Secretary: Part Seven

Chapter Two Hundred and Two

She showers because he told her to, but she would have anyway. She doesn’t bother about more than scrubbing herself down, rinsing and repeating; the grubbiness isn’t surface and the water isn’t helping.

Besides, she’s tired.

She can’t seem to connect her body to her brain so she’s drifting around her room; picking up a hairbrush and staring at it for a long moment before replacing it on the dresser; reaching for the towel that’s slid from her shoulders to the floor, folding it with a precision that forms it into a perfect rectangle, and then realizing it’s soaked and throwing it in the laundry hamper.

She’s missing him as if he’s been gone a month not an hour, and being here, in his home, surrounded by his belongings, is the salt that flavors her tears as they trickle and splash, unheeded, out of her eyes.

She goes into his room and stares at the bed, noticing dimly that Wes must have made it while he was getting changed, because the sheets she’d left rumpled are water-smooth, as usual, but she can’t bring herself to get in it somehow and she leaves after wrapping herself up in his robe, absentmindedly rolling the sleeves back because they’re way too long on her.

She’s been asleep on the couch for three hours when the sound of his car wakes her and she’s too drugged with sleep to come fully awake, but it’s all she needs to drift off into dreams again because if he’s come home that’s good, right?

When she wakes properly, squinting against a ray of sun that’s aimed directly at her eyes, he’s sitting on a chair opposite her, watching her with expressionless eyes.

He’s showered, shaved and suited up; the perfect executive, but even through sleep-bleared eyes she thinks he looks like hell. There’s a small razor nick under his chin and she glances down at his hands, still only because they’re locked together as they rest in his lap. If he’s slept at all it wasn’t for long enough; his eyes are red-rimmed and hazy.

She’s seen him like this before, early on when she’d never called him anything but ‘sir’ or ‘Mr. Wyndam-Pryce’, and it’s that click-click as things fall into place that make the first words out of her mouth a continuation of where they left off, erasing six hours of being apart, ignoring the fact that this is a discussion made for the night, not the day, with alcohol and emotion fuelling the words and cushioning the blows.

Sober, in the sunlight, the words are sharp and acid-tart on her tongue.

“Want to know, Wes. What we did last night; did you ever do that while you’ve been with me? While you’ve known me?” There’s a perceptible flinch as reply that breaks her heart. “You – oh, you -”

She’s scrambling up, light-headed and dizzy, and it’s only that which saves him from her fists because she’s feeling a primitive rage that needs to hurt, needs to savage and destroy.

He’s shocked out of frozen immobility, moving to reach for her before she can say another word, capturing her hands as she raises them to lash out at him.

“No! Faith, you just asked two questions, not one.”

The careful precision of his voice is unexpected enough to halt her attack but she’s still feeling dangerously violent as she waits for him to carry on. They’re so close that she can see the weariness in his face, the drag of fatigue, the grayness of skin that ages him.

“Have I done that since you entered my employ? Yes. Since I got involved with you? No.”

And she wants to know details, wants to know every single fucking thing, but he’s told her all she’s entitled to, if that’s true, and she doesn’t think he’s ever lied to her, so she nods slowly, relaxes so that his hands release her, and steps back.

Then she slaps his face, making it harder than she’d intended because in the split second that her hand’s traveling through the air she sees him make the decision to let her and it’s fucking infuriating.

His hand comes up to touch gingerly at the reddened, smarting skin of his cheek. “Well, I hope that made you feel better,” he says with a sarcasm he hasn’t used with her in a long time. “I don’t think I’ll turn my other cheek but I suppose I deserved that.”

“Yeah, you really did,” she tells him. “But just so we’re on the same page here, Wes, you got that for leaving me alone last night, not for anything else.”

He arches his eyebrow. “Really?” he says with a deceptive mildness.

She can feel her lip quiver and she’s not going to cry again, she’s just not going to do it.

“You can’t keep doing this, Wes,” she tells him. “Can’t keep turning away from me when something happens.”

“There are a lot of things I can’t keep doing,” he says with a careful, chilling deliberation.

“Haven’t we just gone through this?” she demands. “Wes, last night –”

He lifts his hand in a small movement that dries the words in her mouth. “Faith, be silent. Please.” She waits, huddling her arms around her, feeling desperately lonely. “Last night was... something I don’t intend to repeat.” He sighs and flashes her a smile, transient and lemon-sour. “And, yes, I’ve said that to myself before. Sworn it, been determined... and gone back anyway.”

“But not since we –” She swallows, whispers it, “You haven’t wanted to since you met me? Last night wasn’t because you missed it – was it? Because, if you – need to do that, I’d -”

She squeezes her eyes shut, seeing that room, that nightmare of a room, and can’t finish her sentence but she doesn’t need to.

“Let yourself be treated like that? Like dirt? For love?” The last words are spat out at her as if they’re the worst insult he knows and it’s her turn to flinch.

“Well, yeah, Wes,” she says finally. “Because it sure as hell isn’t somewhere I’d go if I hated you.”

He gives her an incredulous look and starts to laugh, which, given the way his face is twisting up isn’t all that much of a good sign. “You, oh, Faith, you’re so incredibly naive. I forget how young you are sometimes.”

“Hey!” she snaps, anger warming her. “I’m not the one who thinks what we did last night was that big a deal.” She overrides his reply. “Yeah, it stirred up some stuff, but fuck, Wes; can’t tell me you didn’t get off on it, because you did, you really fucking did.” She purses her lips and fixes him with a glare. “And so did I.” She takes a step nearer to him. “It didn’t happen that way with us. It wasn’t the same. I wasn’t one of your fucking one night stands, wasn’t one of your failures. Was I? Was I?” He shakes his head mutely and she feels a fierce, hot satisfaction. “What you did with me; you never did that with Christina, now did you?”

He glances at her and there’s a moment of hesitation and she swears if he says anything chivalrous about not kissing and telling, she’s going to hit him again, but harder.

“I – no. I told you, Faith; before you, it was never –” He’s meeting her eyes with an effort she can’t help admiring and he’s flushing, though the shape of her fingers is still lying darkly against his skin, staining it. “You’ve taken every one of my fantasies and made them real,” he says. “Made them – something I’m not ashamed of, despite the efforts of people like Xander.” He shakes his head. “Then last night showed me that I was fooling myself.”

“Why?” The question bursts out of her. “Why, Wes? It was a game; it was my idea –”

“Yes,” he says. “Initially, it was, but you were never planning on playing it outside this house were you? Once again, I took it further than you’d planned.” He frowns. “And you never stop me.” There’s a mixture of confusion and accusation in his voice.

“I would if I wanted to,” she says, trying to make him see that it’s true.

He shakes his head. “I’m not sure you would, Faith. You don’t seem able to judge your limits and I’m not sure I trust myself –”

“I trust you,” she says urgently, meaning it, every word, pushing back the guilt at what she’s hiding from him, because that’s not what they’re talking about here.

He gives her an odd look, speculative and cool. “Do you?” He twists his wrist and taps his watch, switching moods on her in an instant. “We’re already late, but if you hurry we should be able to get to the office by nine.”

“What? Wes, we’re not done here!”

He’s already walking away. “Faith, one thing I learned was how to separate my personal life from my professional one. I suggest you do the same. You’ve got ten minutes exactly.”

Chapter Two Hundred and Three

It could be the fact that they're both coasting along on very little sleep, but everything feels scratchy and off-balance. Especially when he drives two blocks along from the office and pulls in outside the fancy bakery that they never go to.

"Neither of us have had breakfast," he reminds her when she frowns and then reaches for his wallet. "I'll have a coffee with a double shot of espresso and a cheese Danish."

She takes the ten dollar bill he's holding out to her and stares at him defiantly until he sighs and capitulates.

"And you're to have a chocolate muffin and a Cappucino."

And she tries to smile because at least he's giving her some sweet stuff but it slides off her face as soon as it appears.

"This all weird, Wes, and…"

"I'll see you back at the office, we seem to have rather neglected things this week and well, I have a list of tasks I need you to get started on," he says starchily before tapping his fingers impatiently on the dashboard and giving her a pointed look until she gets out of the car.



He wasn't joking about any of it; not the separating work from their fucked up version of Ozzie And Harriet or that he's got a shit-load of things he wants done. As soon as she gets through the door, juggling coffee and paper bags, he's barking at her to get a pad and then spends the next hour throwing a list of instructions at her that should have her jumping for joy because it means that New York isn't just this dim, distant dream but something that's really going to happen.

"And you're to send that form letter out to all our personal clients, the second one to our business clients and then I need you to draft a letter to all our suppliers and the utility companies giving our close of business date and asking them to prepare their final bills. Have you got that, Faith?"

She finishes scribbling down the last line before she risks looking up at him. "Yes, sir."

Then there's this pause, which seems less like a break in orders and more like he's dipping his toe in the water to see how cold it is. "Next week is going to be very busy, Faith. The auditors are coming in to go through my accounts."

It feels like someone has suddenly replaced her blood with liquid nitrogen but she forces herself to stay calm and not even bat an eyelash. "OK, is there anything you need me to do before they come?" Like, maybe find a spare $3000 dollars tucked away in a bag and put it back in the bank.

He doesn't answer for a while and she concentrates on the steady tick of the clock on the shelf, the dust motes swirling around in the stillness of the room and wonders why he can't hear the frantic thrum of her heart.

"Look at me, Faith," he says softly and she lifts her head to try and meet his steady gaze but her eyes skitter away at the last moment. "Everything will be better, for us, for you, when we're in New York," he finishes, and he makes it sound like this solemn vow.

"Do you promise?" she asks him hoarsely because he never lies and he takes promises seriously.

The smile he gives her is so bittersweet and sad that she has to force herself not to fling herself at his feet and beg for forgiveness for what she's done and for the things he's accused her of doing last night. Just for it to be right again. "Yes, I promise," he says simply and then he straightens up and puts on his game face. "I want those letters to catch the lunchtime post please."


And as she has to type out a gazillion letters that all say the same thing to a gazillion different people, she works herself up into a righteously indignant froth that he doesn't have a computer and she's having to do battle with the Selectric, which has chosen today to decide that it really hates the latest typewriter ribbon she's put in.

But by the time ten to one rolls by she has a neat little stack of envelopes and cotton mouth from licking far too many stamps. That's what she tells herself but the thought of spending lunchtime with Daddy not so dearest might have something to do with it

She's scooping the envelopes into a plastic bag when Wes appears in the archway. "Are you going to post those?"

"Yeah and then I have some stuff that I need to do," she mutters vaguely, shrugging on her jacket.

"I was hoping you could work through lunch today," he says, walking further into the Reception area. "We need to get started on the inventory."

Given the choice between half an hour of Liam's beer fume-filled spite and doing inventory with Wes, maybe even getting him to chance the ghost of a smile – well, there's no contest. But if he knew what she was doing, where she was going, he'd thank her for it.

"I can't." She knows how to do this, Spent years lying to Darla, to teachers, to social workers. The trick is not to give them anything but the barest facts. "I have to go out. Be back in, like, half an hour. Do you want me to get you some lunch?"

She has to look him in the eye for the first time that day, pulls her shoulders right back and tips up her chin to meet his frostbitten look. "Please ensure that you're back punctually," he bites out and turns sharply on his heel.



It's 1.25 and a barely eaten burger before she realizes that Liam isn't going to show. She's fed up of sitting here and feeling her heart flip over every time the bell above the door jangles. There's no way to reach him, no way to know whether he's sleeping off another night before. No way to get her hands on the fucking photos.

And then she has this moment of total clarity, or that's what her shrink back in juvie would call it. It's Friday afternoon and he's not going to show. Not going to make it to the bank before it closes at 3 either. Doesn't have to be a brainiac to figure that she's clear for another weekend with nothing to come between her and Wes, except well, her and Wes.

Besides all that shit with the bank yesterday? He'd have said something by now if there were anything to say. There's a lot he holds back, like, the last 37 years of his life before he met her, but the one thing she knows about him, trusts about him, is that if there's something not right, he just comes right out and says it. And she wishes he wouldn't half the time but he's wicked stubborn about that kind of thing. What he doesn't get is that so is she. But he's gonna find out.

That thought gets her sliding out of the booth and then the thought she has of how to scrub away the hangover of last night is what has her hurrying out of the door and, fuck me shoes be damned, running the three blocks back to work so she won't be late.

Didn't count on spending the rest of the afternoon on her knees. Not in the good way either. He has her clearing out archive boxes in the store room and sorting out files to either be destroyed or sent back to their clients.

It's almost 5 o'clock before she starts getting antsy. She can't take a whole weekend of things being so fucked up between them. Of this boring pattern they've fallen into of two days of happiness and two days of fucking abject misery. And she's falling over her feet to get upstairs when she hears the bell on her desk ring out.

Wes is already there as she pushes open the basement door. "I'll get this," she calls out, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You go back to your office."

Might be because she sounds more than a little manic, or it might be because it's the first time she's touched him since she belted him across the face this morning, but he nods tersely. "Be ready to leave in five minutes, please."

She pulls a face at his retreating back and skips down the hall to meet the delivery guy. Everything she ordered over the phone is packed neatly in two boxes. The wine, the stinky cheese, the ice cream, even the stuffed olives, and perched on top is the bouquet of tiger lilies that cost her $50 and better be worth every last cent.

Chapter Two Hundred and Five

There just happens to be a pretty cut-glass vase stashed away in the recesses of her desk, maybe the remnant of some former secretary, or maybe Lilah's, or hell, maybe someone sent Wes flowers sometime, but she kind of doubts that.

Cheerfully humming a tune she can't place, she practically skips off into the tiny kitchen and arranges the shock of tiger lilies into something resembling a proper arrangement.

“Time to go... Why aren't you ready?” she hears him say, somewhere over her shoulder. Whipping around with the vase in hand and nearly sloshing some of the water out of the vase, well, she really wishes she had a camera to catch the look on his face. He's leaning against the door frame, and could it be? Yeah, maybe. He's smiling a little.

