Be Prepared
"It doesn't make any sense," Fred says. They're in Wes's office and he's patting her neck, lifting her arms, checking for burns.
"What doesn't?" he says.
"Quit that," she says. "I'm fine. It's just like a bad sunburn. The monster doesn't make any sense. The physics, I mean. If it breathes fire out its front, why doesn't it go shooting backwards? Equal and opposite reaction."
Wes is starting to have a reaction of his own from all the patting her down. He sits in his desk chair, puts a notebook in his lap for camouflage, starts sketching the monster.
"Given that it was a HaZeel from the twelfth demon dimension, I would presume that it dealt in magic more than physics," he says.
She gives him a little smile. "You're so stiff."
He flinches and almost drops his notebook.
"I would presume?" she says mockingly.
"Oh. Ah. Yes. I do--speak rather formally. Especially in times of--nervousness."
She comes over to his chair, hunkers down with the damp cloth he was using, wipes soot from his face too. She laughs suddenly.
"What?" he says.
"I'm sorry!" she giggles. "It's just--you've lost a lot of your eyebrows. You look kinda surprised."
She puts a hand up to trace the ridge of his late lamented brows with her lovely long fingers, and her thumb brushes lightly across his lower lip. And he can't help it, he gasps, and a hard shiver seizes his whole body; his head jerks back and his shoes chatter against the floor.
He looks a way for a moment and then makes himself look back at her, waits for her confused expression to settle into horror, into revulsion, into however "no" will look on that beautiful face. But she blinks a couple of times and then, incredibly, smiles.
"Ohhh," she says, and then, to his astonishment, she lifts the notebook off his lap and calmly inspects his crotch.
"I'd been wonderin'," she says, "if you were--if you'd been thinking about me--that way. And I guess you have."
She glances up at him--more smiles!--looks down at his lap again. "I guess you have, a lot. Damn, Wes!"
"I," he says. "Yes." His vocabulary seems to have fled. He's written sonnets to her, villanelles, reams of sestinas consigned to his dark desk drawers, and now she's hunkered next to him staring him in the lap and he says "Uh."
"How long?" she says.
"I--what!"
"How long have you felt this way?"
"Oh." He looks down, embarrassed to meet her eyes. "Since two or three months after your rescue. You were so frightened at first, and ill and--irrational. We were all just trying to take care of you, and then when Angel came back and you beamed at him, I suddenly wanted to kill him. I was having fantasies about beheading and staking and burning. And fantasies about you. Of, er, other sorts."
In all those fantasies Fred had been skittish. Shy and timorous and Wes had been oh so patient, gentle, soothing.
But Fred is here and now, and here and now she plops herself in his lap, facing him, one leg to either side of his chair.
"Oh, God," he breathes.
She rocks forward a little, her pelvic bone grinding into him in an entirely pleasant way. She leans her forehead against his, softly, warm skin against his, then takes off his glasses and her own, puts them carefully on the desk.
"Don't want to clink 'em together," she says. And then kisses his eyelids. Her breath is warm and she smells so good. Well, actually right now she smells like soot and some sort of monster viscera, but underneath that is her Fred smell that he's memorized, green apple shampoo and freshly sharpened pencils.
She's moving the kisses down his face now, tiny little smooches, cheekbone and chin, and finally full on the mouth. Soft dry kisses for a bit, then he groans and opens his mouth. And the second their tongues touch they're both leaping up, coughing and spitting.
"AUGH!" Fred says and "GAH!" Wes says and then they're both stumbling into to the bathroom off his office, sticking their heads under the faucet, jostling to fill their mouths, spitting some more.
"I guess we missed some slime," Fred says.
"Apparently." Wes swishes and spits some more, soaps up and washes his lips.
She tugs him back into his office by his shirtfront. "Wow," she says. "I've never--that was like concentrated bus exhaust."
"And cod liver oil," he says.
They both shudder, and then she grins and puts her arms around him again.
And whatever you call the little demon that lives in Wes's head (like Poe's "imp of the perverse," he thinks bleakly,) it wakes up. That little voice who tells Wes he can't possibly be doing the right thing unless he's miserable. Him. He insists on Wes opening his mouth and saying, "Stop. This may not--be best for you. You're probably still traumatized from Pylea, and I was part of the rescue and there's all that--hero worship or transference from Angel, and-"
"Wes," she says. Her lips have gone white. He looks at her miserably, waiting for her gracious retreat as she acknowledges his nobility. "Wes," she says in that sweet voice, "You are a fucking moron."
He gapes.
"And sexist. And condescending. And just--moronic. Traumatized? I survived years in a hell dimension. Years as a slave, and a fugitive, and some things I don't even want to talk about yet, and hell yes, I'm tramautized, but I'm here and I'm working and I don't write on the walls hardly ever any more, and I want to know, do you think you could have survived that? Do you?"
