Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters except for the ones that I created like Hope, Dominic, and Jocelyn.
CHAPTER 7-FIRST BIG MEETING
"Have you heard the good news," Wesley asked with a tired look on his face as he walked up the final few steps and then entered the office that he and Faith shared in the attic. Hope was busy taking a nap in a crib that sat along one wall while Dominic snored softly in a playpen near Faith's desk. A radio was softly playing a Mozart cd that Wesley had gotten Faith for her last birthday after she had mentioned that while pregnant with Hope classical music had helped her to calm down and relax.
"That depends, does if have to do with the case that we're helping Willow with," Faith replied softly with a small yawn as she stopped typing and looked back over her shoulder at her husband.
"Nope…it's something much better, they found the demon that gave Spike his soul back," Wesley started to say softly with an excited smile on his face as he leaned over and gave Faith a kiss on the cheek before Faith spun around quickly in her chair and sat up in her chair, leaving her nose to nose with Wesley.
"Which means that he can take the trials and make his soul permanently his," Faith whispered back with a merry grin on her face before she reached out and pulled Wesley into an unintentionally passionate kiss.
"And finally have a shot at a real future with Cordelia, no more worrying about the gypsy curse," Wesley added in a sweet whisper as he pulled back only so far so that the tips of the two's noses were touching.
"Bet he was happy about that," Faith said with a slightly louder voice as she half twirled back around in her chair, though keeping a hold of one of Wesley's hands as she pulled his one arm tightly around her, almost in a hug, before Wesley took the hint and encircled her with his other arm, with Faith resting her chin in his elbow.
"You could say that, he hugged Cordelia so hard when she first told him that he nearly snapped her in two, he was ready to leave before I even left the hotel," Wesley replied with a happily sarcastic tone to his voice as he lifted his fingers and brushed some of Faith's hair back off of her shoulder and then began to trail a line of kisses up from her now exposed shoulder up towards her ear.
"This is going to change everything you know, Angel and Cordelia finally together…Spike will be devastated, he loved getting under Angel's skin about being with Buffy while Angel couldn't be with anyone," Faith joked with a sly grin on her face before Wesley stood fully back up and nodded his head.
"I'm sure that Buffy will be able to help him through this difficult time though, besides if she can't then Joyce will keep him busy," Wesley added with a tired yawn as he walked away from Faith and towards his desk as Faith turned fully around in her chair and sat up straight.
"Speaking of keeping busy, we have that meeting with Willow and Oz tomorrow morning, Kate is getting back and she wants to make sure that we're all on the same page, and Dawn is staying with a friend through the weekend so we're going to have to find someone to baby-sit Hope and Dominic," Faith said with a frustrated frown on her face as she leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees and looking straight at Wesley pulled out his chair and sat down.
"We could always ask Gunn and Fred to watch them, I don't think that they have any plans for tomorrow morning, and if all else fails then we could always ask Anne to watch them," Wesley offered with a deep in though look in his eyes as he scooted his chair up closer to his desk and glanced down at a couple of the files on the desk in front of him.
"I know she's an old friend and she's doing great work at the shelter, but I don't want Hope and Dominic exposed to that situation, I had to much of that in my own childhood and I swore that if I ever had any kids of my own that they'd never have to go through anything like that," Faith said back with a somber and depressed look on her face before she scowled as she pulled on a button on the shirt that she was wearing and it came off.
"They won't Faith, before we got married I made a promise to you that our children would not know any of the hardships that we did, and I plan on keeping that promise," Wesley said with a very sincere and serious look on his face as he set the papers back down on his desk and then pushed his chair back and stood up.
"I remember, you took me to that fancy Greek restaurant, the one with the bad lighting, and that old guy played the piano for us and you pulled me out onto the dance floor, saying something about having something very important to tell me," Faith said with a slight snicker as she shook her head and slipped the loose button into the pocket of her jeans as Wesley slipped around the corner of his desk.
"And I remember that I nearly had to kill you to get you onto that dance floor, you kept saying that if I wanted to dance then we should have gone to one of the clubs that we had passed on the way there," Wesley said with a nostalgic look of happiness on his face as he walked over to the cd player and pushed stop before switching cd's. Faith was about to ask him what he was doing when an all to familiar melody wafted through the air. Faith wasn't overly fond of the artist or the piece in particular, but she had found that she could lose herself to that melody while slow dancing with Wesley. She guessed that was his intention as well when he held out his hand and asked her with his eyes if she cared to dance. Smiling like she hadn't since she was three Faith did her best to bow slightly in her seat before she took his hand and let him lead her over to an open area in the attic with a window that stood barely open nearby. Without barely moving Wesley reached over and flipped off the lights, letting the room be filled only with moonlight as he held Faith close and they swayed to the music.
