next to Wes. "I'd just finished when Cordy called, and I figured you were all right but I thought I'd stop by anyway and check. She was more worried about your emotions than your blood alcohol count."
"Doyle," Wes said with a sigh. "Everything's a mess. It was so perfect for just a little while when he first came back, and then everything started to implode."
"Angel brooding, you upset because Doyle's your best friend, Cordelia upset because everyone else is upset, and Doyle just plain heartbroken," Gunn summed up. "Yeah, I know what you mean."
"And even with all the beer I drank I still can't seem to relax," Wes admitted with a sigh. "Shoulders are in knots that would fell an ox."
He jumped a bit, startled, when he felt a light touch on his shoulder, but then he forced his muscles to loosen just a little bit and his heart to slow it's frantic beat. "Turn around," Gunn said, almost in a whisper, and Wes shifted on the couch till his back was fully towards the bigger man.
He waited for a moment, breath caught in his throat, then almost moaned when he felt Gunn's huge hands kneading at his shoulders, spreading heat across his chilled skin and leaching away all the tension. This was one of his favorite daydreams, or a close enough approximation- Gunn taking care of him. Admittedly, those daydreams usually turned slightly more erotic, but he wasn't about to let himself think about that now- he was just going to enjoy the rare feeling of ease and quiet in Gunn's presence.
"Done," Gunn said after a little while. "I'd go longer but my hands are all cramped up from holding that battleaxe on sweeps tonight."
Wesley turned around slowly and met his eyes for a brief instant. "Let me," he said, taking one of Gunn's big hands between his smaller ones. He began to gently rub and massage the wide palm, keeping his head bent down and his gaze focused on nothing in particular. Gunn let him do it, and when he tugged his hand free after a little while, making Wesley's heart contract, it was only to put his other hand in his grasp in a clear offer for another massage.
"Done," Wes said after a little while, and he dropped Gunn's hand suddenly like it had bitten him. He leaned back and looked up at the ceiling again, thinking that pretty soon he'd have to find something else to stare at because Gunn was going to figure out that he was only doing it so that he wouldn't look at Gunn. "I haven't been this relaxed in... I don't know how long, really. A long time."
"I know the feeling," Gunn said with a sigh. "And I haven't even been around here that much recently."
Wes didn't say anything, not wanting to break the fragile peace, but apparently his thoughts were all too clear on his face, because Gunn suddenly looked at him sharply. Wes saw the familiar signs of a fight brewing in Gunn's eyes, and he silently cursed his sometimes too-expressive face as he mentally scrambled for a way to avert the coming emotional apocalypse.
"You don't have to say anything," Gunn said bitterly, before Wes had a chance to respond. "I know what you're thinking. I've been abandoning AI for whatever reason and you think I'm just doing this for kicks."
"I wasn't thinking that," Wes said, though his thoughts had been running along those lines. The abandoning lines, not the for kicks lines, but there was enough truth in Gunn's accusation that his voice had blanked out in defense, and Gunn took it as a confession of guilt.
"I hate it when you do that," Gunn snapped. "You get all proper and British and I can practically see the starch in your spine and the teacup in your hand and that little British sneer that means that you're thinking how above this you are."
"You're not a great improvement," Wes said, smoothly and very British. "You always get that little smirk, the one that says 'Oh I'm a big tough black guy, watch me swagger around and think how above all this human emotion I am." Which was less British, but nasty enough that Wes figured it counted anyway.
"I'm leaving," Gunn said, getting up and walking towards the door.
"What you do best," Wes said snidely to his back, and watched as the muscles along Gunn's spine tensed.
"It was a mistake coming here tonight," Gunn said, and picked up his battleaxe. "I'm gone."
"Yes, you are," Wesley said to the empty doorway. "And it's always a mistake, now."
Then he curled up on his side and buried his face in his arms to muffle the noise as he cried himself to sleep.