"No," he says. "No, I suppose not." He closes his eyes. Lost, he thinks. Lost my one chance, ever. Because I am a fucking moron.
She moves closer, starts jabbing him in the chest with a finger. "And you know what? I don't have years of Watcher demon training, and weapons training, and spell training, and you've got, what, six inches and fifty pounds on me, and I just killed a fire-breathing Hazel with an axe!"
"HaZeel," he says, and then wants to kill himself more than usual.
"GodDAMNit, Wes! Will you just--will you STOP--will you just kiss me some more?"
He blinks at her, and then for once in his life another part of his brain talks faster and louder than the perverse imp, and it says: You lost your chance and now you've found it, take it take it take it!
He leans forward and kisses her, hard this time, sliding his tongue in right away, and there's no lingering aftertaste of HaZeel viscera this time. Just Fred. And it's marvelous.
They kiss for a long time, his hands in her hair, hers on his neck.
Then she starts kissing down into the collar of his shirt, mumbling, "I love this red on you, " and unbuttoning him. Soon she's found his nipples, put her warm mouth on each in turn, teech and flickering tongue. He leans heavily against the wall and prays his knees won't buckle.
Fred wore overalls to the fight--his suggestion, for unrestricted motion and plenty of weapon pockets. You'd think they'd be easy-access, but his hands are shaking so much he can't undo the straps, and finally just slides them off her shoulders. He runs his hands up under her shirt. No bra, and he gasps at the heat of her nipples under his palms. Her breasts are nice soft handfuls but he can feel her ribs a bit. Buy this girl more tacos, he thinks.
He's trying to slow down, to make this sweet and sacred and beautiful, but his hands keep moving frantically to every inch of skin he can reach, because it's finally, finally Fred. It's okay, though, because she's doing the same thing, hands here there and everywhere, pulling their shirts up over their heads, pants and overalls coming down in a tangle. They somehow land on the carpet without injury, Wes on top. They're both panting. We must sound about fifteen, he thinks, and smiles, takes her nipple in his mouth, pulls and nibbles. She bucks under him, wiry and strong, and her hands catch in his hair and pull a little. Then they're yanking off bikini pantiesand boxer shorts, tossing them in a heap near his deak. He kisses down her stomach, nuzzles her belly button with his nose. "Tickles!" she gasps.
He reaches her dark curls, kisses them. She's squirming, mumbling "You don't have to, I'm kinda sweaty and all, and…"
"Shhh," he says and darts his tongue in among the curls, and she hushes most obligingly. She's very wet and tastes sharp and salty, wonderful. Her clit is plump and rigid under his tongue, and he has a flush of pride, of "I did that."
"I--oh--you have a pointy tongue. That's--" she says, and shivers under him, grabs his shoulders and digs her nails in, goes limp with a fine sheen of new sweat.
"I'd been thinking about you too," she says, voice gone husky. "Could you tell."
He blushes, nods, slides up to put his head on her shoulder, his cock pinned between their stomachs, which hurts and is lovely.
"I'd like you in me," she says in his ear, and his cock is definitely seconding the motion, but some tiny rational part of his consciousness remembers something he doesn't want to.
"Blast," he says into her neck.
"No condoms?" she says.
"Got it in one." They lie there silently while his mind runs through all the possibilities. He doesn't have any in his room. He can't go to the RiteAid down the road to stock up, because that would involve having functional brain cells with which to drive. He can't run up to Gunn's room and ask for a pack, because he's seen Gunn looking at her too, and that would be exquisitely bad form. Angel wouldn't have any to begin with, because cold dead seed and all that. And he's no idea if Lorne ever even requires condoms, but if he does they're probably--forked, or donut-shaped. Or five-dimensional. Demons can have the most arcane--
"DEMONS!" he shouts.
"WHERE!" Fred shrieks back.
"No, no, no--I just remembered--" he rolls off her and fetches his weapons satchel, then sits on the floor naked going through compartments full of holy water vials, stakes, throwing stars, until, "Eureka!" he pulls out a box of condoms.
Fred blinks at him. "That's in case you meet up with some really good lookin' demons? That watcher's manual has you prepared for everything."
"Yes, well, we copied it word-for-word from the Boy Scout Handbook, and just substituted 'entrails' every time they used 'badges,'" he says drily. "No, actually, Gunn and I were hunting some acquatic sewer demons last week, DyKleshbi, and we used these to waterproof the microphones. You just rubberband them on and lower the mikes down a manhole, and then you can pick up the DyKleshbi's communications, a sort of clicking like dolphins, and, it's quite interesting really--"
"Wes," she says.
He looks at her, sweaty and grinning at him, and hazards a guess: "Shut up and fuck you?"
"You're learning," she says.