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"Are you sure that she said eight," Oz asked with an impatient tone to his voice as he messed with his tie until it became to much of a distraction and she leaned over and forcefully straightened Oz's tie, nearly choking him in the process. Oz knew how to tie a tie however he rarely wore them, only when Kate was in town as she made it a point for the their department to look as professional as possible. A directive that caused Faith to have to dig into her closet to come up with something to wear, far from her usual faded blue jeans and comfortable shirt and shoes. She had ended up picking out a business suit that she had bought for the hearing that had happened when the reporter had sued Angel. Though it was a little big for her she still liked how it made her look all professional and very far removed from her upbringing and old lifestyle. It hadn't hurt that Wesley had asked her if she had ever done it in an empty courtroom. She had countered with a soft snicker of a question asking him if he thought that they could get away with it right in the middle of the trial with everyone in the room and everything proceeding. Faith was about to lean over and ask Wesley a new question, as he was dressed in a dark blue suit himself, but Kate walked into the room looking unhappy with Groo walking closely behind her, trying to get her to drink some sort of Pylean concoction.
"I'm fine Groo, I don't need to drink…whatever that is," Kate said with an unhappy and hurried tone to her voice as she shook her head and set the large pile of folders that she was carrying down onto the table that everyone else was sitting around.
"It is gliesalon juice, said to help soothe both the body and mind," Groo said with a concerned tone to his voice and look on his face as he was careful to keep from spilling some of the juice before he set it down on the table beside Kate's stack of folders. For a second Kate looked ready to snap back at him angrily but she bit her tongue, took a deep breath, and relented. Being the leader of the division had put a terrible amount of pressure on Kate and in no large amount of time every member of the team had incurred her wrath that truly was not their fault. The only thing keeping her sane since the formation of the team was Groo and his seemingly endless amount of patience and love for her. At her retirement dinner Kate would admit that had it not been for those aspects of Groo's personality and character she would never have made it through those early days.
"I don't…oh alright," Kate started to argue with a overworked look on her face before she relented and took a sip, surprised to find that it didn't taste terrible.
"Have fun in Washington," Faith asked with a relaxed smile on her face as she scratched a sore spot on her wrist before Wesley pulled a small tube of cream and handed it to her with a rather stern look on his face.
"Not really Faith, though I highly doubt that anyone can have any fun there," Kate replied with a somber tone to her voice before she finished off the rest of the juice and smiled at Groo, prompting him to take the cup and then leave the room.
"Well at least you were able to get the extra funding, even if it wasn't as much as you were hoping for," Wesley added with a calm and optimistic smirk on his face as he sat up in his chair and opened up a folder before he began to search for a pen in his pockets, finally realizing that he hadn't remembered to bring one. With a guilty and embarrassed look on his face he started to turn to Willow to ask for a pen when he felt Faith hit his arm. He started to turn back around to ask her with his eyes why she had hit him when he saw that she was holding a pen in her hand and an impatient look on her face. Smiling sheepishly he took the pen and turned back to his file while Faith could only smile and shake her head.
"True, though we're still far below our fundraising goal to build our own offices where it'll just be us with the special holding cells where we don't have to borrow paperclips from the other officers," Katy said with an impatient and unhappy smile on her face before she threw in a bit of humor at the end.
"Yeah, I hate having to do that," Oz mumbled with a sarcastic smirk on his face as he loosened up his tie a bit and tapped the end of his pen on his pad of paper.
"Anyway, anyone want to bring me up to speed on our current case," Kate asked with a tired and weary look on her face as she sat down in her chair just as Groo reentered the room and took his seat next to hers.
"Not much to tell really, almost twenty victims, all just dropped dead like they were alive one moment and dead the next, coroner can't find a single reason why they're not all still alive, Wesley has a theory that the deaths were caused by a Tavivosh demon, though because of the fact that they were supposed to be extinct and are invisible until they attack we haven't really gotten very far on that particular front," Faith said with a confident tone to her voice and look on her face as she sat up straight in her chair and casually scribbled a few notes down on the pad of paper in front of her, catching the look of pride in Wesley's eyes when she was through.
