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Title: Just
Human
Authors:
Miss Murchison and
Keswindhover
Rating:
PG-13
Disclaimer:
All characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy,
etc. Only the lame plots and dialogue herein are mine.
Notes: Wes/Angel,
post-Season 5. Co-authored with
Keswindhover, which accounts for any strangeness in the spelling.
I'd write American, she'd change it to British, and . . . well, I
still adore her. She volunteered as a backup writer for the
Original
Flash-fic-athon Reunion and enlisted me as an authority on New
Jersey. Written for
justhuman,
who hails from that lovely state.
We wrote this before the last two episodes of Angel aired, and we were
completely unspoiled, so this scenario comes entirely from our
imaginations.
"Il
faut cultiver notre jardin." ('Candide')
Angel sat looking at his garden, a frown creasing his forehead as he
contemplated his pear trees. Bob Flowerdew's Complete Fruit Book
was open on his lap, and a pair of pruning shears lay on the porch
beside him. He looked up at the gunmetal sky. If it didn’t stop
raining soon he was going to have canker on every branch, he was sure
of it.
"Angel."
He didn’t look round. "Wes."
The porch chair swung a little, as Wes settled beside him.
Wes looked out over the sodden landscape in front of them. There were
flowerbeds full of newly planted and bedraggled flowers. Bushes, still
with their Latin name tags attached, perched in circles of newly dug
soil.
"You’ve retired to cultivate your own garden?"
Angel shrugged, "Hell, I saved the world, I figure I deserve a bit of
a rest. Although," he turned over his right hand and contemplated a
blister on his palm thoughtfully, "this is all kinda harder work than
I expected."
“Yes,” said Wes, “and of course, you have an awful lot of enemies in
LA now. I can understand why you left there. But it’s not so clear to
me why you chose to come to New Jersey.”
"They said it was the Garden State," Angel muttered, sinking his head
between his shoulders.
Wes looked around him. His first impressions of the state had come
when, jet lagged and suffering from massive culture shock after nearly
10 months isolation in a monastery, he had stumbled through a huge
ugly airport and then taken a terrifying drive along a maze of mammoth
highways bordered on both sides by enormous oil refineries belching
noxious fumes. The fear had grown in him that Angel was so used to
hell dimensions that he'd sought one out for a retirement home.
Now he'd arrived at Angel's new home, though, he had to admit that
this Victorian era fixer-upper set in a semi-rural area was a lot
better than he'd feared. Although Angel's house might be a bit
termite-ridden, and the outside was in need of a coat of fresh paint,
it had a certain character. It also boasted a backyard that melted
into a stand of pine trees.
Angel sneezed. “Damn colds,” he said bitterly. “I swear every cold and
flu bug in America has been lining up to get me since I ...changed.”
“Well,” said Wes, looking around him at the scattered pile of
gardening books, magazines, cushions, rugs, crumpled tissues, empty
coffee cups and other evidence of occupation scattered around the
chair, “If you’ve been spending all your days sitting outside in the
rain, in the cold, I can’t say I’m that surprised.”
“I like the sun,” said Angel.
They both looked up at the grey, cloud-covered sky.
Angel sneezed again, and shivered. “There are times when being human
sucks.” Then his eye fell on the coffee machine in front of him, and
he brightened a little. “But on the plus side, there’s coffee.” He
looked directly at Wes for the first time. “Would you like some
coffee?” he said eagerly. “I’ve learnt how to roast it myself.”
Wes looked down at the coffee machine perched precariously on the
uneven plank floor before them. His eye followed the Heath Robinson
arrangement of three short extension leads; each plugged into one
another, leading across the rain lashed porch, and into the house.
There was a puddle forming around the plug and socket connection
nearest the edge.
“You do know that water and electricity don’t mix?” he said mildly.
Angel looked defensive. “Of course I know,” he said, “I’m not stupid,
you know.”
“But you are mortal,” said Wesley. “Human. And liable to
electrocution." He pointed accusingly at the puddle.
“Yeah, I've been a real boy since last May,” said Angel, “all as per
the prophecy.” His tone was flat.
“Earlier, I think,” said Wesley, “you’ve been growing more and more
human, by degrees, all the time I’ve known you." After one last
disapproving glance, he gave up on the puddle around the extension
lead, and leaned forward, his tone becoming urgent. "The process got
finished last May, but it started long ago. It just sort of crept up
on you. On all of us, really."