“Is it after five?” She smiles back, carefully crossing over to stand right in front of him.

“It is. Who...?” He doesn't finish the query before she cuts him off, pushing buttons just for the sheer fun of it now.

“We're not leaving yet, so back to your office, Wesley.” He doesn't move. “Go on, go on. I'll be there in a minute.” She can't help grinning from ear to ear, holding out the vase to him. “Oh yeah, these are for you.”

He's rarely speechless, even rarer still, the kind of speechless that's infused with a little bit of shining delight. After searching for clues in his ashen, pinched face all day, it was a welcome reprieve. Yeah, she was right for once. Start with flowers, and the rest would be easy.

“But...” he finally manages to sputter out.

“No 'buts' – don't make me tell you again.” She gives him a very mock-serious look until he finally takes the vase, shaking his head.

“I suppose I shouldn't tell you I had plans for us, for this evening.” He fixes her with that cold stare, but she wasn't buying it, not one bit.

“No you didn't.” She stares him down, unblinking.

It takes a minute, but he cracks. “Very well, Faith. You're beginning to know me a little too well. I have to admit I was at a loss...”

“Well, good thing one of us wasn't.”



Thankfully, he's been clearing papers and files off his desk all day, so the usual neat but precariously teetering columns of documents have been swept away and filed and the shining mahogany surface completely empty. Well, except for the vase of tiger lilies. He's still staring at them, bemused, when she finally enters, arms full of food and little dishes and a cheese knife (what didn't he have in that kitchen?).

Arranging everything just so, she leans over the desk, lightly kissing him on the lips. She's undone a few of the buttons on her blouse, in a gesture to the whole after-work hours thing, giving him an eyeful of cleavage.

“Don't touch anything yet. I need to get the wine and the glasses. Do you have a corkscrew?” The one thing that she couldn't find in the kitchen, of course. He pulls open the top desk drawer and pokes around for a few moments before pulling out a wine key from its shadowy depths.

“Will this do?”

“That doesn't look like any corkscrew I've ever used. Guess you'll have to open the wine then.” He very nearly laughs at that, and she very nearly sticks her tongue out at him for it. “I'll be right back.” She turns on her heel, all efficiency, but looks back over her shoulder to catch him sneaking a stuffed olive. “Wesley! I said don't touch anything!”

He snatches his hand back like a chastised child, and hot damn! He even winked at her.

Gathering up the rest of the impromptu dinner, juggling the wine glasses and a plate of petit fours to go with the ice cream, she can't help but feel just a teensy bit pleased. She doesn't want to jinx anything, but yeah. It was working. Ply a epicure (thanks, Jane Austen, for that vocabulary boost) with flowers and food and a goddamn $20 dollar bottle of wine and you get results. She just wonders why she hadn't thought of this before now, before it felt kind of like sticking a band-aid over a bullet wound. Still, it was working, so there was no use dwelling on what'd already past.

Setting the glasses and tiny cakes down, she presents the wine with a flourish.

His eyebrow slides up in surprise. “Faith, I'm impressed. La Crema Pinot Noir. An excellent choice.”

“Yeah, about that ... actually, Roger picked it out ... but I told him what I wanted it to taste like. I even mentioned, like, berries and a woodsy top note. And it had to be under twenty bucks.” She flashes a winning grin and scrapes one of the side chairs right up to the desk. He's already carefully cutting the away foil on the wine and with a few expert twists of the wrist and a hearty yank, gets the bottle open in no time flat. Splashing a bit into his glass, he offers it to her.

“You should try it first then, to make sure it meets your exacting standards.” She leans in toward him and he tips the glass against her lips. As requested, her berries are there, right up front, and when the last flavor spreads across the back of her tongue, it smells like sandalwood.

“It'll do, I think.”

“Well, that's a relief.”


She waits until they've both had a glass and a half of wine before she starts with the serious talking. For the first glass, it was all superficial flirting that tumbled into meaningful glances and stolen kisses and ended choked-down brie and her pasted-on smile. He's feeding her olives and she's sucking on his fingertips at the halfway point of the second glass. It was time.

She takes a hearty swig on her wine, rolls the stem between her fingers, chin tilted up, eyes locked on his. “Where did you go last night?”

“Is that all this was, Faith?” He's darkened in an instant -- there's that condescending squint and the corners of his mouth twitch downward. “An elaborate production to soften me up for interrogation?”

“No,” she says, her voice miraculously staying even, un-cracked. “I just want to know.”

He looks away, sighs, and makes her wait. But she's willing to wait as long as it takes, silent and still, except for an occasional sip of wine.

After what seems an eternity, he finally murmurs, “I just went for a drive.”

She eyes him suspiciously, but it's a waste because he's still looking at some undetermined thing in the corner of the room. “A drive.”

“Yes, Faith. I.... I just needed to get away, as far as I could, in as little time as possible. I didn't know where I was going, I just needed to get there as quickly as possible. And it was all working quite well until, in my complete disregard for everything except speed, I ran out of gas.”

“You didn't.”

“I swear, really I did. I had to walk three miles before I found a gas station.” He finally turns, looks her in the eye. “I know you're wondering if I went back to the club, found that girl...”

“No. I'm really not. I know that's the last thing you would have done.”

He doesn't know whether to smile or glare at her for that, and the resulting combination is perhaps the most endearing look he's ever had on his face in the entire time she's known him. “Well, that's a relief.”

Their glasses are empty, and she pours the last of the wine evenly between them. “Don't worry, there's another one. It's not as good, I couldn't really afford...” His hand grasps hers as soon as she sets the bottle down.

“Thank you. For all this.” He squeezes her hand, and it's all a bit too much and she has to pull away and fidget with her hair, a hot flush rushing up her cheeks because he's really touched, he is.

“It was nothing, really.”

“No, Faith. I don't deserve this ... or you. I behaved abominably...” She can't help but try to interrupt, but he just holds out a hand to still her before she can get in a word edgewise. “No, no. I did. I shouldn't have left you alone last night.”

She wants to snap, “Damn straight!” at him, but bites her tongue, takes another sip of wine instead.

The words are tumbling out of him now. “I should have at least had the courtesy to explain things. It's just... I can't. This is hard and incredibly frustrating. I don't know where to begin. Don't think I don't want to tell you things, Faith. Not when it comes to this. I just ... I can't quite say ...”

“Wes, don't. Don't rush things. It's okay.”

“... what needs to be said.”

She feels bad for interrupting him like that, when it seemed like he was just getting on a roll, but she couldn't help it, 'cause he was really just spinning his wheels in the mud. It was unbearably painful to see him like this, unable to form the words she was sure his heart was desperately funneling to his brain. She knew this because she had the same damn problem.

Chapter Two Hundred and Five

He lifts up his half full glass of wine and finishes it in two nervous gulps and then he puts it down carefully on the desk and behind his troubled gaze, the nervous twisting of his fingers, she can see something else there; a shaky kind of resolve that he's going to try and say some of the things that need to be said.

"I don't know why I'm like this," he begins helplessly. "It would be so easy to wrap it up in some neat little psychological equation. That my problems are a result of a desperately unhappy childhood: a despot of a father. But, Faith, those are excuses, they're not reasons."

Her hand creeps out so her fingers can curl through his but she realizes that there's nothing she can say, because he's finally fucking talking and she doesn't want him to shut up. Wants him to get all the poison out of his system, no matter how messy it gets.

And it's like her gentle touch is the key that turns some rusty lock inside him because he's leaning forward, elbows on the desk, head in his hands and spilling it out in these choked sentences. "I always thought it was a sickness, you see. Something festering away at the heart of me… that if I ignored it then it would go away.

"When I was at University…" He stumbles and falls then, fingers tugging at his hair, then he lifts his head up and pins her motionless with the anguished disgust on his face. "I tried to do things properly, date these vacuous little debs, hold doors open for them, always pay for everything and there was no connection. I could see myself gangling and awkward, trying to impress them, only to be laughed at, ridiculed for my archaic attempts at gallantry. When you've never been allowed any respect, any control in your life, it suddenly becomes your raison d'être. The need for it swallows you up, Faith."

She blinks as he says her name because he's pulling her into this, telling her story as well as his own. "Because no one will ever let you have it and you don't even know what you're looking for, just, like, that there's something wrong, something missing like you've lost your keys, yeah?" And she's so fucking inarticulate but he sits bolt upright and his eyes are slightly wild now.

"Yes! Exactly, that's it! I pored over dull treatises on the law by day and read de Sade at night, tried to tell myself that it was just a phase, a hangover from being continually labeled a failure and that if I could just pass my law exams, somehow take on the trappings of a successful life, that I wouldn't feel like that. And it worked for a while, though the price was costly, of never being able to get close to someone and then… well… oh, picking over old wounds is never a good idea, is it?"

She's so caught up in this terrible, sad picture of a Wes not much older than herself that she doesn't realize at first that he's trying to clam up, bottle it all back down until his mouth snaps shut tighter than a steel trap.

Before she can even think about it, she's grabbing his arm and pinching him hard, hard enough that he actually squeaks in protest.

"Tell me, Wes," she hisses, pinching him again. "Don't you fucking dare shut me out. I want to know what happened next."

He looks so fucking scared, like he's going to bolt at any minute and that only sheer willpower and her hand clutched tightly around his wrist is stopping him from jumping out of the chair and running out of the room.

"You want to know what happened next, Faith?" he asks with this horrible, hollow laugh that sounds like he's choking. "There was a girl, Winifred, Fred, and I loved her passionately like some hero in a storybook. I believed all those romantic notions that love was this purifying force that would save me, deliver me from this disease that was rotting me slowly."

He's peering at her intently and she can't hide the flash of jealousy that she's wearing like a new dress. Because he's said that he loved her but it was never the romantic kind of love that you get in Jane Austen novels. It was messy and fucked-up and it had led to this moment right here; a broken man confessing his darkest secrets.

"She was so gentle," he murmurs, almost to himself. "Such a tiny, fragile thing that I wanted to protect her. And we held hands and I'd kiss her chastely on the cheek and thank her for a lovely evening. I spent my first month's salary after I was called to the Bar on an engagement ring."

And the tears that have started trickling down his face are a perfect match for her own 'cause apart from him, no one's ever held her hand or kissed her on the cheek and thanked her for a lovely evening.

He scrubs the back of his hand across his eyes and gropes for the glass of wine, which is empty. Before she can even stop him, he's getting up in this violent, jerky motion so unlike his usual grace, flinging the chair back so it bangs against the wall. "I need another drink."

But she's not letting him go, can't let him go and get lost in his memories of the perfect, fucking Fred (which is a stupid ass name for a girl anyway), so she's running after him.

She hunts him to ground in the kitchen where he's yanking the cork out of the second bottle of wine and he doesn't even look surprised to see her. "It's funny how I can still feel so angry, so utterly betrayed," he says conversationally but he's gulping hard. "For all her cant about loyalty and trust…" He tails off and holds the bottle up to his mouth and it's the first truly shocking thing he's done because this is Wes who drinks his coffee from a bone china cup and his milk from a special glass that he gets pissy about when she tries to pour orange juice in there instead.

"Wes, hey, Wes," she say softly like he's a wounded animal who needs help but is too dumb and hurt to accept it. "Don't you think you've had enough?"

"Beautifully put, as ever, Faith," he whispers. "And no, I've not had enough."

It's kind of terrible because she's never seen anyone swallow down quite so much alcohol in one go, not even Liam in the middle of a bender. But once she reaches up and tugs the bottle away from him, spilling red wine down his shirt when he clings on, his fingers slowly uncoil and then he's sliding down the cabinets and sitting on the floor, staring up at her, lost and frightened.

And she wants to say something. Something so deep and profound that can touch him, move him away from the past and into the present, back to her. But the words never come easy so she's crouching down next to him, pushing and pulling at his unresisting flesh until his head is in her lap and he lets her stroke his hair.

He's got to get it out and she has to know. Yeah, it's hurting him but it's hurting her more to always have him in the shadows, only revealing himself bit by bit. She wants him to rip off the plaster in one painful jerk.

"What happened with Fred?" she asks him in a tiny voice that doesn't even sound like it comes from her.

He doesn't say anything for a while and then he starts to speak, the words spilling out in this eager rush. How Fred was this doe-eyed Texan girl in England on a Fullbright scholarship and that his parents loved her even though she wasn't from the fucking Mother country. And they had an engagement party with a swan made out of ice and shopping for place settings and all the other things you're meant to get when your life is mapped out in this pretty, perfect pattern.

And Fred's religious, or maybe just Texan, and she's saving herself for her wedding night 'cause her virginity's a precious gift you give to the guy you're gonna marry. Though she can't help but think that most of the guys she knows would prefer a case of Bud or some woofers for their car stereo.

Then there's a night out at the ballet, too much champagne and they decide to give it a dry run. 'Cept those shy, doe-eyed girls from Texas ain't ever what they pretend to be. Turns out that little, fragile Fred is a goer when he gets her between the sheets. Up for anything or so she said and so he thought and he said it was the champagne and the way the moonlight lit up her skin so she looked luminescent on the white sheets and he said it was a moment of madness and desire when he put her on her hands and knees and fucked her from behind with a little light spanking served up on the side.

Which is like, practically vanilla compared to what they've done but Fred's loving it and screaming so loud that they wake up the man in the flat upstairs. And she wraps herself round him and he goes to sleep with her voice cooing in his ear about how much she loves him.

Then the next morning she gets up, still all dewy-eyed about the seeing-to she had the night before. Then while he's in the shower, she leaves her engagement ring on the kitchen table, has breakfast with a friend to tell her all the gory details of how perfect Wes with his perfect future is a fucking sick freak with unnatural desires. And her friend tells her mother who tells Fred's mother who's in town to buy her frickin' hat for the wedding and it ends with Wes sitting in his father's study and…

"He said I was sick, that I was a pervert, that I didn't deserve a girl like Fred and I had to agree with him," he recalls in this dead, dull voice as he stares up at the kitchen ceiling and she walks her fingers over the frown lines on his forehead. "Then I got this very tiresome, not to mention clichéd speech about never darkening his doorstep again, which I took at face value."