"Sounds like you guys have been having fun, what's the possibility of any or all of these killings being caused by natural causes or a human criminal," Kate said with a tired smile on her face as she ran a hand through her hair and turned away from Faith to look straight down the rectangular table towards Willow.
"Zip, zilch, the big nada, there is not a single natural or human related cause for any of these deaths that we've found so far, I've come up empty with the net and at the moment Wesley's demon theory is the best thing that we've got," Willow replied with an anxious and unhappy frown on her face as she began to tap the end of her pen on the small stack of files in front of her.
"I see, so then where do we go from here, we can't exactly sit on our hands while more people keep dropping dead, do we have any leads on these Tavivosh demons," Kate said quietly with a calm nod of her head before she looked up and at each and every person sitting at the table.
"No…not at the moment," Oz said with a serious and unhappy frown on his face as he looked briefly at Kate before looking back down at his tie.
"But we do have a general idea where they might be congregating, if it is them," Faith added with a cautious expression on her face as she laid down her pen on the pad of paper and interlaced her fingers on the top of the table, trying to sound confidant and like she knew what she was talking about.
"They like to assemble and gather around bodies of water, and seeing as how we're only a stones throw away from the ocean their lair or camp could be anywhere," Wesley added with a grim look on his face as he had laid out a small map of the nearby coast on the table in front of him.
"So what you're saying is that I should conduct an exhaustive search of the entire California coast," Kate asked with a fair amount of sarcasm in her voice as Wesley suddenly felt very foolish and couldn't help but look away, his spirits lifted a bit when Faith slipped her right shoe off and rubbed his ankle a bit, not wanting to play footsy but more as a small show of support without being overly dramatic and out of place.
"It might be possible for me to cast a sort of locater spell and see if I can find an are of high demon concentration, sure we might get a few false leads but there aren't to many demon groups that nest or headquarter themselves by the water, most of them stay far enough inland," Willow said with an optimistic look on her face as she looked up only briefly as she began to scribble down the words to a spell on her pad of paper.
"That's a good place to start Willow but unless you can somehow make it a long range spell you could be at it for days if not weeks," Wesley stated with a sobering tone to his voice as he leaned back in his chair and turned from looking at Willow to looking down the table at Kate.
"Maybe we could research these demons a bit more and figure out which beaches and waterways would be their most likely hideouts and go from there," Faith added with a helpful look on her face as she pulled her foot back from Wesley's ankle and bent down just enough to put her shoe back on.
"Good idea, Wesley and Faith I want you two to find out all that you can on these demons and give Willow whatever help she needs, while the rest of us continue on working as usual, this isn't our only case," Kate said with a tired look on her face before she seemed to nod her head in finality and then close the files in front of her and stack them back up into a pile.
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"That woman is in serious need of a vacation," Faith grumbled with a relaxed tone to her voice as she slumped down into her chair in the attic and put her feet up after having gotten home and changed clothes. Her business suit had been put back in the corner of the hallway closet and now she had on one of Wesley's old baggy shirts and her favorite pair of shorts.
"I agree, however she is in charge of the unit and as such our boss," Wesley said with a tired look in his eyes as he sat down on the edge of Faith's desk and started to tickle the underside of her left calf.
"Wimp," Faith grumbled back with a tired pout on her face as she ran her hands through her hair and ruffled it up a bit.
"Cute dear, now may I ask how are you going to be able to help me with this research when it's all in an ancient demon language that only five other people in the world know how to read," Wesley stated at first with a serious and almost angry look on his face before he switched gears and picked Faith's feet up off of her desk and set them down in his lap. He couldn't help but smile as he watched the gears in Faith's mind turn as she tried to come up with a reply that would prove her worth in the matter while still not making her look stupid. Seeing if he could affect the outcome of that thinking Wesley slowly started to tickle the bottoms of her feet before moving on to her ankle, the back of her calf, and then to the back of her knee, finally ending up tracing a line of tickles up the back of her thigh and only stopping just below her butt when he hit the bottom of her shorts. The whole time that he was doing this Faith stayed silent, watching Hope and Dominic in their playpens out of the corner of her eye. But she couldn't keep a pleasured smile from creeping up onto her lips along the way.
"Well…Hope needs a bath and Dominic needs to take his medication, so I'll leave you to the fun stuff," Faith finally replied with an embarrassed look on her face, as that was all that she could come up with, before she reluctantly brushed Wesley's hand away and stood up. She forced herself not to look back as she picked both of her children up and walked out of the attic.
END OF CHAPTER 7