A/N Many thanks to
rahirah for the fast beta read on this; much
appreciated. Written for the Autumn Angel Book of Days Challenge,
stories archived here:
www.moracle.co.uk/angelbod/archives/aut03/index.html
When You Canât See the Wood...
“I canât pay you, you know.”
The words were honey-sweet but if there was a trace of either regret or
embarrassment in the voice, it was so faint as to be invisible.
Angel and Wes exchanged glances. In the space of a few seconds they
silently, urgently conversed by means of widened eyes and facial
twitches.
Donât like taking money for helping people.
Quite.
So we can let her go?
Yes - no! Cordelia!
Oh, God.
Angel coughed and turned to their client. Cordeliaâs views on clients
who didnât pay might not match his own in any way, but heâd become an
unwilling convert after a few of her lectures. Sheâd ranted at length;
variations on a single theme, which seemed to be that rich people
needed helping too and allowing them to show their gratitude with a
check was only polite. Ranted over and over, her voice passionate
and intense, her eyes glowing with a holy fervour heâd only seen her
show when sheâd bought something on sale and got them to knock off even
more for a flaw so tiny heâd been unable to see the slight blemish
until sheâd ...
“Angel?” Wesley said, his voice uncertain. “Were you going to say
something?” This century, he added silently.
“What? Oh...yeah.” He turned and offered the woman in front of him a
tentative smile. Cordelia had mentioned the need to look friendly, and
made him practice smiling and shaking hands. Wesleyâs attempts to copy
him had met with her grudging approval, tempered by a scathing
assessment of his ‘way too English and not in a cool, Hugh Grant sort
of wayâ clothes. His own awkward attempts at welcoming clients had
resulted in a despairing look and a sad groan as she sank into her
chair and rested her head against her desk. “Were you ... not
happy with the service we provided at, umm, Angel Investigations?”
Please say ‘noâ so I can tell Cordelia itâs why you didnât pay.
She blinked, nut- brown lashes sweeping down to cover hazel eyes. “Of
course I am! You both did a wonderful job killing that horrible,
horrible demon.” She smiled at them and Wesley felt a warm glow kindle
as she let her gaze linger on him. “I couldnât be happier. Really. Iâm
just not able to pay you.”
“Why is that?” Wesley asked, striving to sound politely curious rather
than curt. It wasnât that he minded helping her as a favour, but he
felt a slight indignation stir and cool the flattered glow. The herbs
for the binding potion had been out of season; heâd ruined the edge on
his favourite axe chopping the head off the demon, then finding out
that the arms (four) and legs (three) needed to be separated too, and
his blue shirt was never going to be wearable again. Thekoth slime was
corrosive. “The details you gave us seemed to indicate that you are,
forgive me, rather a wealthy woman?”
She laughed, a gentle sound, musical and soft. “Oh, I made that up! I
donât have any money at all. Why would I need it?”
Angel frowned. He wasnât in any way able to price her outfit accurately
but it looked expensive. Her hair was a wild swirl of chestnut that had
to be purposeful because it looked too silly to be natural, and
Cordelia would have walked through an ocean of Thekoth slime for those
shoes. “Clothes? Food? Somewhere to live?” he said tentatively.
She shrugged, a beautiful movement that set her body swaying as though
a breeze had blown through the Hyperion lobby. “All those are provided
for me.”
“By whom?” Wesley asked. He flushed uncomfortably as an obvious
explanation sprang to mind and began to stutter. “That is. Oh. I didnât
mean. I do apologise.”
She smiled at him, a puzzled smile. “Why?”
Angel glared at Wesley. “Perhaps we could just move on? If you canât
pay your bill right this minute, Ms. Woods, maybe we could set
up...installments?” He voice trailed away. God, he hated this. It was
so sordid. He was supposed to be helping people, not hounding them for
cash.
“No.” Her lilting voice went flat. “That wouldnât work at all. Now that
youâve destroyed the demon menacing my tree, I must go home. Itâs been
too long already.”