"So you came here?" she prompts, smoothing her thumbs across the thin skin under his eyes to catch the last of the tears.

"Well, no," he corrects her, leaning into her touch so faintly that she's not even sure that he realizes he's doing it. "First I spent a month drunk, or maybe I spent it hungover, I can't really remember. I lost my job and I took all the money I had left in my bank account and bought a plane ticket to Fort Worth, Texas."

She knows what's coming next, feels sick to the stomach just thinking about it. "To see Fred?"

"To see Fred," he sighs in agreement. "In this misguided belief that she still loved me, and we could put it all behind us and move on. But it didn't really go according to plan."

"So what, they ran you out of town with pitchforks?" she asks indignantly but all her wrath is on his behalf.

He looks up at her and it's a fucking miracle because there's a wry twist to his lips that could be a smile if you were squinting really hard. "Oh no, it was much worse than that. We had this week-long reconciliation which we spent in bed. She said that she'd panicked that next morning; they were rather a religious family as I recall. And against my better judgment, I believed her when she said she wanted to explore 'the wilder side of her nature'."

It's an effort not to clench her hands into fists and smash them against something. There's all this complicated stuff fighting in her head: big heaps of jealousy, sympathy, anger but she just keeps on patting and petting him. "So how wild did her nature get, Wes?"

He shrugs. "Not so much, as you'd probably say. I wouldn't let things progress any further than they had that first night. It really was a wonderful week. They had an ice machine in the corridor outside our hotel room," he adds vaguely. "And she was very sweet about it when Saturday arrived. Said she'd had a wonderful time and that she was very grateful to me but all things considered she could never imagine herself being married to someone like me."

He's crying again and it's not wussy or pathetic. Just fucking heart breaking that Wes, her Wes who reads her Jane Austen in silly voices and makes her breakfast in bed and buys her key fobs and fucks her so hard and so well that she'll never be able to love anyone else can be so broken when she doesn't know how to fix him.

"Wes, please don't be so sad," she murmurs slipping down so she's lying on the cold, hard kitchen floor next to him. "We can make it all right, please."

"I wish I wasn't like this," he breathes against her neck. "You shouldn't…"

"No! No! No!" she snarls, squeezing her arms round him. "Don't even fucking think about saying what you're gonna say. I'm glad that you are like you are because it's you and I wouldn't want you to be anyone else. I couldn't love anyone else, any other Wes, but the one I've got."

He tries to pull away from her but she holds on tight. She might not know the right words, the right combination to ease away his trouble but she's stubborn and stubborn's got her this far.

"I've still got you, haven't I, Wes?"

He moves his head and then his voice muffled, "You have me, Faith, though why you'd want me is still baffling."

He struggles to sit up and she forces herself to let him. His wine splashes on his shirt look like blood and she presses her hands over them. "What we have, Wes, I guess it's not…we're not like… it's not about holding hands. It's never gonna be. And I can't keep coming up with new ways to tell you that I love you if you keep freaking out and pushing me away every time you start confusing me with some frigid little debutante from Texas."

She finishes it up with a superbitch glare and she doesn't give a shit if she's supposed to keep her name out of it. He's staring at her, open-mouthed and a bit slack-jawed yokel for her liking, and then he buries his head on her shoulder and starts to laugh.

"What's so fucking funny?"

Seems like there are tears of mirth now though she doesn't have a fucking clue why. "Everything," he splutters. "Everything is funny: my alcohol-induced attack of maudlin reminiscing, your choice turn of phrase in describing the previous love of my life, us sitting on a kitchen floor at 8.30 on a Friday evening."

And because she never got a chance last night, she cups the back of his head and kisses him now. Soothes away the last remains of all the guilt and the pain with the promise of her lips.

Chapter Two Hundred and Six

And if she can’t always tell him exactly how she feels, can’t always translate her feelings into words —well, she doesn’t always have to. Somehow this is all she needs to say —the fact that she’s not turning away from him is reassurance enough. She brushes away his tears and kisses him so sweetly and intently that she brings him back into the moment. His tongue slips into her mouth, wine-warmed and uncharacteristically, if endearingly, clumsy for it. They stay that way for a long time; his arms are wrapped so tightly around her, as though she’s the only thing keeping him grounded. At that moment the quiet between them is as important as the talking.

Eventually —slowly and somewhat regretfully— she breaks it off, knowing full well that she’s got to drag him home somehow.

“We need to get you home, Wes. We can’t stay here.”

“Why not? The kitchen floor seems perfectly amenable.” He lets out this funny little chuckle as he starts to reach for the bottle again but she intercepts him.

“Oh no, Wes. That’s enough.”

“Oh?” He looks at her slowly, struggling to focus on her and it’s strange to see his usually piercing blue stare so compromised. He smiles this slow, wry, slightly lopsided grin. “But I’m not done.”

She wraps her arms around him and tries in vain to get him to stand but he’s like a dead weight in her arms. She finally lets go of him and sits back down on the cold parquet with a thump. “Not done? Wes, I think you’re plenty—”

“Oh, but I’m just getting started. Because, really, no discussion of my past failures would be complete without mention of Ms. Lilah Morgan.” He leans close to her and drops his voice to a whisper, as though he’s letting her in on a secret. But really, it’s more like a mystery. “Shall I tell you?”

As questions go, it’s a fucking loaded one. And she’s not even sure that she wants to know. In fact, she feels like she knows enough already. The familiar knot in her stomach is back and she’s starting to wish that Wes hadn’t drained the last of the wine.

“Our marriage —if you can call it that—wasn’t so much about honoring and obeying as it was about competition and humiliation.” He makes this derisive little snort. “And for awhile that was enough. I thought it was what I needed. Maybe it was.” He lets his head roll back against the cabinet and he closes his eyes. Sighs heavily. “She was everything Fred wasn’t. Everything—”

Faith shifts uncomfortably. “You don’t have to tell me, not if you—”

“Do you know what l’amour fou is, Faith?”

“No.” She’s almost afraid she’s going to find out.

“I do rather think we fit the definition rather well. We were well-matched in aggression, passion, and a certain clinical detachment. Every moment we were together was a pitched battle. Tenderness simply wasn’t part of the equation.”

Once he says that, her thoughts flicker back to a certain post-coital conversation they’d had early on, and now it’s been crystallized in her mind. She can put the pieces together now. And she’s going to be thinking deeply uncharitable things about a certain Lilah Morgan in perpetuity.

The sound of Wes’ voice snaps her out of her reverie.

“And I think I wanted it that way. Like it was what I deserved after I bungled things so badly with Fred. But Lilah just hated me for acquiescing to it…”

For the briefest second this dark cloud passes over his features and he looks so defeated and diminished. He smiles sadly. “She knew how to punish me so well.”

Chapter Two Hundred and Seven

For a second, it’s as if she can see every bruise, see his body bared and bloody, but she knows he doesn’t mean it like that.

Lilah wouldn’t have bothered with anything that simple, that obvious. As one of Lilah’s victims herself, she feels a pang of fellow feeling as she imagines what Lilah did to repay every perceived slight; how she would’ve taken advantage of every weakness Wes revealed, or didn’t hide well enough.

But she doesn’t have to imagine it because he’s telling her, with a flow of words made possible by the wine, and if listening to him takes more endurance than anything else he’s ever asked of her she doesn’t let it show. The floor really isn’t comfortable but she shifts so she’s sitting beside him, pulling his unresisting arm around her shoulders and wrapping her arm across his body. This way they’re close, but he doesn’t have to look at her as he talks and there’s a small flicker of relief to warm her when his arm tightens automatically.

But the chill returns as she looks up at his face and sees the way he flinches every time he says Lilah’s name.

“We worked together so well, you see; she has a brilliant mind, incisive, quick; it was a real pleasure to tackle a case and know that she’d invariably come up with something original, a new slant on it – she was... very amusing, very witty. I found myself able to relax with her. Our relationship turned physical one night when we were working late...” He sighs, stares up at the ceiling. “It’d been so long – I think it helped – I was fooled into thinking my rather enthusiastic response to her overtures meant I’d changed, but I hadn’t, of course.”

“Well, no,” she says a little tartly. “Could’ve told you that myself.” He gives her a questioning look and she rolls her eyes. “Wes, it’s your thing. It’s what turns you on. You can stop doing it but you can’t stop it being what you want, any more than Xander could get off on kissing me when he’d got the hots for Andrew Wells.”

His eyebrow lifts and for a moment he’s looking and sounding almost normal. “This would be a hypothetical kissing I assume?”

“Me and Xander? God, no; we totally tried to get it on. Dated for weeks. Just didn’t work out.”

“I suppose that explains his protectiveness towards you, and his possessiveness,” he murmurs, momentarily distracted.

“No,” she says, feeling a little exasperated. “That’s because he loves me and we’ve been friends for ever. Got nothing to do with the fact we spent one fall lip-locked in the closet.”

“You’d be surprised,” he says. “And you’re probably right about my inability to alter.”

“No probably about it.”

“Yes. Well, be that as it may, it worked for a while; enough that we got married, though that wasn’t – wasn’t a decision prompted by romance as much as practicality.” He bites his lip, choosing his words more carefully now. “We didn’t – I never tried to do anything with Lilah that I did with Fred. Never let her see that side of me. She – guessed though. Found – evidence of my proclivities by rooting around when I was out – books, pictures, the letters I’d sent to Fred that she’d returned –”

She takes a certain pride in knowing she’s never done that. Stolen from him, yes. Gone through his stuff, no. No way.

“She laughed,” he said in a cool, distant voice. “Wasn’t shocked, wasn’t overly concerned; even offered to indulge my whims.”

“You didn’t -?”

He shakes his head, a swift, violent shake that goes on for far too long until she reaches up and stops him, placing her hand against his face. “Shh,” she whispers. “It’s OK, Wes.”

“No, I didn’t. Not with her. I wanted to put that behind me. Wanted to prove I didn’t need it, could still function – but I couldn’t.”

It’s killing her to listen to this. Her hand is gripping onto his shirt, holding on so hard to a handful of cotton that her fingers are aching.

“Sex with her after that became – well, it was –” He’s searching for a word and she can’t help him, though ones like ‘hellish’, ‘violent’ and ‘bloody’ are skittering around her head. “-adequate.” She winces. Worse than hell. “Then one night I just – I couldn’t.”

The admission’s forced from him by whatever compulsion is driving him to confess, be shriven.

“She was furious. Insulted. I don’t think she was hurt, but – no, I don’t think it was that. She withdrew, became distant, very cool. It was a relief, to be honest. Then one night I came home and found her waiting.” His hand comes up to rest against hers, gently prizing her fingers away from his shirt and then bringing their linked hands down to his lap. “She’d gone somewhere – some sex shop. Spent a fortune on every clichéd accessory you can imagine; fur lined cuffs, whips, gels - gone to town on a set of the tackiest leather-look costumes...” He curls his lip. “Toys.” She thinks of what he used on her, and yeah, not his style at all. Those scarves; a belt, a brush, his hand... he didn’t need more than that. Didn’t need anything much at all when it came down to it.

“So you told her to get changed again or something? That you weren’t interested?” she says hesitantly, wondering if that’s the tiniest bit of pity she’s feeling for a rejected Lilah who might, just maybe, have been trying –

“’Changed’?” he says. “Oh – no, Faith. I don’t think I made it quite clear. The costumes were for me to wear. Not her. She said I was too weak to be anything else but servile, that she was going to make me kneel, make me beg –”

Something, some memory twists his face and he’s struggling to his feet, pushing her aside so that she’s lying, sprawled on the floor, as he bends over the small sink and heaves, the wine and food she’d chosen leaving his body as he retches, his body shaking in violent spasms.

She’s thrown up enough to know what he’s going through and she’s ready when he finishes, running the tap, bathing his face, getting him water to rinse his mouth with. He’s coming apart as she looks at him and she’s starting to panic.

With a strength that comes from desperation she gets him into the library, where a low couch gives him somewhere to rest, and covers him with a throw before going to start a pot of coffee.

When she comes back he’s sitting up, hands clasped in front of him, eyes downcast.

“I’m so sorry,” he says.

“If it’s for wasting all that fancy food, yeah, you should be sorry,” she says, with a mock-sternness, kneeling down so she can peer up into his face. “But the flowers are still in one piece, so it’s not a total loss.”

“I didn’t mean –”

“Don’t want an apology for telling me stuff, Wes,” she says. “Not ever.”

“You shouldn’t be burdened with my inadequacies,” he whispers. “I never wanted you to know –”

“Know what?” she demands. “That you’ve picked two total losers to get involved with? Want a rundown on my ex-boyfriends? Want me to tell you about the one who fucked me on Monday night and his dick was barely dry before he was on the phone telling every single fucker on the football team about it? Or the one who took me to a party and his friend offered him a six pack if he’d let me go down on him, and he agreed, and when I told them both to fuck off and made him take me home, he dumped me out of the car and I had to walk six miles home in the rain?” She takes a deep breath. “They don’t matter, Wes. What they did, how they hurt you – it’s over.”

He raises his head and studies her. “Sometimes, with you, I’ve believed that,” he said.

“Think it all the time,” she tells him, “because it’s true. Wes, I’m scared I’m going to say the wrong thing, fuck this up... but I love you. I’m like you. If you’re a freak, you’re a freak with a freak for a girlfriend. Finally.”

He frowns at her. “You’re not a freak,” he says, sounding annoyed. “Faith, you’re not to refer to yourself like that.”

“I won’t, if you don’t,” she says pointedly. “And if you start in on the whole bit about me deserving better, when I’ve told you and told you all I want is you, I’m gonna get seriously pissed.” She purses her lips. “No; I’m going to get irate. Yeah. Much scarier.”

He smiles, but it wavers. “I think I’d prefer you to be neither, so I’ll refrain.” The smile vanishes. “I feel dreadful.”