“I guess,” said Angel reluctantly, looking out at his sodden garden
again, hand clenching unconsciously around the soreness of the
blister. “Once I got my soul back. I sure started feeling like crap as
soon as that happened. Guilty.”
“Actually, no I don’t think so. I've been reflecting, in the
monastery. On a lot of things. Souls, and prophecies, and curses, and
what makes us human.” Wes sat forward in the chair and turned to face
Angel, his face intense. “Nothing happened for as long as you thought
that your soul was a curse. It’s since you started to care about
people, to love them. First Buffy, and then Cordelia, Gunn, Fred, and
the others. And Connor above all. You started loving like a man - and
hating like a man. Looking back, that day when you tried to smother me
in the hospital was rather encouraging...”
Angel's head jerked up and he stared at Wesley's earnest face, then
quickly down again. “Encouraging, huh? It sure didn’t feel like it at
the time. If Gunn and Lorne hadn’t been there I’d have killed you.” He
looked down at the pruning shears, and picked at his blister a little.
“Yes,” said Wes, “I know. But look at how you would have killed me. No
fangs, no bumpy forehead, no biting.”
Angel sighed. "So, I hated like a man. That doesn't seem like such a
great thing to do."
"Hated and loved," said Wes earnestly. "You may not have been human
then, but you tried very hard to believe that nothing human was alien
to you. It made you a Champion. And, eventually, it made you a man."
Angel reached down for a tissue, playing for time. Wow, Wes was
getting kinda intense. As he bent down Bob Flowerdew slid from
his lap, on top of a battered copy of Gardening for Dummies. He
flushed. Clumsiness seemed to be a human characteristic too. He kept
his head down, scanning his sizable collection of how-to books, then
picked up Earthly Delights, and went over to kneel on the wet
grass, by a sickly-looking planting. Back turned to Wes, he plucked a
stray weed with one hand while using the other to dab with the tissue
at his runny nose. The rain had ebbed to an occasional drizzle that
was almost soothing against his skin. But the wetness pockmarked the
open page of his book, and after pretending to read it for a moment,
he tossed it back under the shelter of the porch.
Wes waited patiently on the swing.
“And you were Prophecy guy. Still are, I guess.” Angel turned, and,
for the first time, looked properly at Wes. “In fact," he said, trying
to lighten the tone, "you even kind of look like Jesus now. Didn't
they feed you in that place?” For Wes had lost weight, and his face
had an aesthetic hollow cheeked look. His hair tumbled down to his
collar, and he had grown a considerable beard, also slightly curly,
and a little bit ginger.
"There was food available." Wesley was silent for a moment, and then
he added bitterly, “I'm more Judas than Jesus though, wouldn’t you
say? Although," he steepled his fingers together, his tone becoming
cool and analytical, “in the interests of historical accuracy I should
point out that both Jesus and Judas were Semitic, and therefore very
unlikely to have blue eyes. You’re being led astray by western
Christian tradition.”
Angel sat back on his heels. He looked at his palm again, picking away
at the blister. “I'm being led astray by that 'Jesus of Nazareth'
movie - saw it in the seventies, during my rat eating days." He pulled
the blister from his palm and gazed fascinated as the hole filled up
with blood, "And Wes, you're sure no Jesus, but you're not a Judas
either."
Wes sighed and looked around for the box of tissues. He pulled out a
few and went to kneel beside his friend in the wet, taking Angel's
hand in his and soaking up the blood. "You need to watch out for
infection as well," he said patiently. "Now that you're-"
"-just human," Angel finished for him.
They knelt quietly, side by side, staring at the sad little plant.
"I wonder if it'll survive," said Wes.
"Certainly not forever," said Angel. "Nothing alive is forever." He
looked down and was surprised to realize Wes was still holding his
hand. He shifted his grip, returning the pressure of the other man's
fingers.
"I'm very glad you're here, Wes, finally. There aren't a lot of people
left I can talk to."
"Me either," said Wes.
There was another silence as they thought about who wasn't here.
"Besides," added Angel. "I don't really like most people much. Funny,
after all this. I thought once I became human, I'd be a party animal,
but instead, it's like that old poem. How does it go? 'I wish I liked
the human race. I wish I liked its silly face?'"