“Your tree?” Wesley said. “I thought - you told us that it was a danger
to you and your children! What does a tree have to do with anything?”
Angelâs eyes narrowed. “Is there something youâre not telling us?” he
asked. “Because Iâm starting to get a bad feeling about this. We found
the demon in the grove, just where you said heâd be, and yes, he had an
axe and there was kindling stacked around the trunk of a tree, but we
assumed - that is, Wes told me that -”
“The Thekoth ritually dismember, then cook and eat their victims. Which
doesnât quite fit with another text I translated that seemed to
indicate they were vegetarians, but when you called us in such a panic
and we saw his preparations -”
“We killed him when he attacked us,” Angel said, finishing off Wesleyâs
sentence and ignoring Wesleyâs tight-lipped look of reproof.
“Yes. You saved me and mine. We are eternally grateful. I must go.”
“Youâre a dryad, arenât you?” Angel said bluntly, his voice certain and
his arms folded across his chest as he watched her face register
surprise.
Wesley gasped. “Of course! Now I see! If the tree to which your spirit
is bound were to die, so would you. Now the texts make sense; the
Thekoth is both vegetarian and a particularly brutal killer.
Fascinating.”
She gave them both a rueful smile and for the first time looked a
little uncomfortable. “Youâve guessed correctly,” she said. “Now do you
see why I have no need of money?” She gestured down her body. “All this
- a glamour.”
“We would have helped you anyway,” Angel said quietly. “You didnât need
to lie.”
She walked to him and cupped his face in a slender brown hand. As
Wesley looked at her, he thought he could catch glimpses of her true
form. The hair looked less like tangled tresses and more like leaves,
overlapping and swirling as though wind-tossed. Her skin was darker,
smooth and gleaming with a dull gloss. Wesley found his mind drifting
back to the schoolyard and conker season. Heâd had one champion conker
once; boiled in vinegar, pierced and threaded onto a length of twine.
Sore knuckles and stinging fingers hadnât stopped him from winning
match after match until, with the abruptness of all crazes, conkers
were out and the winter chill had brought other games.
“I see that you mean that. Now I wish...” Her hand fell away and she
looked at them, her eyes shifting from summer green to autumnal brown.
“I will give you a gift instead.”
Cordelia wouldnât be appeased by anything that wasnât attached to a
designer label, but Angel tried to look grateful and suitably
appreciative. He wondered what a dryad considered precious. Fertiliser?
She reached out, her hands locking around Wesleyâs left wrist and
Angelâs right.
“I have power enough for a glamour, but that can do more than disguise;
it can reveal. I give you both an hour in which you can -” She looked
thoughtful and then mischievous. “Return to nature, yes? See life as I
live it. Discover truths that lay hidden. A new experience. For an
ageless vampire and a young man with an enquiring mind, that should be
a gift worth having.”
She dropped their hands, stepped back and flung her arms up high in a
wild, swift gesture that reminded Wesley of boughs whipped by an autumn
gale, scarlet and brown leaves scattering like droplets of blood...
The violence of the image was mildly disturbing but he forgot it in the
shock of discovering that his feet were rooted to the floor. Literally
rooted.
“Angel!”
“Wesley? I canât move. Where did she go?”
“Angel.”
Something in Wesleyâs voice drew Angelâs eyes and attention. “What?”
“Why are we...naked?”
Angel glanced down. “I have leaves sprouting,” he offered. “Maybe
theyâll spread.”
Wesley scanned his own body, twisting and bending as much as he could.
He discovered that he could move his torso and arms but his legs,
though not fused together, didnât respond to his mental commands. He
was naked and his skin was marked in a combination of white and silver
grey swatches of colour. A silver birch. It had to be. Leaf buds,
tightly furled, were emerging from his body in a pattern that he
realised, when he saw it on Angel, seemed to follow the path of the
major blood routes in his body.
Angel. Once his gaze fell on Angel, he couldnât look away. The strong,
powerful body had become an oak, mature, weathered and majestic.
Angelâs pale skin had deepened many shades and his hair and eyes seemed
to have lightened until they were a light brown.