“You going to throw up again?” she demands, jumping up.

“Afraid so.” He swallows and lurches towards the kitchen, and she takes a few minutes to call a taxi before following him.

They’re going home where she can take care of him properly and no fucking way is he driving like this.

Chapter Two Hundred and Eight

The cab takes its sweet time to show, and thanks to some strong coffee Wes has already started to sober up a little. Even so, she makes him stay on the sofa while they wait, ignoring his protestations that he should clean up the mess in the kitchen. She tucks the blanket more tightly around him and sighs with exasperation. “Uh-uh, Wes. You’re staying put.” She kisses him on the forehead and goes off to do what she can with the disheveled kitchen.

Finally she hears the telltale flurry of impatient beeps that mark the arrival of the cab. She helps Wes up; he’s unsteady on his feet. When the cabbie leans on the horn again he winces. “He’d better not have trained in New York City,” he mutters. “Otherwise I may be redecorating his interior gratis.”

“Uh, we’ll tell him we’re not in a hurry, OK?” Faith slips her arms around him and somehow gets him to the door.

Thankfully the cabbie turns out to be more tortoise than hare, and they manage to get to Wes’ place without any mishaps. He spends the ride leaning against her, eyes closed, drifting in and out of sleep. She shakes him awake. “Wes, we’re here.”

He looks positively grateful to be home, and sighs audibly when they make it over the threshold. She takes his hand and starts toward the stairs.

“C’mon, Wes. You’re getting a shower.”

He doesn’t protest, just shuffles listlessly up the stairs after her.

And when she starts to undress him, well, that feels strange too, because it marks this subtle shift. Like they’ve finally remembered that trust is all about these little, tiny, un-remarked upon moments, as much as the big, turning-point ones.

She doesn’t draw it out, just unbuttons and unzips him with patient, gentle efficiency. He looks positively ashen as he leans against her. She notices. “The water will do you some good,” she says as she nudges him into the hot spray. And he just stands there, head back, eyes closed, letting the water wash over him.

“Better?”

“I feel almost human. Almost.” He turns off the taps. “I’d kill for a glass of water though.” He looks at her imploringly. “Could you—?”

She’s ready with one of his gazillion impossibly white, impossibly fluffy towels and she wraps him carefully up in it before she goes off to get him some water from the kitchen. By the time she gets back he’s shrugged off the towel and has crawled into bed. She sets the water down on the bedside table and starts to get undressed. And he’s not so far gone that he doesn’t watch her appreciatively as she slips out of her work outfit.

As she pulls back the quilt and sinks down onto the down-filled pillows, it hits her how incredibly exhausted she is. She curls her body around his and rests her head against his chest. He wraps his arm around her and neither one of them feels the need to say anything but that’s okay. It’s not the heavy, portentous silence of the past week but something refreshingly companionable.

Her eyelids are drooping shut when he says, “I’m never drinking again.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s what I said after my first five shots of peppermint schnapps. And yeah, that little promise lasted a week, tops.”

“I really think I mean it this time. All things considered I’d have been better off if I’d learned my lesson after I drank half a bottle of my father’s Château Y’Quem when I was fourteen. He was right to never forgive me.”

She widens her eyes in mock-indignation, hand fluttering to her heart. “Château Y’Quem? I’ll never forgive you! That’s it!” She giggles and kisses him on the cheek. “Well, maybe I’ll forgive you in the morning. But right now I’ve got to go to sleep.” As if to prove her point, she lets out a big yawn.

“Faith?”

“Mmm?” She’s half asleep already; her sleep-clouded brain can’t quite understand what he’s still doing awake.

“Thank you. For everything. It shouldn’t have come to this. I should have told you—”

“Wes?”

“Yes?”

“Shut up and go to sleep.”

He smiles and kisses the top of her head. He lets that be the final word on the matter before he drifts off.

Chapter Two Hundred and Nine

For only the second time since she's slept with him, she wakes up first. He's huddled under the covers, his breathing even and slow and although the sun is high up in the sky, she doesn't have the heart to wake him.

Instead she gingerly slides out of bed and, feeling as if she's auditioning for the role of scream queen in a horror movie, she actually, genuinely, fucking tiptoes out of the room.

Showered and dressed in jeans, an old T-shirt and flip-flops, she puts the coffee machine on, snags an apple from the bowl and unlocks the kitchen door. It's one of those beautiful mornings. The air's already soft and hazy and full of promise and it looks like someone's painted the clouds onto the impossible blue of the sky.

She takes a bite of her apple and chewing ruminatively she starts to turn over the events of the night before. It was brutal. It was horrible. And she can feel her heart aching in sympathy for how much pain he was put through, how much pain he's still in. But really? Deep down, she's glad that he got fucked up and broken on the way to her. Because she's fucked up and broken too and they're a perfect, matched set.

But then she thinks that well, it's not exactly cool to be shaking her pom poms because Wes has had his heart trampled on and spat out by a couple of bitches who…

"You look very pensive, Faith. You're positively glaring at that apple."

She lifts her head from her savage contemplation of her half eaten Granny Smith to see him standing in the doorway, looking calm and smooth like the destroyed man from last night was just a dream she had.

"Hey," she says softly. "How are you feeling?"

He stretches tentatively and gives her a rueful smile. "Despite the fact that I rather disgraced myself in a variety of ways that I shudder to recall, I feel quite chipper. Maybe a little fragile but nothing a cup of coffee won't cure."

"What? You don't have a hangover?" she asks indignantly. "That sucks! You puked up a $20 bottle of wine, you could have the decency to have a headache."

He's padding towards her, taking a moment to stop and sniff the air, before sitting down next to her on the bench. "Maybe it's because you looked after me so wonderfully last night, not to mention all the water you poured down my throat."

She squints up at him and apart from a little puffiness around the eyes and a faint pallor bleaching out the tan he got last weekend, he looks like a walking advertisement for the benefit of eight hours sleep and eating five pieces of fruit and veg every day.

"Are you sure you're OK, Wes?" she asks again, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek.

His arm curves round her shoulder and he drops a kiss on the top of her head. And another one. And another one. "Quite sure, my sweet girl."

She's not sure how it happens but she goes from being made of flesh and bone into a puddle of girl gloop just from the three words said with such fierce affection.

"Faith, about last night. I really am ashamed…"

"If you start apologizing for any of it, Wes, then man you're going to be looking at the business end of a hissy fit. We on the same page?" And it doesn't come out quite as menacing as she planned it but his arm tightens around her.

"You spent all that money, arranged such a lovely and impromptu picnic only to have it ruined," he murmurs against her hair. "I think the first thing on my agenda for this weekend is to buy you a…"

"I don't want you buying me stuff all the time," she protests and it's sharp and shrill and as soon as she says it she's having to work really hard to not think about all the stuff that she doesn't have to think about until Monday when the bank opens again. "You wanna get me a present, Wes? All I want is you being you. And if you want to fuck my brains out at some stage today then that's fine with me too."

He starts to give her his pissiest look, all flary nostrils and narrowed eyes but he gets bored halfway there and sighs instead. "That really is a revolting turn of phrase, not to mention what a mess it would make of my sheets."

"Well, you could just fuck me into the mattress instead?" she suggests and he winces again 'cause what? She's not using her increased word power or something.

"Now that you mention it, you have interrupted me several times in the last five minutes," he says, his voice deceptively calm but she could pick out the little glint in his eyes in a police line-up now. "And there is a small matter of this disreputable T-shirt, which I'm sure I asked you to never wear again."

He's seizing a good handful of faded and holey cotton, knuckles brushing against her belly. "I want to go to the Farmer's market this morning," he drawls so slowly that it's almost like he's taken the afternoon off between syllables. "Then we're going to have brunch up at the lake."

She leans into his touch, hoping that he'll just rip the top off her and schedule in a little pre-brunch action. "Then what?"

"I'm also sure that you were at least a couple of minutes late returning from lunch yesterday," he replies smugly. "I'm sure by the time we've eaten, I'll have thought of a suitable method of chastisement. Now go and change."

And it's OK that she pulls a face at his bossiness even as she can feel the blood quickening inside her at the thought of what he'll be able to come up with, after a couple of hours if he really puts his mind to it. "Any special requests?" she asks, standing up and putting a hand on her hip like the whole getting changed thing is too boring for words.

He leans back on the seat and gives her a look that strips the top layer of her skin away. "The little polka-dot dress and I'll be most displeased if you even think about wearing anything underneath it."

Chapter Two Hundred and Ten

She runs away from him, polka-dot dress fluttering in the warm breeze, when he tells her that he’s going to buy Brussels sprouts, and is only persuaded to tuck her hand neatly into the crook of his arm, like a lady, when he confesses that they’re a winter vegetable and he wouldn’t dream of buying them at this time of the year.

Then he wipes the forgiving smile off her face by leaning down, so that his cheek, smooth from shaving, brushes hers, and telling her, without troubling to lower his voice, that she’s not to move out of his reach until they’re back home, no matter what, and as her fingers clench around his arm because with her knees this water-weak it’s all that’s keeping her upright, he chuckles with a complacency that’s both infuriating and reassuring.

It’s not as easy as it seems either; the sunshine and the start of strawberry season has brought out the crowds and they’re forced to squeeze their way past people laden with shopping and entirely too busy looking for bargains to watch where they’re going.

It’s a double buggy with an enchanting pair of twin girls in it that prove to be her undoing. Even Wesley, who’s not shown any sign of being paternal while she’s known him, has to pause and give them an indulgent smile as he bends down and returns a stuffed lion, just in time to halt a scream that would’ve left their harassed mother deaf most likely. It's either his English accent as he says, “There you are,” or the fact that when he smiles gravely he’s irresistible, but whatever it is, the toddlers are cooing, the mother’s pushing back windswept hair and giving him a thank you that somehow turns into a life story...and without Wes’ arm, she’s forced to step aside to let a man in a hurry get past and somehow she can’t get back to his side.

So when the buggy gets swallowed up, with nothing but a faint howl to mark its presence, as little Bethany (who teethed early but still doesn’t sleep through) drops Mr. Roar again, Wesley looks for her, extends his arm, raises his eyebrow meaningfully as he touches nothing but air, and fuck, let the games begin...

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” she protests later. “And if you hadn’t been so busy with that woman –”

“Mrs. Patterson,” he says reprovingly. His eyes narrow in thought. “I think I handled a case for her husband some years ago, before they got married. He was involved in a car accident, and, strangely enough, she was driving the car that hit his. An odd way to meet, but it seems to have been successful.”

“Whatever,” she says sulkily. “I tried my best.”

He tightens a knot, steps back and smiles. “I’m sure you did. Which is gratifying, but not in the least relevant.”

His finger traces a line from the back of her neck and down the long hollow of her spine. “You’re very beautiful, you know,” he tells her, his touch lingering, as though he can’t bear to move his hand away. Then it does move, lifting and returning in a single sharp flash of sound and sensation, and she can’t hold back the low cry of surprise that first stroke gives her because she forgets how it feels, always, and it’s always new.

“I’m going to make you even more beautiful,” he whispers and he doesn’t stop until he has, and her ass is as pink as the flowers she’s kneeling amongst, tiny wildflowers threaded through the grass, and she’s glad he decided they could go to the lake another day when they saw the traffic headed that way, because they couldn’t have done this there and she’s not sure they should be doing it here, but she’s not going to stop him.

And he keeps her there, kneeling and naked, arms tied around the willow tree in his garden, while he feeds her from his hand, strawberry juice staining his fingers and her lips, and only unties her because he wants to fuck her and she tells him, fervently and at length, that, no, unless he uses the silk scarf to gag her, she’s gonna make enough noise that the people at the bottom of the hill will hear her.

Which means when they get inside he makes her wait for an hour before his cock finally slides inside her, after forbidding her to do more than whimper, no matter what his mouth and hands are doing because he says the sounds she makes are beautiful too.

And when he hears her whispering his name and telling him she loves him, as they lie, curled together in a sleepy, sated snuggle, he smiles, eyes closed, and tells her he loves her too.

Chapter Two Hundred and Eleven

They're woken by the insistent ringing of the doorbell. It takes Faith a second to remember where she is. She hauls herself slowly up to a sitting position. Wes is already pulling on his trousers.

"You expecting something, Wes?"

He half-turns toward her, the slyest smile on his lips. "Perhaps."

"I told you not to buy me anything!" She swats him playfully. "It's not more than ten bucks, right? Right?" She gives him her best intense glare.

And goddamn it, he actually rolls his eyes. "Ten —and some change. And who said it was for you?"

"Wes! What did you do?" But it's too late –he's already out the door.

She starts grabbing for her clothes. Problem is, her dress seems to have disappeared. Now she remembers —it's still hanging from a bush in the garden. She doesn't even remember when he finally stripped it off of her. Was it before or after the—

Then she hears the front door slam and she's now insanely curious about whatever's going on down there. But she figures that she'd better exhibit some patience —she thinks her ass has had enough for one day.

She feels the same intense anticipation as if it were Christmas morning —or so she imagines, 'cause actual Christmas morning in her household usually involved a knock-down drag-out between her parents. And isn't that just the gift that keeps on giving?

Just when she's pondering that, she hears Wes' footsteps on the stairs. He leans against the doorframe, arms folded across his chest and looking rather pleased with himself.

"You're welcome to come downstairs now," he drawls tantalizingly.

She pulls on her kimono and slips past him into the hallway. His eyes are following her but he's not moving from the spot. She bounds down the winding stairs two at a time and he admonishes her from the landing: "Faith, it would hardly be prudent for you to slip and fall headfirst over such a trifle."

She pauses long enough to see his smirk of pure satisfaction. That's just enough to spur her on.

And sure enough, there's an impressively large box and a couple of not so shabby smaller ones sitting next to it in the vestibule.

"Oh my God!" she screeches, jumping down the last three steps. "You didn't? How… when? Shit, Wes!"

