Author: Anna
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Warren/Andrew
Distribution: Usual sites, comms, lists. Anyone else, please ask.
Feedback: Delighted to receive. Constructive welcome.
Disclaimer: I want them, but they're not mine. The apartment is, though.
Note 1: Part 4 of the New York Series.
Note 2: Thanks to And and Christie for the prereads.
It was raining hard against the windows on the day he gave up. It was relentless, the rain, and below on the streets umbrellas scurried by, slick and shiny in the grey. He had the desk lamp on, focused on her circuitry and wiring, and, in the middle of a particularly intricate piece of soldering, he sat back and thought, fuck it. I don't need this. There are other ways.
"Andrew?" he called. Andrew was watching Attack of the Clones on his laptop on the coffee table. He had found some ripped version somewhere and downloaded it.
"This movie is so flawed," he replied. Warren couldn't see his face but he could hear the frown.
"Andrew," he said again.
"It doesn't matter how often you watch it, it's still so flawed." Andrew sighed deeply and sadly.
"Andrew," said Warren a third time. He said it with patience. It was a tone he was still unused to in his own voice.
"Yeah?" said Andrew distractedly.
"How much money do we have? You know, in the bank, investments, everything?"
Andrew shrugged, his eyes not leaving the screen.
"I thought you knew," he said. "I hate the sappy love scenes. They're so boring."
"And you usually like those," said Warren.
"Hey, that was only one RomCom, okay?" Andrew eventually tore his eyes from the screen. He was still frowning defensively when he turned around. "And I happen to think Meg Ryan is a very talented and beautiful actress."
Warren laughed, but not unkindly.
"I thought you were gonna leave me for Hugh Jackman." He took off his orange glasses.
"Only if he has claws," said Andrew noncommittally, returning to the screen. "So how much money do we have? And why are you asking?"
"Oh, no reason," said Warren. "Just wondering."
Millions, he thought. Millions left over from the bank job and subsequent investments. And they lived pretty modestly. It wasn't like they wanted some big swanky place out on Long Island or a penthouse on the Upper East Side. The Village suited them fine, and he had grown accustomed to this apartment. It was nothing special, just a regular Village apartment, but it was spacious, and it was theirs, and while he had been in bed all those months Andrew had decorated it with real taste. The couch was burnt orange, and the coffee table was a dark mahogany. It looked old and smelled of funiture polish. Andrew must have picked it up in some antiques place. Warren had never bothered to ask. The armchairs were big and soft and a warm cream colour. He never sat on an armchair, he was afraid of spilling coffee on the upholstery. Andrew would be mad.
There was a standard lamp, very stylish with a Japanese paper shade, in the corner, and matching reading lamps beside the couch and on his own desk. Bookshelves lined the wall behind the couch almost completely, and were already packed with their purchases in the used book store just a block away, and Andrew's ever-expanding comic collection. Warren had once mentioned the possibility of boxing up some of the older comics and putting them in the storage closet by the kitchen, but Andrew had simply mooted the idea with a look and Warren hadn't suggested it again. He didn't mind flicking through Spiderman when the mood took him, so he guessed it was alright for now.
Hawking and Asimov shared the shelves with Neal Stephenson, the complete works of Tolkien, Arcadia in a soft leather binding, and folders full of papers, mostly on quantum theory, that Warren had downloaded and printed, from The Implications of Quantum in AI Development to Schroedinger and the Future of Quantum Processing. The flaws in some of even the most highly respected academic papers amused him, and now and then he toyed with the idea of writing a paper of his own and popping a few aneurysms in the world of quantum dynamics. He imagined it with relish: the initial disbelief, then the grudging admittance that this newbie's theories seemed indeed to be correct, then the lecture tours, then the pop-science hardback with glossy picture spread, followed by book tours and signings and interesting people and places and five star hotels, all expenses paid. Sub-atomic particles spinning round him like stars and flashbulbs, and black-rimmed glasses like a mark of rank as he expounded ground-breaking theory after theory. Chaos in the waves of thick applause.
He sighed at the reverie and left his desk, joining Andrew on the couch. Yoda flashed his light sabre around on screen like a determined gremlin with a new toy. It was in poor taste, Warren thought, to make an old Jedi leap about in so undignified a manner.
Andrew leaned back into his arms, his eyes still on the screen, a look of morbid fascination on his open face.
"Ugh," he said.
"I hear ya," replied Warren. He ran comforting fingertips through Andrew's hair.
The rain continued to plaster the windows with thick water. The evening grew darker and darker, until not even the wet pavement below reflected streetlights up through the downpour.
"Andrew?" he said drowsily into Andrew's hair that night. They were still on the couch, Andrew lying back against Warren and engrossed in I, Robot, which Warren had suggested he read.
"You didn't programme her with the robot rules, though," said Andrew, apropos of nothing apparent to Warren.
"What?"
"April. You would have let her harm humans."
"Oh, well yeah. I guess I didn't think that through." Warren pulled Andrew closer. "And to return to scheduled programming, I repeat, Andrew?"
"Sorry. Yes, Warren?" Andrew put the book down, keeping it open with a thumb.
"Do you think…" Warren put his arms around Andrew's waist and rested his chin on his shoulder. "Do you think Buffy still cares, you know, about catching us?"
Andrew shut his book, marking the page carefully.