Wesleyâs eyes closed and he became aware of dozens of new sensations,
new information for his mind to absorb. Hunger, heat, pain and
pleasure; all still existed, but in a subtly different form. He knew,
without looking, that the floor of the lobby had been pierced and
broken, that whatever he and Angel had become was reaching down,
searching for earth. There shouldnât have been any; the basement lay
beneath them, but whatever magic had transformed them seemed well able
to take care of a detail like that. He felt sticky, delightfully moist
soil wrap around the finest tendrils of his roots, felt the cool flow
of water moving up, suffusing him with more than moisture. He craved
light but even as he formulated a longing for sunlight to stream down,
he thought of Angel. Would sunlight kill him? Would flames burst out,
crackle and char the figure before him? His face twisted at the thought
and his eyes flew open.
“Are you O.K, Wes?” Angel said, his voice worried. “You looked a
little...freaked for a minute there.”
Freaked? Wesley stared at him and began to chuckle. “Weâre trees,
Angel. Trapped and helpless, naked and - and you wonder that I
seem a little disconcerted?”
Angel tried to shrug but he seemed to have less flexibility than
Wesley. “She said an hour, right? Weâll be pretty stiff but it
shouldnât kill us.”
“Unless an axe-wielding maniac with a grudge comes - I didnât say that.
I take it back!”
“Wesley!” Angel groaned. “Never mind.”
Wesley was aware that they were both babbling. He knew why he was.
Angel was so close...if he stretched out his hand he could touch him
and Wesley wanted to, wanted to know what Angelâs skin felt like now.
Cautiously, he reached out and laid his palm against Angelâs forearm.
Angel glanced down but didnât say anything. Wesley stroked the skin
experimentally. “It feels like skin, not bark, but somehow...I donât
know what it is, but itâs different,”
“Iâm alive,” Angel said softly. He brought a hand up to caress his
chest, spreading it out over his heart. “I can feel it, can feel myself
living, breathing...” He gripped Wesleyâs hand, squeezing it gently.
“How does it feel for you? Is it the same as always?”
“No; far from it,” Wesley replied, reveling in the warmth of the hand
on his and the flesh he held. “This is so much better; Iâm aware,
intensely so, of every part of me. I can feel myself expanding,
changing...”
“Spring,” said Angel. “Weâre going through spring.” He looked down and
a wry smile curved his lips. “Youâre hard, Wesley.”
Any embarrassment Wesley would normally have felt at that was missing,
an emotion he couldnât conceive of in this form. He smiled, swaying
towards Angel in a wanton invitation. “I could blame it on rising sap,”
he said, enjoying the amusement that crossed Angelâs face at his words,
“but I think itâs more than that. Spring is the time of mating, birth,
a new beginning.” He glanced down. “You seem to agree with me.”
“Want you, Wes,” Angel said. “Need you...”
Any desire to smile left them both. “Weâre not trees, are we? Not
quite. I remember reading about dryads in spring. They -”
“Wesley...” Angelâs voice, sounding tortured. “Touch me. Please?”
Wesley felt a surge of lust, uncomplicated and strong, wash through
him. All desire to lecture on sylvan rites of spring fled in the face
of the reality. They were close enough for him to be able to lean
forward and kiss Angel, even as his hand slid down and wrapped around
Angelâs cock, feeling it stir and move inside his grip. His other hand
moved up to circle Angelâs shoulder and he felt Angel copy him. Time
slowed as he kissed Angel for the first time. Soft brushes of lips
against lips, lips dryer than he would have expected, creating a rustle
and whisper of sound until the kiss deepened as Wesleyâs own cock was
taken and held. The frustration of being unable to thrust into Angelâs
fist was forgotten as strong fingers wound around him, coaxing and
commanding all at once.
Elemental. Eternal. Endless. Wesley felt himself come and wasnât sure
how long heâd been coming, how long before he finished. His tongue was
against Angelâs, his own hand sticky from Angelâs climax and his arm
was pulling Angel as close as possible. The distance between them had
stopped mattering; the need to move had faded. Warmth soaked through
him and he fell into a drowsy sleep for a moment.