"Really, Faith, there's no need to be quite so strident," he admonishes her with a grin but he's got this soft look in his eyes like secretly he's delighted by her delight.

But she can't look at him because she's diving for the biggest box. "We've got a TV and… a home entertainment system and a DVD player! And, Wes, this cost way more than ten dollars and change."

He crouches down on the floor next to her as she runs a disbelieving hand over the boxes. "Shall I arrange to have them sent back then?"

She bumps him with her hip, almost toppling him over. "Well, fuck no! But Wes, it's so much money." It's even more money than she's stolen from him and that unwelcome thought suddenly takes up residence in her head like a gang of squatters who refuse to leave.

"It is rather a lot of money," he agrees carefully and she can feel his eyes on her. "But I did enjoy that bizarre Queer Eye show at the cottage and if it makes you feel better you can read a book in the library while I'm watching it."

"That wouldn't be fair!" she protests hotly. "And, like, how would you even know what the good shows are?"

"I'm sure I'd manage," he says dryly, standing up and staring at the boxes with a certain amount of trepidation. "But I'm sure it would be far more rewarding if you were to help me. And if it really bothers you that much, you can pay me back. I'm sure I could come up with some barter system for every hour you spend glued…"

"Oh, whatever!" And she's too busy scoffing and then sticking her tongue out at him to think about double meanings and blank checks.




It takes them a good hour to set it all up after they've dragged the boxes down the stairs, into the den.

She makes Wes a cup of tea because, of course, he can't just start ripping away the cardboard and figuring out as he goes along. Nope, he has to sit down and read all the instruction manuals, then lay out all the leads in some super secret sequence while she's ordered not to touch anything under pain of death.

And she's not too impressed either when he confesses that he hasn't signed up for a cable package because they'll be in New York in a few weeks.

"It hardly seemed worth it, Faith," he mumbles, peering round the back of the TV set. "Could you pass me one of those scart leads and stop pouting while you're at it?"

"You can't see me, Wes, so you don't even know if I'm pouting and man, all the good shows are on cable."

"I daresay we'll cope. We can watch DVDs or I can watch DVDs and you can finish your Dorothy Parker." He crawls out from behind the TV and gives her a stern look, that she isn't buying for a second.

"There's no way you're gonna be able to work this thing without my expert advice," she tells him and yeah, she is pouting now. "And my Blockbuster card," she adds triumphantly. "I might even let you buy me some popcorn."

He snaps the last lead into place and adjusts one of the speakers perched on top. "I may be agreeable to renting some films but I'm taking the whole issue of junk food under advisement," he demurs, bending over and switching the set on.

Nothing happens and he looks so mystified that she bursts out laughing. "You must have plugged something in wrong."

"I absolutely did not," he huffs. "I followed those labyrinthine instructions exactly."

She picks up the remote and presses a few buttons but still no joy, until she waggles it in her hand. "This feels kinda light. You put the batteries in it, yeah?"

And if she lives to be a hundred, she's never going to forget the expression on his face, which goes from outrage to realization and then back to outrage within a millisecond.

"Wes," she says so sweetly that it gives even her a sugar rush, "if you drive us into town so we can rent some movies and you let me buy three different kinds of junk food then I promise that we'll never, ever talk about this again."

He's whipped and he so knows it and she tosses the remote control in the air and catches it one-handed. "I'll even let you choose the movies," she promises, while he stands there with his hands on his hips and shoots her laser beam death rays with his eyes.

Then he shrugs and casts a look of utter loathing at the new TV, which stands there all shiny and knowing. "Very well," he sighs resignedly. "You'd better go and retrieve your dress from the rose bush in the garden and get changed."



She had been going to let him choose the movies 'cause she's a fucking saint and yeah, they were going to be provisos about foreign languages and shit but as soon as they open the door of Blockbuster and she sees all those colorful boxes lining the shelves, all her good intentions get forgotten.

Wes is staring at the shop in bemusement like he's just walked into the monkey house at the zoo and she grabs his hand and drags him, un-protesting, through the early Saturday evening crowd of harassed parents and their ankle biters.

"We have to get this!" she shoves Lost In Translation at him, "it's my all-time favorite movie, you'll love it. Oh, and this. Shit! I haven't seen this for ages." Ghostworld and The Royal Tenenbaums join the pile and Wes is trying to read the synopses and not drop anything as she tugs his sleeve and pulls him towards the arthouse section.

"You can choose something too," she tells him graciously and he arches an eyebrow way higher than it's ever gone before.

"Thank you, Faith," he says gravely. "That's very magnanimous of you. We'll have this and this, and definitely not this," he adds, giving her Ghostworld back.

"But it's my favorite movie ever," she whines, trying to push it into his hands.

"You've said that about the last ten DVDs you picked up," he reminds her tartly and picks a box up from the shelf. "If you don't stop being such a brat, I'm going to make you watch this."

She peers over his shoulder at reads the description: "'A man seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black Plague. God, Wes! No fucking way.'"

He juggles the boxes so he can slip his arm round her shoulder. "Not even if I let you gorge yourself into a sugar coma?" he purrs in her ear but she twists out of his grasp and wags a finger at him.

"Nuh-huh!" she taunts him. "You trying to bribe me, Wes? I'm shocked."

And there's nothing he can do as she dances away from him and goes to look at the New Releases because there's children, really, young children about and so he'll just have to think of a suitable punishment for when he gets her home, which is just fine by her, she thinks with a decisive nod as she puts Ghostworld back and picks up Donnie Darko instead.

Half an hour and a slightly fierce discussion about why Kill Bill Volume 1 is not appropriate Saturday night viewing later, Wes has caved in on the junk food if it comes from the gourmet food shop a couple of blocks away.

"And as I had absolutely no say in our movie choices, it's only fair that I select your calorific treats," he says smugly. "Wait here."

She peers in at the window, trying to use mind control to get him to walk over to the freezer compartment when she sees a neon light reflecting off the glass and then she's flashbacking to another night, with Xander, standing across the street and begging her to do him the mother of all favors.

The brown paper bag that Wes is clutching looks promisingly full but she only gives it a cursory glance because she's too busy trying to work up to voicing the bright idea she's had.

"I thought you'd be trying to wrest this out of my hands," Wes chuckles and then frowns because she's biting her lip and shuffling her feet. "What's the matter, Faith? Are you going to grill me on exactly how much money I've spent?"

She draws a pattern on the sidewalk with her flip-flop and tries to give him a winning smile, which doesn't feel right on her face. "I think we should go and get some porn to watch," she blurts out because there ain't no way in the world to dress it up.

And yeah, he's shocked because his eyes widen slightly but then his face gets that closed-in, hungry look which doesn't lead to anything good but her clutching the bed sheets and screaming. "Really? Well, that sounds… interesting."

She jerks her hand in the direction of the neon sign. "There's this store just down that alley," she mutters. "Like, a private store."

Wes is staring at her like she's just lifted her dress over her head and flashed the entire town. "Don't you have to be over 21 to frequent those kind of establishments?"

"Well, it's not like they check ID on the door and that place is wall-to-wall sleaze."

"And you know that because?" He's got his lawyer voice on now and she's got all his attention, which is just how she likes it.

"Well, I went in there one time, for Xand," she explains, as he gently takes her arm and crosses the street. "He wanted some gay porn and he was too chickenshit to buy it himself."

"So you offered, out of the goodness of your heart?"

"You know me, Wes. I try to do someone a good turn every day," she smirks but he's too busy looking shifty as he checks to make sure that no one's followed them down the alley to notice.

"If we go in, Faith, and it's a big if, I don't want you rushing around, picking embarrassing objects off the shelves and thrusting them at me and neither do I want a running commentary on said objects. Are we clear?"

"As crystal, sir," she snaps back and he's dithering and it's that time in a relationship when it feels right to do a little porn shopping together. So she saves him from having to make a decision and reaches up to ring the bell.

Chapter Two Hundred and Twelve

Faith’s heard these rumors about these girl-friendly places with discreet whited-out windows, salespeople who double as safe sex educators, and a try-out room for vibrators.

But then, shitty one horse towns in the middle of nowhere don’t get one of those. Instead they get this grotty, neon-lit hole-in-the-wall whose owner seems to think that penis-shaped gummy candies are the height of sophistication.

It’s been a while since she’d been in and she’d had just long enough to completely forget how fucking creepy the place was. At least she’s not alone this time.

Maybe that’s worse.

When she and Wes walk in everyone in the place looks up furtively from their wank mags. Faith smiles nervously and Wes grabs her resolutely by the elbow and leads her through the small, stunned crowd with all the assurance of Moses parting the Red Sea.

“So, Faith? What exactly did you have in mind? There are so many… wonderments to choose from.” On cue, he picks up the “Honeybun Spanking Kit” with an expression that’s equal parts curiosity and obvious distaste. He flips the package over to read the explanation, mutters “Cinnamon?” under his breath, and puts it back on the shelf.

That’s when he spots a veritable wall of Rabbits and attachments and he drags Faith over to it. “Do you think Mr. Bunny would like a friend? A dolphin, perhaps? Or a…” He picks up a luminescent silver vibe and peers at it, “…bear?”

“I think Mr. Bunny is just fine on his lonesome, Wesley,” she grits out, hoping against hope that the Furtive Perv brigade isn’t listening in. “Didn’t we come here to look at the, uh, films?”

“Oh, I hadn’t realized that we were in a hurry. I’ve never been here before and I think I’d like to browse first.”

And she’s rolling her eyes before she can even stop herself. Wes grabs hold of her arm again. Leans over and whispers in her ear, “Don’t think I didn’t see that, Faith. I’m sure I’ll think of something suitable later. Perhaps I’ll even find…” He casts his gaze around the gaudy, crowded room. “Ah! Yes.” Still holding onto her, he crosses the room to this rather tacky array of cheap pleather paddles and canes. “Something like this.”

She blanches, whispering, “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

The bastard actually takes a second to smirk. “Yes, I am rather.”

“Godammit!” She punches him in the arm. “Let’s get some porn and get out of here. It’s kinda creepy.” It comes out more shrill than she’d expected.

“Fine. But after your bratty behavior earlier this evening, you don’t get to choose.”

She splutters for a second. “But Wes! You don’t know a goddamn thing about— ”

He looks incredibly amused. “I don’t? And you’re an expert then, Faith? I may take your counsel under advisement but I wouldn’t count on it.”

And she’s all set to go into serious pout mode when a copy of “Bend Over Boyfriend II” catches her eye and she snaps it off the shelf, waving it in front of him. “This is a modern classic, Wes.”

His gaze flickers over it and skitters off with disinterest. “If that’s what you have in mind, Faith, you can file it away with the tying-me-up scenario.”

“It’s just a movie. I didn’t say anything about—”

“No, you didn’t. But I could see that gleam in your eye.”

“Someday I’m going to have my wicked, wicked way with you, and you’re going to like it,” she lilts out as seductively as possible when she doesn’t want the whole frickin’ store to hear.

She gets a raised eyebrow for her trouble. “Oh, really?” He chuckles. “You sound awfully assured of that, Faith. And really, in the foreseeable future I rather think I'm going to see the swift reddening of your arse.”

Her cheeks are coloring as he says it and he skims his fingertips slowly over her breasts before she can stop him. “Stop it, not here,” she hisses.

“Not to worry,” he says mildly as he goes back to studying the vast array of boxes. She gives him five full minutes before she barks out impatiently, “Jesus, you are the most serious porn shopper in the world. What, are you reading the plot summaries or something?” Now it’s his turn to look a little sheepish and she giggles. “You totally are! Oh my God, I’m never letting you live this one down, Wes.”

Finally he picks something off of the shelf. He turns to her with a look of supreme triumph.

“What did you get?” She cranes her neck to see but he’s covering up the title too well.

“It’s a surprise. Now, be a good girl and go outside while I pay for it.”

Chapter Two Hundred and Thirteen

For once she doesn’t mind doing what he says, even though walking through the shop alone is way worse than doing it with the solid presence of Wesley beside her. There’s one guy who looks unsettlingly like – oh fuck it is - the guy who taught French and left mid-term when he got caught giving an airhead blonde extra tuition that somehow needed both of them naked to do the trick. Harmony’d been barely legal because she’d been kept back a year, but it hadn’t saved him. And the soixante-neuf jokes just wrote themselves....

She ducks her head before she can see what he’s reading or – gross – where his hand is, and heads for the doorway in a controlled manner that might look like a dead run to an observer.

She doesn’t wait right outside but takes little sideways steps until she’s far enough away from the entrance to be officially not hanging around it, and waits. For a hell of a lot longer than it normally takes for someone to pay for something, and she knows damn well Wes isn’t getting fucking carded so what the hell is he doing in there?

When he emerges, cat that got the cream smirk firmly in place, the bag he’s holding is way too loaded to be holding just a vid and she hisses at him as he comes alongside her and takes her arm.

“Wes? What did you get? You were supposed to be getting a movie. One. What did you –”

She tries to rummage and peek inside the bag but he holds it away from her and says in the voice of sweet reason, “Faith, if you want me to empty the bag and show you my purchases in the middle of the street, I will, but wouldn’t you rather wait until we’re somewhere slightly less public?”

He’s got her there, and she can only nod, biting her lip, and then glare at him as he locks the bag in the trunk, still with that annoying smile twitching at his lips.

She pouts until halfway home when he reaches over and lays a warm hand on her knee. He doesn’t move it, doesn’t say anything, but something in her melts and she relaxes and it’s only two steps from that to bouncing, because, shit -

“We’ve got a television!”

He gives her the most indulgent of smiles. “We do indeed.”

“And now we’re normal,” she says, with satisfied certainty. She sneaks a look at him and he’s spared a second to give her a baffled, bemused glance. “It’s true, Wes,” she says seriously. “Gotta tell you; no matter how freaked Xander was by what we get up to in the bedroom, it was nothing compared to the look on his face when he found out you didn’t have a TV Really.”

He stares out at the road and his face is unreadable.

“You’re not going to send it back!” she says, totally panicking because shit, that wasn’t the right thing to say at all...