"We were, like, her archnemeses. Which, by the way, is how you say that."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome." Andrew shifted round in Warren's arms. "Why are you asking about the Slayer?"
Warren shrugged.
"I was just thinking –"
"You weren't thinking of going back there, were you? Back to Sunnydale? Because I don't wanna go, Warren. I like it here. The comic store is, like, way better. You know?"
"Okay, okay, it's okay. I wasn't thinking of going back there." Warren kissed Andrew's cheek. "Not permanently, anyway," he added.
"You want to go back there on, like, vacation? No one goes to Sunnydale on vacation." Andrew laughed nervously. "Apart from those Goth guys but I never really liked them very much. Though their coats were cool."
"Not on vacation either," said Warren gently. "I was just kind of wondering, that's all."
Andrew looked at him intently, the way he did sometimes when he stopped talking. It was quiet in here, enclosed in the gentle sibilance of rain.
"It would be kind of neat to see what Jonathan's doing," he conceded, after a while.
"Hoping the Slayer lets him hang out at her house?" said Warren, a little caustically. Talk of Jonathan still made him uncomfortable.
"Maybe she does. Maybe he's in her gang now."
Warren shook his head, something cynical around his mouth.
"Maybe some day he'll have the guts to be alone." He laughed a little, before looking into Andrew's bruising eyes. Then he shook his head. "Forget it," he said wearily. "Forget Sunnydale. Forget I mentioned it."
He lay back against the burnt orange couch, bringing Andrew with him like some kind of comforter, his unsettling eyes closed and tired again. The Japanese light in the corner softened the shadows on his face, and Andrew watched him for a moment, before turning and allowing himself to relax back against Warren's comfortable body. He left his book closed and stared, maybe unseeing, maybe not, at Warren's cluttered desk.
"I can hear you thinking," said Warren, after a while.
"No you can't," replied Andrew.
"I can. I'm not finishing her. She won't work." Warren's eyes were still closed, and he still held Andrew against him.
"Why do you always call it a her?"
"I don't know. Left over from April, I guess," said Warren.
"You're not finishing it?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Warren paused and opened his eyes.
"I've got other plans now," he said eventually.
"Other plans?" repeated Andrew.
"Yeah."
"What other plans? Something to do with Sunnydale? With Buffy?" Andrew's voice had taken on an edge, like the one he used when Warren spilled beer on the carpet one night. "We can't go back there, Warren. You'll get headaches again."
"No, nothing like that. Real plans. I said forget Sunnydale. Forget it, okay? Just come here."
Sometimes kissing was the only way to stop Andrew talking. And Warren didn't want to talk about his nebulous dreams just yet.
And he liked the kissing. And he liked the bedroom. And he liked Andrew.
And he liked the new pictures in his head, and he thought, first step: clear that junk off his desk first thing tomorrow. Forget Sunnydale. It was good advice.
It was not a question, he told himself later, of what he deserved. Staring in the bathroom mirror in the thick gloom of the night, the solitary neon light over the medicine cabinet throwing its sickly luminescence onto his already pale skin, he could see the scars still, where she had scratched at him. Faint they were now, of course, so long after the fact, but there they were, visible to anyone who could come close enough to see. He wondered if Andrew ever saw them and remembered that night in the lair when he watched him kill Katrina. If Andrew thought of it, he hid it well. Perhaps he had made himself forget.
Life didn't work that way, he was sure of it. Life wasn't a case of this for that, balancing the scales. And who would believe it anyway, some crazy girl from California saying he killed a suicide? No one. No one would believe Buffy Summers over Warren Mears, if he were to write that paper, if he were to publish that book. Maybe even give a guest lecture in UC Sunnydale. She had no proof. She had nothing on him.
"Warren?" Andrew knocked tentatively on the door, his voice sleepy and muffled. "Warren, you okay?"
His head still twinged, occasionally, and this was one of those times. It was nothing to what it had been just a few months before, or a few months before that. These were like contractions of the brain, sudden spasms of pain that spread out just under his cranium then faded away, only to pulse in some other part of his head and fade away again. But these excuses for headaches he could take with barely a grimace.
"Yeah, Andrew, I'm fine," he said. He turned on the cold tap and splashed water over his face.
"You sure?" Andrew spoke through a yawn, somewhat mollified. "Come back to bed."
"Yeah, I'll be out in a minute," said Warren through his hand. He looked back into his own eyes in the mirror. He could always see the white all the way round his black irises. It gave him a manic look, he thought, not entirely dissatisfied with his reflection, dark though the circles under his eye sockets were in this light. They really should change the bulb in here to something with a warmer tone. It could do wonders for his self-esteem.
It was still raining as he lay in bed, wrapped in Andrew's favourite green duvet. Andrew lay beside him, deep in dreamless sleep. He wished he could sleep like that. He had been able to, when they arrived in New York first. No more. His mind had begun to tick again, and tock, and new pictures formed on the ceiling as he stared at the shadows of raindrops.
Amorphous fears remained, though, playing on his mind at this bleak and lonely hour.
Katrina was dead, Buffy was far away, and all he had left of Sunnydale was a sleeping boy who turned, as he watched, and held him.
It wasn't a question of what he deserved. It never was.
It was a question of what he wanted. He wanted Andrew. Check. He had Andrew.
But he still wanted so much more.