"'I wish I liked the way it walked. I wish I liked the way it
talked,'" said Wes. "'And when I was introduced to one, I wish I
thought, What jolly fun!'"
Angel felt Wes's hand tense under his own. "Kinda ironic isn't it?" he
said. "I save the human race, I get to rejoin them, and then find that
I can't live with my neighbours because all they go on about is the
garbage day changing and how the Parkway tolls are crazy ..."
Wes kissed him.
Angel startled backwards, nearly toppling over.
"Sorry," said Wes, sounding almost equally startled. "Not sure where
that came from." He got quickly up on one knee - and then fell back as
Angel dragged him fiercely downward on the wet grass and dirt,
pressing him to the ground.
Angel looked down at him for a moment, his expression unreadable, then
he suddenly rolled, on to his back, releasing Wes once the roll was
complete. Wes bent over Angel, a little breathless, feeling their legs
tangled together, watching the rain falling on to his face.
He bent and tasted Angel's mouth first, then his cheek, then the side
of his neck. He lingered a long time over the pulse in the other man's
throat, feeling it speed up at his command, thudding harder each time
his hand moved lower on Angel's body.
He found that somehow his hand had ripped open Angel's shirt. He bent
his head to lick a nipple that his fingers had already teased erect.
Angel's body was covered with a sheen of perspiration, and Wes dragged
his tongue along his abs, savouring the salty tang that spoke of
humanity and arousal. He had spent months in the Monastery trying to
find a way to make himself desire to live. Now, at the touch of
Angel's human flesh, desire returned in a rush, and suddenly he was a
starving man, desperate and hungry.
The thing he had hated most about being a vampire, Angel thought, was
the chilling cold that never quite let go of his heart, no matter how
much blood he drank, no matter what passions inflamed him. He'd
expected the fulfillment of the Shanshu prophecy to warm him in a way
that made up for every human weakness it had also bestowed. But it
hadn't been like that. He'd still felt an inner cold.
But now Wes' touch was warming him, making the blood pound in his ears
as they rolled over again, tugging at clothing, anxious to feel bare
flesh against his own. Wes was trying to help, but still it was taking
too long to undress, because they were both unwilling to move apart
long enough, too feverish to strip off their now soaked and muddy
pants or slide the torn limp fragments of a shirt over a shoulder.
They rolled almost under the porch, barely noticing when they crashed
into Angel's pile of gardening books, and then away again. Wes winced
as the corner of The Edible Garden hit him in the shoulder,
then forgot it instantly, as Angel's hands clasped his buttocks, and
dragged him closer. Angel shrugged aside Uncommon Fruits for Every
Garden as he pulled them both away from the porch, in another roll
through the mud, closer to the plantings he'd been brooding over
earlier.
Wes' body shuddered, but not with cold. It was damp but warm there, on
the dark, fertile earth, and Angel's body was a greater heat above
his, each of them clutching the other clumsily, too forcefully.
Everything around them smelled of life and growing things. It was
imperfect but beautiful, and oh, so comforting.
Suddenly, all Angel could hear was the throb of his own blood in his
ears, and he felt a moment's panic as he lost control. But Wes was in
the same state, and suddenly it was over, each of them clasped in the
other's hand, their lips meeting with a frantic effort to prolong the
moment.
They rolled apart, Angel staring in consternation. "Sorry, Wes," he
mumbled, and then he sneezed.
Wes raised himself a little dizzily. "Ah," he said after a moment,
sounding embarrassed. "We seem to have done a bit of damage."
Angel stared at him, and then looked around the garden. His new turf
was squashed flat, and the plant he had been leant over so tenderly a
few minutes before was bent pathetically to the earth, the stalk
broken in several places. His gardening books lay scattered face down
on the wet ground.
"I hope the plant is the only thing I damaged. Wes, I'm sorry I made
such a mess of ... you know."
"It wasn't exactly perfect," admitted Wes. Then he grinned. "But it
was good. I haven't felt like that for a long while."
"I'm not sure I want to settle for 'good,'" said Angel, frowning. "I
used to be able to do a lot better. I'd hate to think I lost
everything to become human." He sat up, and brushed some wet grass off
his elbows.
Wes reached out to push back a lock of Angel's muddy hair. "Well, in
that case, there's another human thing we could do."
"What's that?" said Angel, looking over at him suspiciously.
"Try again." And Wes moved closer, and pulled Angel back into his
arms.
The End.
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