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “Send it back when I haven’t watched a single one of the delightful movies you chose? I can hardly wait to dive into them and become a couch potato.”

He says it in such a tentative, prissy sort of a way, as if he’s not sure he’s got the right phrase, that she bursts out laughing, and the hand on her leg twists and his fingers pinch her thigh, high enough up that her laughter cuts off abruptly.

But when she looks at him, dry-mouthed and with an ache starting a few inches north of his fingers, he’s grinning and she realizes she’s totally been had.

***

When they get home, he sends her to the kitchen with the bag of snacks, and tells her to arrange them and bring them to the den. She watches him vanish, porn goody bag in one hand, DVDs in the other, and rolls her eyes. Getting a TV is good but she’s wondering if she’s made a monster. Give any man a remote and he turns into a control freak; the effect on someone like Wes was too scary to think about.

When she discovers the jelly beans she forgives him in advance, and the caramel popcorn’s like a blowjob in the bank...

By the time she wanders into the den, mouth full of a mixture of orange and cotton candy beans because she loves mixing them up, he’s got it working, and holy mother of God, it’s huge. Even the fact that all she’s looking at is a commercial for toothpaste, and she’s getting entirely too well acquainted with some man’s tonsils, doesn’t stop her from voicing a near orgasmic moan of delight.

“It is rather impressive, isn’t it?” he says, with so much pride you’d think he’d gone out into the forest and hunted the sucker down with his own little bow and arrow. “Well, this certainly isn’t how I’d planned to spend the evening –” She experiences a small pang of regret because whatever it was he’d had in mind, it was bound to have been good, and if she ends up missing out on sex because he gets addicted to channel-hopping, she’s going to send it back herself. “– but I’m sure it’ll be entertaining.”

And it is. He insists on watching a non-porn movie first and as it’s still daylight and they’re both sober, she’s not inclined to argue. He holds her hand and she snuggles up beside him on the couch, with their feet propped up on the footstool that’s wide enough for both of them to use. The room darkens, he produces some beer that, even if it’s imported from Belgium, is still beer, and she drifts off just as Westley and Buttercup are battling a R.O.U.S or three, dreaming about doing just this, until it occurs to her that she doesn’t need to because she already is.

When the credits roll, he stretches and stares at the mess they’ve made with the brief popcorn fight. “Hmm. I think we’ll have a short intermission,” he murmurs and then looks thoughtful. “There should be ice cream at this point, if I recall correctly.”

“You don’t have any,” she points out. “And if you did, I’d have found it by now and eaten it when you weren’t looking.”

“I sincerely hope not, Faith,” he says. “Such wanton greed and deceit would bring my entirely justified wrath down upon your... head.”

“My ass, you mean,” she says, giggling, because fuck, she’s getting buzzed from the beer, her stomach’s full of sugar and starch and Wes is looking at her with that gleam in his eyes that promises fun times ahead.

“Well, now you come to mention it ...” he purrs, “that is a more suitable location, perhaps.” He stands up. “But as there isn’t any, you couldn’t have eaten it, now could you?”

She’s left to work out the Wes logic as they get fresh supplies and the beer gets swapped for a red wine that’s as smooth and rich on her tongue as the chocolate truffles he puts just out of reach, so she has to ask him every time she wants one and kiss him before he’ll slip one into her mouth.

He reaches into the brown paper bag from the porn shop and pulls out a video, giving it a long stare as if he still can’t quite believe it’s there in his house, in his hand. “Why were you so amused at the idea of reading the plots?” he asks.

She snorts. “It’s porn, Wes. Who cares what happens in the three minutes before they get naked?”

He stares at her. “That’s a remarkably limited way of looking at it,” he says.

“Don’t see why.” She still can’t see what he’s got, but his thumb’s covering a pair of tits that probably got a dressing room of their own and there’s a promising looking tangle of arms and legs.

“You don’t find yourself aroused by a certain setting, a stock character? Horny housewife, sexy student, naughty nurse?” He’s reeling off the alliterative clichés with his mouth twisted wryly but he doesn’t sound bored and the look he’s giving her is intent enough that she knows from experience he’s going to want an answer.

“Well, none of those. Not really into the girl –on-girl action, y’know?”

“And so my fantasy of you with one of your fellow inmates dies an untimely death,” he sighs.

It’s unexpected and she flushes. “Hey! Wasn’t like I was doing time. Juvie isn’t – well...” Her voice trails off because, yeah, she did get an offer, but it wasn’t from one of the girls, it was from one of the officers, and fuck, as if she hadn’t got enough crap to have nightmares about. The flash of sharp nails digging into her breast and sour breath kisses makes her shudder. “Not my thing,” she says fixing him with a glare. “And if there isn’t a cock to be seen in that, you can watch it by yourself.”

He stares at her in silence and she grits her teeth. “If we’re talking about clichés and fantasies, Wes, what about you?” she bites out. “Bet you went to a fancy boarding school with all sorts of fun when the lights went out.”

His eyes are cool and a little distant and she’s not sure if she’s angrier at him or her, because she wanted this to be happy and fuck, he’s dredged out enough harrowing memories for one weekend.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Faith, but the only service I performed for the upper class boys was to write a good deal of their homework in exchange for cash.” He smiled. “Oh, were you expecting six of the best and a buggering behind the bicycle shed? I’m afraid I can’t offer any spicy stories along those lines.”

There’s a sticky pause and then he says softly, “I think this is where I apologize, isn’t it? You look remarkably upset and it wasn’t in the least bit tactful of me to bring up your past like that.”

She sighs. “No, it’s fine.” She gives his hand a forgiving squeeze.

“I’m still curious, though.” He tilts his head. “No fantasies at all?”

She starts to blush, because, yeah, she’s got them, but since she met him they’ve changed and he’s got a starring role in most of them. “Wes, I’m practically living it; why would I want to dream about it?”

He purses his lips and mercifully lets her off the hook, maybe because he’s feeling guilty about the juvie bit, probably because he’s dying to watch the porn. He gets up and slides it into the VCR and settles back with her.

The title’s enough to make suspicion flare. Two minutes in and she’s spluttering.

“Wes!”

“Mmm? Ssh, Faith, it’s just getting to a good part.”

She spares the screen a swift glance. “That’s not how you change the typewriter ribbon!”

Wes smiles. “Oh, I think Cyndy’s doing a marvelous job,” he purrs. “Even if she somehow managed to get ink all over her blouse and had to take it off. Oh dear; she’s dropped her pen. I wonder if she’ll bend over ...and well look at that. She’s not wearing anything under that rather brief skirt. Not very professional of her, is it?”

She gives him a ferocious jab from her elbow but he’s apparently too entranced in the exciting life of Cyndy, the office slut, to notice.

It’s a fairly standard film as these things go, and by the time Cyndy’s serviced half the typing pool, her boss, three customers and, go her, changed the toner in the photocopier, they’ve both gone silent and there’s a space of several feet between them. It’s not that they’re not aroused; she can see Wes is hard and yeah, even with the fake groaning and moaning, there’s still enough action to have her interested, but it’s more the fact she’s watching porn with Wes that’s turning her on than what’s going on in front of her. Which makes her wonder what’s got Wes going.

Then Cyndy gets cornered by the coffee maker by Nikki, who’s mad because Cyndy fucked her boyfriend at the Christmas party and even the banner that flashes across the bottom of the screen advertising that immortal encounter (Buy ‘Santa Fills Their Stockings’ and get this deluxe, imitation leather wallet FREE!!!) can’t take away from the tension, ‘cause, man, does Nikki look mad. And she’s so mad that when she tells Cyndy she’s gonna pay and pulls her down over her knee and starts to whale on her ass with a hairbrush yanked out of a purse that’s barely big enough to hold a lipstick but, hey, movie magic, you gotta suspend your disbelief, Cyndy just squeaks heartrendingly and somehow slips so she ends up on her knees between Nikki’s legs and Faith knows where that’s going, but the spanking, fake though it was, has changed something and she can’t look at Wes without feeling the heat in her face and reliving the sting of his hand on her ass.

The last ten minutes spin out excruciatingly slowly, but it ends eventually (Cyndy gets promoted! And has the cutest name plate on her desk that tells the world she’s an Ass Manager) and she can’t help whimpering with relief as Wesley presses buttons with a frowning intensity and sends the room into darkness and silence. He reaches over and switches on a lamp and then looks at her. “That was the most –” He’s silent again, and then he gives her a puzzled look. “Did you like that?”

“I’d like to say it didn’t suck, but it did.”

“Every five minutes,” he says with a shiver. “Good Lord, it’s enough to make one want to be celibate.”

“Over reaction, Wes!” she says, because, crap though it was, well, they all were, and he’s so missing the point... “And you got off on it.”

“I really didn’t,” he said.

She reaches over and taps at the proof. “Then what’s this?”

He doesn’t blink an eye. “An involuntary, purely physical response to a carefully calculated audio/visual stimulus?”

She rolls her eyes. “There’s way shorter words for it, Wes. Stiffy. Boner. Hard-on...”

He cuts off her recital with a reproving cough. “Very possibly.” He leans back and raises his eyebrows. “Now, if I recall correctly, Cyndy would know just what to do to take care of it. A remarkably industrious young lady in some areas, though her shorthand skills seemed limited.”

And she’s not having Wes comparing her to Cyndy with a wistful look in his eyes. Standing up, she strips off her dress and gets his full attention riveted on what’s hidden behind a scarlet satin thong and a matching push-up bra that she doesn’t need but still does the job.

“You going to pay me overtime, for this... sir?” she says with a sassy grin as she straddles his knee and goes to work on his shirt buttons.

“Say it properly,” he tells her and the games stop being new and a bit weird and they’re back where they belong, with Wes in charge, and there’s nothing fake or tacky about the way her heart’s started to hammer and her clit’s started to throb.

She drops her eyes and then glances up at him, all meek and anxious. “Do I get overtime for this, sir? Because it’s after five, you know.”

Her nipple’s trapped between his fingers and teased hard and aching before he replies.

“I’m sure I can compensate you for your efforts in a way that’s mutually satisfying,” he says sounding so fucking serious that it takes her a minute to recognize it’s a line from the movie and by the time she does he’s got her lying face down across the footstool and he’s finding out for himself just how wet she is.

Chapter Two Hundred and Fourteen

He hooks his foot under the stool and drags it closer, making her yelp and cling on to the sides as it shifts underneath her.

Then he's snagging the side of her thong with his finger and letting it ping back against her hip. "I don't like this," he says conversationally. "It leaves nothing to the imagination."

And considering the way the red satin divides her ass in two and is almost as bright as her bottom after he's administered a really hard spanking, she can't help her annoyed, "Well, you like me plenty when I'm naked and that leaves jack shit to the imagination."

He's already sliding the satin down her legs and she obediently wriggles against the padded leather seat to make it easier for him. "If you're naked it's usually because I've made you that way," he replies instantly and she knows that he's thought about this a hell of a lot. Her in her underwear, her out of her underwear. "I prefer those cotton short things you're so fond of…"

"They're called boy-cut panties," she hisses and she has to wonder about the weirdness that is Wes. He's got her wet pussy, all primed and raring to go, about six inches away and he's lecturing her about her choice in knickers. Isn't that what the English call them? "And what about those black panties you got me? They cover up everything.”

He gives a dreamy sigh like a thirteen-year-old girl getting her first glimpse of Orlando Bloom. "I know, that's why I bought them. Well, that and they do cling so delightfully to your arse," and he trails his fingers down that part of her anatomy and now it's her turn to sigh and arch up into his caress. "And they do have the advantage of letting me do this when you're wearing them." He slides his hand under her, finding her clit with a feather light touch that makes her shift restlessly, waiting for his "Hands and knees please, Faith", and scrambling into position when it comes.

She waits and knows she's quivering with anticipation but he just pats her ass almost absent mindedly and gets to his feet. "I think we should watch another film," he suggests mildly and now she's quivering not so much with anticipation but with barely suppressed rage because she's posed just like Cyndy when she got it up the ass from the photocopier repair man and he's more interested in the TV. It's so fucking going back first thing tomorrow.

Then she realizes he's holding the porn bag and she decides to hold fire on returning the TV if she gets at least two orgasms in the next hour. He crouches down and she almost giggles at his look of awe as the DVD tray slides smoothly out so he can pop the next film in.

"What are we watching?" she asks eagerly as he sits back down and tries to ignore the fact that her ass is practically in his face. He doesn't seem to mind though; as she peers over her shoulder at him, he pops a chocolate truffle in his mouth and aims the remote control over her head.

"Twelve Horny Men," Wes drawls in a really bored voice. "It's a courtroom drama, allegedly."

The credits roll and she stays meekly in position while the first two horny men have their way with the court stenographer and one of the jurors and yeah, she's predictable because all that fucking and grinding and "suck it, bitch" are kinda turning her on but it's not the same as when they're holding hands on the sofa and she can see him getting hard, feel his fingers twitching against hers.

"Stop fidgeting, Faith," he orders and she tries to lock herself in place but the lights are dim so he can't really see anything, not her wet pussy or her hard nipples, just the ghostly white curve of her ass in the shadows of the room.

Horny man no 3 is fucking the girlfriend of the accused in the washroom, when she hears a rustling sound, then the crinkle of plastic. What the fuck is he doing? Was it the porn bag or the junk food bag? She's trying to decide which one she'd prefer when she feels him shift forward on the couch and run his hand up her thigh.

"You're wet," he remarks softly, teasing around her dripping hole with the tip of a finger. "That's very good. I don't want you to take your eyes off the screen, Faith."

There's more suspicious sounds, plastic and paper so she's only got one eye on the screen as Horny men 4 and 5 respectively spit roast the fancy lady lawyer which makes her think of Lilah and she doesn't even realize that she's given a little shudder until she gets a hard thwack on the ass with the edge of the remote control. Man, that home entertainment system is on its last fucking promise.

