Disclaimers: These things are not mine. Wesley's fondness for 12-year Lagavulin and his lack of sales resistance are canon. The rest of this craziness is down to me. Due to caffeine rush, I'm running faster than the speed of my betas, so all mistakes are mine. Thanks to Stoney and InLoveWithNight for helpful comments.
II. My Beamish BoyWesley had hardly spent any of the money that he made from Wolfram & Hart. Same old car, same apartment, same frozen dinners. He had even given up the stupid-impulse purchases from late-night TV or E-bay or Zharkon's Mystical Weapons emporium -- the result of the philosophy that, if you were going to be in debt up to your eyeballs until you died, you may as well own a collapsible sword, or DVDs of every season of Highlander, or a knife that could cut through tin cans.Still, his self-enforced Spartanism allowed for one small indulgence and, on the day that the mind-boggling sum materialized in his bank account -- "Sorcery?" he asked; Harmony rolled her eyes and said "Direct deposit." -- Wesley went to the liquor store down the block from his flat and shelled out three hundred dollars to special-order a case of twelve-year Lagavulin direct from the distillery in remote Scotland. Over the years, Wesley had been in the same store to buy beer, wine, the occasional mid-label vodka or gin-in-a-plastic-bottle but never whiskey because once you had a taste for the real stuff, you didn't insult your tastebuds with knockoffs or blends. The clerk, who had sold him most of that cheap garbage, smiled. "Moving up in the world?" Wes tried to smile back as he said, "Nothing but the best."
He would have given that reason to anyone who asked. (No one did. No one cared.) He drank single malt because it was the best, a taste acquired in his undergraduate club at Cambridge. An essential link to the old country for an Englishman making his way in the world, a memento to keep in the desk drawer and pull out and share, man to man, as an occasionally luxury, with a particularly valued client. To himself, he would have added that Lagavulin reminded him of summer days rambling through the ruins of Dunyveg Castle with Annie MacDonald, while she whispered in his ear about a thousand brave Islaymen marching to Bannockburn to fight for Robert the Bruce, and he answered "Yes, the English are tyrannical bloody bastards, you know my mother's American, right? Actually we're all Russian and Scottish on that side --" and anything else he thought she wanted to hear until she kissed him just to shut him up.
Now, stepping through the oak double doors of this almost-forgotten room, Wesley realized what a load of bollocks that explanation would have been. He knew that the Scotch had nothing to do with Cambridge or dirty weekends in the Highlands. What he had craved was the smell of the stuff, the whiff of mystery and power the essence of adulthood that seeped over a small frightened boy as he approached a darkly silhouetted and austere form. As he made his cautious way forward to ask without asking for the mercy of the only court whose judgments he had learned to care for. Fine Scotch and old leather, parchment and aging tapestry, ink and decades of dust, made up the smell of his father's library.
Tonight, Roger Wyndam-Pryce, sat in his accustomed place, at the far end of the oak table, a pile of books before him, face hidden in his hands. Ashoka, Roger's longtime retainer stepped in behind Wesley, and the ever-present belt of wooden stakes rattled underneath the man's loose white shirt. Combination valet, driver, and body guard, Ashoka had been part of the household since Wesley could remember. Roger Wyndam-Pryce had spent a few of his early years in India, before independence, and he spoke vaguely enough to give the impression that Ashoka had come with the family from Bombay. Wesley knew for a fact that the man was from Swindon, played snooker for extra money, and got his many vaunted words of Eastern wisdom from the back of tea boxes. Wesley had also seen him take out two Ylppa demons with his bare hands in ten seconds flat, and so he knew enough to keep his amusement at Roger and Ashoka's shared pretensions to himself.
"Sahib," said Ashoka, "The young master has arrived." Wesley stepped through the threshold, conscious of his shoes, wet from the evening mist, on the Persian carpet.
Roger slowly raised his eyes, and Wesley had to struggle to stand still under that penetrating gaze. "Well, well, young man. You look a good deal like someone I used to know. Named for my wife's father, John Malcolm Wesley, I believe. And once he carried my name as well. But I must be mistaken. My son does not come to this place. Not, at least, of his own free will."
"What can I say? I suppose it's been a long time since I've slain a Jabberwock." Here, Father. I believe I've slain another. The words he used to say when he would walk into this room, a completed translation rolled in his nervous hands.
Now, Roger raised his eyebrows and rose from the chair, pushing slowly to his feet. "And how am I meant to answer? Come to my arms, my beamish boy?." He came toward his son, but Wesley did not move toward the embrace. It was all he could do simply to hold his ground. Then halfway around the table, a few feet away, Roger stopped, leaned back and thrust hands into the pockets of his tweed coat. "Are we not grown old for such games?"
"It's just as well. I'm not feeling especially beamish tonight." Wesley murmured, stuffing his hands into his own suede jacket, realizing too late how automatically he had mirrored his father's gesture. Wesley let his eyes travel up the walls with their ceiling high shelves of leather bindings. And even though he knew that Diogenes would have better luck in finding an honest man in Athens than any woman in this masculine holy of holies, he tried to sound surprised . "Mother's not here?"
"She's asleep," Roger answered. "Like civilized people. She'll see you in the morning." He took one hand from his pocket and gestured at the table. "We have little in the way of fatted calf, I'm afraid. Due to the meat scares -- that's a joke, son, you are permitted to smile." He reached down to a drawer in the table. "But I do have a well-aged single malt. Living in that blasted country, I don't even know if you even --"
"The Puritan influence in Los Angeles may not be quite what you have been led to believe. Even in California, we occasionally indulge."
"I was going to say, I don't know if you even appreciate the difference."
"I've probably been ruined by the insidious influence of smog and cable television and food that you can actually taste. But I'll chance it."
"I find I lose patience with sarcasm in my old age, Wesley. If you could manage to put aside that trademark -- and I must say, after more than thirty years, increasingly tiresome -- defensiveness, perhaps you might be ready to sit down and talk with your father, man to man."
"Yes," Wesley said, turning to glare at Ashoka. "Man to man to body guard. I assure you, Ashoka, we'll be quite --"
Ashoka lunged forward and grabbed Wesley's shoulder.
"Look out!" Wesley called. Moving on instinct, Wesley threw an elbow, pulled out of the bodyguard's grip, and threw the man to the ground. "Father, are you --?" He tried to turn but couldn't. His father had taken hold of his wrist. Wesley shook him off, whirled and tensed, ready to defend himself. He wished for faster fists. He wished for a Browning automatic. But his father had not attacked him; he had only gripped Wesley by the hand and pressed a cold metal object into his palm. Now, Roger leaped away, stood behind the table as though it were barricade, and stared intently at Wesley's hand.
Wesley looked from his father, wide-eyed and almost cowering, to Ashoka, struggling from the floor. shoulders squared and braced for attack. I'm not going to fight a couple of old men. But what the hell is going on here? He took in the intensity of both mens' gaze, and then looked down and saw the object in his hand. It was a small silver cross.
TBC