“Summer.”
Angelâs voice was in his head now and he woke to find that where their
skin touched, they had begun to merge. His grandmotherâs garden had a
tree formed of three saplings, planted too close together. Their
branches and trunks had intertwined until it was almost impossible to
see that they had once been three.
The lust had gone, replaced by a sleepy satisfaction. Summer...the time
to relax, to continue growing, to play. They could only kiss now, long,
slow kisses, tasting each other, tongues delving deeply, teeth biting
playfully. Wesley felt happy and content, as though this would never
end, though his mind was clamouring at him in a warning that eventually
sank deep enough to prod him into action.
With an effort, he dragged his mouth away from Angelâs and tried to
speak. The words were clear enough in his mind but they wouldnât let
themselves be spoken. He captured Angelâs gaze with his own eyes and
tried to convey his agitation. Autumn was next. They could survive
that...but not winter. Somehow, he felt that winter would kill them,
that they would retreat into a hibernation from which they would never
awaken.
Angelâs eyes were sad, as if he knew it too. “Autumn.”
Wesley felt his skin begin to dry and crack. Leaning forward, he tried
to kiss Angel again but he couldnât reach him now. The weight of his
years pushed down upon him and he felt a thousand sharp pains as his
leaves shriveled and fell, leaving him exposed and cold.
How much longer did they have? Impossible to tell. It felt as though
theyâd been here for years, decades, no matter that he knew that
couldnât be the case. Would the spell end now, while they were safe in
autumnâs embrace, the evanescent warmth of an Indian summer beginning
to creep through him, precious heat to be stored against the coming
chill?
He tried to blink and couldnât. Angelâs eyes were open too and their
gazes met and locked. If this was how it would end, it could be worse,
Wesley thought. With a final effort that took all he had, he told Angel
wordlessly that he loved him and felt Angelâs answering echo surge
through him, full of the promise of a spring day, a summer night,
strong enough to defeat autumn and conquer winter.
And with that, the spell was broken.
Wesley and Angel stood, locked in an embrace. They glanced down and
moved apart hastily, not meeting each otherâs eyes, adjusting clothing,
wiping hands surreptitiously, a flush of embarrassment burning on their
faces.
“Well,” said Wesley, in a strange, strained voice. “That was quite an
experience. Indeed.”
Angel looked at him, his face unreadable. “Yeah,” he said finally. “It
was.”
“Iâm not sure payment in kind is something to encourage, mind you,”
Wesley continued, wondering why he couldnât seem to shut up. Heâd
turned into a tree, not a babbling brook.
Angel raised an eyebrow. “I can think of worse fates,” he said mildly,
his eyes speculative as he studied Wesley. “Was it really all that bad?”
Wesley swallowed and adjusted his glasses and discovered a reserve of
dignity. “If you mean, did I not enjoy the enforced intimacy, then,
yes, clearly I did. We both did. Whether itâs something we should dwell
on now the spell has ended is another matter. I think -”
“I think I want to know what itâs like kissing you when there isnât a
spell.” Angel interrupted. “I think weâre both a mess and need a
shower. I think I want you in there with me and I think Iâm going to be
glad we can both move again because thereâs a lot I want to do to you
in a lot of different ways. Is that enough thinking and can we just get
to the bit where weâre doing?”
Wesley met his eyes. “We can, but Iâm not sure we should. What happened
during a spell is one thing; that would be...something else again. It
would complicate so much.”
Angel sighed. “Chalk it up to the spell that I even asked, Wes. Iâm
sorry. Damn. I just thought - ”
He began to walk towards the stairs, hurrying away. Wesley felt
desolate and lost. The dryadâs words echoed in his mind: ‘more than
disguise; it can revealâ. What had it revealed?
Then he remembered Angelâs answer and he was hurrying too, going after
the retreating figure, his footsteps as light as a leaf and as sure as
spring.
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