"What are you doing?" she asks suspiciously over the cheesy, plinky plonky soundtracks and the "yeah, baby, let me fuck your mouth."

His finger is still thrusting shallowly in her cunt but he pulls it out and then there's something else there, something that isn't made out of any part of Wes. Unless he's suddenly turned into silicone in the last five seconds.

"It's called a G Twist Vibe," he says silkily. "And I remembered your favorite color so I bought the candy pink model."

"Gee, thanks," she says sourly and punctuates it with a tiny, high-pitched yelp as he stops rubbing the end of it against her pussy and slides it home,

"I know you were quite adamant that Mr. Bunny was content to be an only child," he continues, amusement dripping from every word, "but I was worried about him, quite frankly.”

And she's saved from having to give him the really cutting remark that she just needs a second to work on because he gives it a couple of quick twists and she's already pushing back, trying to fuck herself on it because they've been watching porn for the last two hours and what? She's meant to be made of fucking stone?

"Now, now, Faith, there's plenty of time for that," he admonishes her gently and then sits back down, leaving her on all fours with a pastel-pink vibrator shoved up her cunt.

"What the fuck are you doing?" she growls, whipping her head round to give him the mother of all glares. "You just can't leave me like this!"

Wes' gaze swivels momentarily from the on screen action. "Good God, that's a creative use for a gavel," he murmurs before fixing her with a steely stare that's completely lacking in sympathy. "I just have, Faith and what's more I expect you to hold it in place until the end of the film. I could turn it on if you think it would help. Now watch this scene; they had one of the stills on the box and well… it's the main reason why I bought it."

She tries to watch some brunette chick with these humungous hooters take it up the ass but her mind's on other things. She keeps clenching her muscles to hold the vibrator in place and it just makes things worse, makes her wetter so she can feel herself throbbing around the vibe, feel it sliding ever so slightly so she's forced to try and tilt her hips up to hold it in place.

He makes a tutting noise because he's way too busy watching her than the sensurround, enhanced vision porn, which should be flattering but it's fucking not. "I don't see what's so great about this scene," she snarls, trying desperately to cling onto the vibrator which seems to be making another bid for freedom. "Once you've seen one ass fucking, you've seen them all."

"Possibly, but I thought she looked a little bit like you."

"Say fucking what?" she practically screams, scrambling upright and yanking the vibrator the rest of the way out of her. And then she throws it at him for good measure. He catches it one-handed which would impress her at any other time but really not the hell now. "I remind you of some skanky, porno queen? Take that fucking back!"

And either Wes can't see how mad and fucking offended and hurt she really is. Or else he's just got a death wish because he smirks. "Maybe a little, around the eyes. Can't you see it?"

No, she can't fucking see it because she's not even looking. Way too busy jumping up off the stool so she can straddle him and pin his hands to his sides. "Take it back, Wes, now."

Any other time and she'd be rubbing herself against his seriously hard cock but he's not getting anything tonight but the cold shoulder. She can feel him testing the strength in her hands that she's got curled around his wrists and yeah, he could probably break free of her grasp. And in that case, she'll just have to whack him over the head with the fucking vibrator until he sees stars or sense. Whichever comes first.

"Really, Faith, you can't see the likeness?"

"No, and really not seeing the funny in this either, Wes, so you can just fucking take the smirk off your face.”

Instead he just peers over the top of her head and she is going to kill him, slowly and bloodily and feed his rotten corpse to the dogs when she realizes his gaze is back on her angry face. "I was mistaken," he says gravely. "She looks absolutely nothing like you. It must have been a trick of the light."

"You're just saying that," she mutters darkly, tightening her grip. "'Cause you know you've worked my last fucking nerve."

He doesn't make the slightest sound of protest even though her fingers are aching, just leans forward so he can plant a row of kisses across her cheek towards the tight, angry line of her mouth. "There isn't a girl in the world who's as beautiful as you," he whispers against her lips. "Or has such a pretty mouth," he adds, pressing tiny ardent kisses against it and she's letting go of his hands, her heart and her body softening so she's clinging to him.

"I'm not going back on the stool," she states firmly though, daring him to contradict her. "Not after you've been so mean."

He turns her around gently so she's sprawled across his lap, back nestled against the seat of the sofa, his arm round her shoulders. "Well, no, this is much nicer," he agrees. "But I'm afraid that there's one part of your former arrangement that I can't concede. Open your legs, please."

And she guesses that compromise is as good as it's gonna get so she's parting her thighs and letting him slide the vibrator back inside her with these maddening little thrusts that make her squirm against him. When it's wedged inside her as far as it will go, he pats her knee.

"Now I want you to stay perfectly still until the end of the film," he says reasonably. "Do you think you can do that?"

"I guess," she nods and he gives her a sly smile which makes all the little hairs on her arms stand up.

"Good," he purrs and then turns the thing on.

Chapter Two Hundred and Fifteen

She makes this sound that’s uncannily like the one her evil, skanky twin is making a few feet away, but it’s got the edge because she really fucking means it. Staying still just became impossible, because she’s doing her best not to come and the only way she can do that is to wriggle until her fucking G spot isn’t being remorselessly stimulated by something designed to do just that and succeeding all too well.

He doesn’t turn his head but he says mildly, “Faith? Perfectly still wasn’t a suggestion.”

“If I stay still, I’ll come,” she hisses, doing the shallow breathing and tummy clenching and anything else she can think of to stave it off. “And I guaran-fucking-tee you, I’ll be moving then.”

His lips get all thin and annoyed and she’s not sure he’s putting it on. He points the remote at the T.V like he’s the conductor in a symphony or something and pauses the movie, leaving them both staring, transfixed, at a ten inch dick in extreme close-up until he clears his throat and presses ‘stop’ instead, so the screen goes mercifully blank.

“Recently, Faith,” he says in a cool voice, “you’ve lost the small amount of control I thought I’d managed to instill in you. Perhaps I’ve been entirely too lenient of late.”

Yeah, or perhaps you’ve fucked about with the rules until I don’t know if I’m coming or going she thinks darkly, not even amusing herself by the pun. Saying it out loud is really tempting but she keeps her lips closed because she’s certain she’d never get it out without whimpering and that’d kind of ruin the effect.

“Certainly you should be able to control yourself better than this,” he says disapprovingly, pushing the vibe back where he had it before and frowning when her hips buck up in a despairing attempt to dislodge it.

“Wes...” And she’s dying here, feeling the sweat pop out all over her and the heat gather and swell, spreading out so that she thinks if he touches her somewhere – anywhere – she’ll come just from that, explode and shatter and burn.

“You’re not to come, Faith,” he says sternly, implacable and unyielding.

She stares up at him, drowning as he watches from the shore. He’s made her aware of her body in a way she never was before, and he’s sure as hell taught her some control, but she knows her limits – fuck, so does he – and she’s perilously close to them right now just from feeling the hard muscle of his thighs against the back of her legs and seeing the way he’s breathing just a little bit fast for a man who’s been Mr. Couch Potato all night. Adding in the porn film and the relentless humming in her cunt, you’ve got an orgasm that’s not going to wait and why he can’t fucking see that, she doesn’t know...

Then he reaches down and runs a fingernail across her clit and she screams before he takes it away, dimly aware that his arm’s tightened around her shoulders as the climax hits her and her body convulses around the vibe hard enough to add a few more ridges to the fucker.

And it’s only as she opens her eyes in time to see a satisfied look on his face that she gets that he knew, fucking knew she couldn’t do it, all along.

But he’s not going to admit it, not going to confess that it wasn’t fair and she never stood a chance.

No. He’s going to punish her for failing.

And he’s done it before, and it’s been part of the game, but there’s something a little dark in his eyes as he smiles down at her, tugging the vibe free and placing it neatly back on the packaging because it’s practically dripping. And when he tells her to get back on the footstool, she’s expecting his hand, or even, God forbid, something from that fucking grab bag, to make her ass, still tender from earlier, sting and smart all over again.

She’s not expecting him to say softly, “I saw your father yesterday, Faith.”

That, positioned like this, he can’t see her face, is all that saves her. The shudder that she holds back with an effort of will he’d be proud of, is more of a shiver because she’s been dipped in ice and her blood’s thinned to water and pierced with icicle-shards. It hurts to breathe, hurts to think, and her voice is unnaturally calm as she says, “Yeah? Bet that just made your day.”

“Indeed.” His hand gives her ass a pat that’s auditioning to be a slap and then it pauses, resting lightly on her skin. “No, wait, I’m mixing up my days. I saw him on my way to the bank, so it must have been Thursday.” There’s no room to feel any more panic; she’s overloaded with terror already and you can’t wet water. She lies there, waiting, with her heart trying to escape her body, smash a hole right through her ribs and fly away...

“At least I think it was him; he drives a white pick-up truck, yes?”

“What? No!” She’s babbling now, a summer-heat wave of warmth melting the ice. Not Liam. He hadn’t seen her fucking father, hadn’t seen him, hadn’t spoken to him, didn’t know. Wes didn’t know.. “Red, it’s red, rusty but red.”

There’s a reproving smack. “I think that’s enough talking, Faith. There’s the matter of your deplorable lack of –”

“Wes?” She’s desperate enough to twist around and if he sees her eyes are wet, maybe he’ll think it’s from coming so hard or something. “I’m sorry.”

He looks at her with a face so expressionless it’s like staring at marble, chilly and smooth. “What for?”

And she lets another chance go by.

“For moving. For coming. I’m sorry. You’re right, I wasn’t trying.” And she can’t look at him for this bit, so she faces forward, locking herself into position and whispers, “You should punish me, Wes. You should hurt me.”

There’s a long silence and then he stands up. “I think we’ve both endured enough for one evening,” he says and she’s all set to panic again when she sees he’s nodding towards the TV and realizes he means the god-awful movies.

Walking towards the television he takes out the DVD and stares at the shiny side like he’s wondering where they fit the little people in. Then he replaces it in the case and gives her a smile so natural she wonders why she thought he was angry, and says, “Oh, do get up, Faith. I promise you I’ll deal with your disobedience later, but for now I’d rather like to eat something that’s neither salty nor sweet. Are you hungry?”

And she’s really not but she smiles back just a bit too fast, a bit too eagerly, and says, “Yeah, Wes. I really am.”

Chapter Two Hundred and Sixteen

After tugging her dress back on, she trails disconsolately after him and into the kitchen.

She's not sure how it's happened - or maybe she does but she's sure he doesn't know. He can't know. He'd be grilling her like she'd just taken an oath on the bible – but all of a sudden the cosy intimacy of their moviefest has become something else. Something that resembles a six feet block of concrete standing in between them.

He's rummaging for food in the fridge, pulling out a tray of steak and green leafy things, which she eyes with a certain amount of distaste. The thought of putting food in her mouth to compete with the metallic top note of unease and the memory of all the sugar she's consumed isn't something that's filling her heart with joy. And the thought of an argument because she won't eat her greens would just put the fucking cherry on top.

Before she even registers it, she's taking tiny steps towards him where he's washing the meat under the faucet.

"Are you mad at me, Wes?" She's got this whiny thing going on, which makes his face momentarily tighten before he gives her a bland smile.

"Of course not. Why ever would I be mad at you?" he enquires smoothly but she's sure there's a slight edge to the question.

"Dunno. I couldn't help it before," she blurts out. "I didn't want to but…"

"Instead of trying to wheedle your way out of whatever retribution might be coming, why don't you make the salad?" he suggests, brandishing a bag of tomatoes at her.


And in the books that she's started to read, they're always going on about these comfortable silences but this silence, punctuated only by the sound of her knife as she chops vegetables into perfectly sized pieces and the spit of the steak under the grill, is pretty fucking far from comfortable. It's awkward and spiky and she doesn't know what to do to make it right.

It certainly isn't sitting down next to him and trying to force herself to eat food that tastes like seasoned cardboard. She chokes down half the steak and a few raddichio leaves, even spears up a couple of chunks of tomato to show willing but her heart isn't in it and he whisks her plate away with one of his special sighs, which is so gusty it threatens to blow her napkin off the table.

He scrapes the rest of her dinner down the waste disposal and if he mentions starving children in Africa or any one of the five major food groups she's going to shove his head down there too. But he doesn't. And when she raises her head from her silent contemplation of her fingernails it's to find him staring at her with this really odd expression which makes her heart flip over a couple of times and then start revving up.

He looks exhausted. Just flat-out fucked with it and she can't tear her eyes away because it's like she's seeing him, really seeing him properly for the first time in ages. And there's these deep grooves on either side of his mouth which she's sure never used to be there and lines on his forehead because he's got a semi-permanent frown. Shouldn't he look happier? Like, if he loved her and she loved him and they were due to run off into the sunset together any day now.

"You barely touched your dinner," he says flatly with no hint of accusation but it echoes in the silence and her head snaps up.

"I ate too much popcorn before," she says immediately, even though most of it ended up scattered about the sofa cushions after their impromptu battle.

"Don't lie to me, Faith!" he growls and it's so fierce, almost verging on venomous that she hitches her chair back. "I won't tolerate it."

She can feel her face crumbling as if someone's just knocked down her foundations and they're back in this tired old pattern of attack and retreat as she stumbles to her feet and heads for the door. "See! You are fucking mad at me!" she spits out through a mouth full of sobs but she's not even out of the door before his arms are around her, pulling her back as she tries frantically to disentangle herself.

"Faith…," he murmurs into her hair and it's tender enough that she stills.

"I haven't done anything wrong," she insists. "You keep changing the rules on me and I don't know what you want."

He turns her round and brushes the tangled curls back from her face and she's frightened of what he's going to find there. "Everything will be better when we're in New York," he says urgently. "We can put everything behind us."

She's clutching handfuls of his shirt and then she gives in to it and touches him. Feels his heart beating out a frantic rhythm beneath the cotton. "Wes, you do love me, don't you?"

And this is just another dance they do because she's being so fucking needy and instead of not standing for it, like he used to, he's whispering reassurances, trying to make everything better with his words and the hands that are stroking her cheeks. "…I'll give you a bath, you'd like that, wouldn't you? And then we'll watch another movie…"

It's too much that he's so forgiving when she's fucked him over three thousand times. She's got nothing to give him because she's already taken everything so her hands are sliding to his belt, unbuckling it with steady hands and he doesn't stop her, just wraps his hands in her hair as she sinks to her knees.

When he comes in her mouth, it's like a tick in a column so her account's in balance again. And she can remember to breathe in and breathe out again so by the time she's cuddled up on his lap watching Lost In Translation, she can enjoy the solid warmth of him surrounding her without feeling guilty. Besides, he doesn't say anything as he brushes the tears from her face with careful strokes of his fingers because she's already told him it's a really sad movie…

Chapter Two Hundred and Seventeen

It isn't until they're snug as two very tense bugs in bed that she starts to feel slightly more human.

They're lying side by side, not touching, but it's dark and in the dark everything is softer. Not so many sharp edges and lines. His face is a blur as he rolls over and strokes a hand up her arm.

"It's been a terrible week," he says feelingly. "Possibly the worst week since records began."

"Yeah," she sighs in agreement, winding her fingers through his when he reaches for her hand and all of a sudden she's anchored when before she felt like she was freefalling, trying to catch on to anything to stop herself rushing through the air.

"There was the dinner party from hell," he continues and she can feel him shudder. "And my disastrous attempt to, well…"

"Turn us into Ozzie and fucking Harriet?"

"Possibly if I actually knew who they were. Is he the one who has that awful reality show and you said we'll have to watch it?"

And unbelievably she's gone from stiff as a board and wide-eyed with angst to giving a gurgle of laughter and snuggle into his welcoming arms. "That's Ozzy Osbourne, Wes. Jeez, get a ticket to the 21st Century."

His chest rumbles as he gives a rueful chuckle, coaxing her against him so she can hitch her leg over his. "And we were both sick and I'm still of a mind to write a scathing letter to the diner."

And she's not going to let the real reason why she had her head wedged down the john disturb this fragile, shaky peace. "I don't think it was their fault," she mumbles, continuing in a rush to move on to the next reason why the week had sucked like a nuclear powered vacuum cleaner. "I was just having an off day and you had a migraine and we… that weird shit in the motel room…"

"Yes, I think we should declare a moratorium on that kind of role-playing for the time being. And possibly any more encounters with my ex-wife."

And it's dark and she's feeling brave or maybe just stupid enough to add: "And mentions of that sad sack of shit who's supposed to be my father."

He doesn't say anything, just smoothes his hand down the length of her spine, his touch light and soothing. "I sometimes think life would be easier for us if we went to live in a cave, miles away from the rest of the populace."

"You'd fucking hate it," she splutters, raising herself up with an elbow to his chest which makes him grunt, and he possibly even glares but his face is in shadow when she squints down at him. "No way am I living in a cave, even with you."

"Maybe that's a clause you need to add to the contract when we go through that tomorrow," he teases. "The party of the second part refuses to become a cave dweller."

"Oh, do you still want to do that?" she squeaks 'cause they haven't been able to get through a single day lately without weirdness and upset and her tummy hurting. And contracts written over pre-nuptial agreements seem way more fairy tale, or like her and Wes' version of a fairytale, than this week's horror story.

His hands are on her again, kneading her shoulders, brushing her hair away from the nape of her neck, all sneaky tactics to get her to rest her head in the crook of his shoulder.

"Of course," he assures her and his voice is so gentle, so fucking sweet and she wonders how he can do that, just make everything all right in her world with that husky tone. "How else am I ever going to get you to desist from describing me as pretty?"

"Like that's ever gonna happen," she snorts, because this is one dance that she loves.

"Or to get you to stop crying because it leaves me feeling utterly helpless. Do you think your tear ducts will respect the letter of the law?"

She presses a kiss against the hollow of his throat and fights the urge to tell him that she never used to cry so much before she met him. "Probably not, Wes. I'm 18, stuff makes me cry. It's just I love you so much," her voice is this hoarse whisper and yeah, there's that familiar prickle at the back of her eyes. "And it's scary sometimes 'cause I hate that I become this stupid, weepy girl."

And still dark, still hidden away from the rest of the world so they can say all the things they can't say when the lights are on. Because he's kissing her and sighing against her lips, "I love that stupid, weepy girl. And I love the bad-tempered girl who swears far too much. And I love the girl who force feeds me junk food. And I love the girl who's going to go to sleep in the next ten minutes most of all." He punctuates the most adorable fucking words he's ever said to her with a tired yawn that almost threatens to dislodge her but she clings on and shakes her head.

"I'm not sleepy, Wes," she mutters apologetically. "I've eaten way too much sugar and I got all upset and now I'm kinda wired and…"

"I have a cure for all of that," he purrs and the gentle sweeps of his hands change their cadence so they're heavy, fraught with promise as he flips her over so she's on her back and he's looming over her.

Then he's slithering down her supine body, pausing to nip and kiss and suck all the lucky inches of her that he deems worthy. Teasing her nipples with the rough drag of his tongue and stopping only to lift his head and order her hoarsely to spread her legs.

Chapter Two Hundred and Eighteen

He only stops again when she's come more times than she can count. She's wrung out and boneless, still breathing heavily and floating somewhere high above the bed.

By the time she finally returns to her senses a minute or so later, Wes has wrapped his arm around her and sidled close.

"That… works remarkably well," she sighs contentedly with the last bit of energy she can summon. She can't see his expression but she hears a low, wry chuckle. Smug bastard.

"Wes?"

"Hmm?”

There's some part of her brain that's rebelling against the afterglow, against the sleepiness, and it's fighting to shove words into her mouth. It takes all the effort she can muster to bite the incriminating bits away, until all that's left is an incoherent mumble.

“I'm sorry...” She's smooshed up against him, lips against his neck, and she's surprised he can hear her at all. “...so scary sometimes. It's all kind of scary, getting pulled in too many directions at once...” She sighs, glad this probably isn't making any sense at all. “I don't know, I'm just thinking too much I guess...”

He curls his hand around the back of her head, fingers slipping along the back of her neck. He's making these soothing shushing sounds that she's pretty sure she doesn't deserve, but she forgets that thought and snuggles in closer to him, making breathing barely possible, comforted by the spicy scent of his sweat and her juices on his skin, by the steady and tender pressure of his fingers on the tight tendons of her neck. He tuts a little as he massages the last knot away, and her eyes are drooping heavily. Before long, she's fallen asleep there in his arms, slipping into an echoing, empty corridor of dreams.

Yeah, she'd had a pretty rotten dream; they'd been walking in Central Park, or her dream-twisted, TV-informed version of it. The “Law and Order” one where joggers are murdered and little boys kidnapped and teenage girls molested during parades; the tree limbs bend toward the broken asphalt paths and the sky is gray and heavy with clouds. He'd gone into a thicket of trees without a word and disappeared and she'd yelled her dream-self hoarse, running through the endless trees and screaming for him before awakening with a start.

She's alone in the bed, legs tangled in a sheet and miles away from the pillows. The space where he should have been is only slightly warm, but not cold. Struggling up on an elbow to see if maybe he's just in the bathroom or something, his heavy silhouette against the wan moonlight filtering in from the window catches her eye.

“Wes...?” Her mouth is dry and cottony from sleep; her voice raspy and weak, as if she really had been screaming for real and not just in her dream. She's not even sure if he heard her, 'cause he doesn't reply. There's a nagging lump in her throat that's rising up and she swallows it down painfully. It's that damn helpless feeling, the one she wishes she could tell him about when she's more awake, when she could couch it words that wouldn't just bust out and give away all her damn secrets in one go. “Wes... come back to bed. It's so late...”

He turns to look at her, or at least she thinks that's what he's done. The back lighting of the moonlight makes his face completely unreadable, as she can only see the high arch of a cheekbone and the drawn, tight corner of one side of his mouth.

“Go back to sleep, Faith.” He sighs, voice thin and scratchy and obviously exhausted and pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers -- a move that's almost always endearing -- but in this context makes the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up and send a cold shiver down to the base of her spine.

“Wesley...” she chokes out, pissed that she's sounding like a needy, demanding girlfriend 'cause all she really wants is for him to stop thinking, to stop worrying and come and wrap her up in his arms again. She doesn't like the thought of him there in the dark, all those sharp gears churning in his brain. She's too tired to fully comprehend it all, but it really can't be a good thing. But maybe she's still asleep then, and this is just a weird, vivid part of her dream.

When he turns away from her and looks back out the window instead of climbing out of the chair and coming back to bed, though, she knows this is all really happening and there's nothing she can do to stop it. Except maybe close her eyes and pray that he's not come to any solid conclusions and hope in the morning it's all blown over.

It takes a long time for her to fall back asleep and in the end she fakes it, counting to one hundred slowly a few times before he finally returns to bed, curling on his side away from her and shoving his arms under the pillow.

Chapter Two Hundred and Nineteen

When she wakes up from more unsettled dreams -- from the tossing and the turning to these horrible flashes of New York City being some kind of hellish inferno into which she's been cast, she wakes with a start. Her first instinct is to reach for Wes, and thankfully, he's there. She sinks back down onto the pillows, sighing with relief as she wraps her arms around him.

Still half asleep, she whispers, "Had the most awful dreams, Wes. You were gone, and then I couldn't wake up and…"

His voice is muffled by the pillow. "I'm here, Faith."

She kisses his shoulder, snuggles up next to him, fully ready to finally get some decent sleep. "Did you sleep okay? I think I was dreaming but the bed was almost cold and you -- "

He cuts her off with an "I slept just fine," that's ever-so-slightly curt.

"I should have returned the favor, is that it?" She giggles and throws her leg over his, brushing her hands along his back before settling them around his waist.

He rolls onto his back and smiles sleepily. "Perhaps." He's all Cheshire Cat enigmatic this morning. It'd be goddamn aggravating if it weren't so endearing.

"'Perhaps'?" She mimics his tone of crisp formality. "Are we going to have to set up a system of strict barter, Wes? Because I seem to recall we have some matters to discuss this morning."

He chuckles. "Do we, Faith?" He rests his arm behind his head, looking down at her with amused affection. "Are you going to cross-examine me now, counselor?"

"If it pleases the jury, your honor."

"I think there's some courtroom conflation going on, but I'll let that pass for the nonce."

She leans against his chest. "'For the nonce'? Where are we, Wes? The freaking mother country?"

"I'll not have you speak of the mother country like that, Faith." He gives her his best look of pure mock-effrontery. Which is pretty damn good.

"Wes? Shut the hell up." Rolling her eyes, she puts her money where her mouth is, giving him a kiss that's dead-serious even if she isn't.

"That …works remarkably well," he whispers into the concave space between their lips before he pulls her close again.

It's not like an early morning roll in the sack is all she needs to forget the nightmares and long shadows and the cold half of the bed in the middle of the night, but it's certainly a good start. Except that when she slides her hand along his belly and tries to slide it under the sheet where she can see a textbook example of morning wood waiting, he grabs her wrist, pulling it away and pinning her arm to the bed.

She flutters her eyelashes at him, “Oh, so, we're playing it like that this morning...?”

“We're not playing anything now. We have plans.” Little kisses dot her lips between each perfectly drawled word. He's looking pretty mischievous for someone who didn't get a lot of sleep.

She tries not to be bratty about it, she really does. “We have plans...?” She squints at the clock. “At 8.00 am on Sunday morning?” He nods gravely, the picture of seriousness. “Uh, look. Not to be harsh, but if we're not gonna knock boots in the next five minutes, I'm going back to sleep.” She manages to wrench her arm out from his grip and huffily flops over, only half-kidding and half-annoyed. “Go watch “Meet the Press” or go do your crossword or something. Putter in the garden.”

He's prying her back around to face him, and dammit if she can't keep up the act, even if yeah, she really rather would be going back to sleep. He looks so obviously pained at the mention of puttering in the garden, she thinks, that she pulls him in for a kiss, the kind of kiss that turns into a hasty grope, that could turn into a quick hand job, if only...

But no. “Faith, really.” Pries her hands away again and again. “Wouldn't you rather save this for this afternoon? Maybe until after you're better rested and fully fortified with the best breakfast this hellhole of a town can offer on an early Sunday morning?”

“And that could be had where, exactly?” A big yawn threatens to turn her face inside out, and now that she thinks about it, it's probably not wise to ignore that low rumble in her tummy that's getting a little demanding now since she didn't make the most of dinner last night and is pretty much running on sugar fumes at this point. “Not really in the mood to go gallivanting around at this time of the morning, even if all the waitress at every hole-in-the-wall, hidden treasure diner in this town do all seem to know your name...”

He rolls his eyes at that and sighs heavily. “Just stay right here, you spoiled thing. You don't have to move an inch. Well, actually, you may want to sit up when I get back...”

It takes her less than a minute to drift back to sleep after he leaves – he won't say what he's up to despite (or maybe because of) her wheedling questions, and she's suspicious when he doesn't even shower, just slips into yesterday's jeans and T-shirt and disappears, with vague promises to be back shortly.

She's not too far asleep, though, because the blessed aroma of coffee nearly has her jumping out of bed and tackling him before he can get in the door. And she's doubly grateful when she spots that the cup is from the edgy local coffee shop a few blocks away and not from like 7-11 or something. Not like he would bring her that dreck anyway.

What he has brought her is an excessively foamy and sweet caramel latte, which she announces will be her beverage of choice on Sundays from now on; same for the chocolate croissants, croissants stuffed with ham and cheese and spinach, and the plain ones spread thick with sweet butter and strawberry preserves. Sunday food, perfect in bed.

And she's known him long enough now, long enough to know that when he's paying that much attention to every damn detail of the food, making sure it's expanding her tastes but isn't too challenging, he wants something. And sipping her latte and watching the sunlight streaming through the windows glint off the near-invisible and horribly endearing scattering of gray in his hair that's usually well hidden by the low lights in the office, she's really quite content to give it to him.


Part Eight

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