Just Human

AUTHORS: Written jointly by Keswindhover and Miss Murchison.

DISCLAIMER: These characters are not ours, but we haven't hurt them, just given them some emotional issues.

RATING: PG

PAIRING: Angel/Wes

DISTRIBUTION: Ask first - but we’re going to say yes.

FEEDBACK: Yes, please - [email protected]

"Il faut cultiver notre jardin." ('Candide')

Angel sat looking at his garden, a frown creasing his forehead as he contemplated his pear trees. Bob Flowerdew's Complete Fruit Book was open on his lap, and a pair of pruning shears lay on the porch beside him. He looked up at the gunmetal sky. If it didn’t stop raining soon he was going to have canker on every branch, he was sure of it.

"Angel."

He didn’t look round. "Wes."

The porch chair swung a little, as Wes settled beside him.

Wes looked out over the sodden landscape in front of them. There were flowerbeds full of newly planted and bedraggled flowers. Bushes, still with their Latin name tags attached, perched in circles of newly dug soil.

"You’ve retired to cultivate your own garden?"

Angel shrugged, "Hell, I saved the world, I figure I deserve a bit of a rest. Although," he turned over his right hand and contemplated a blister on his palm thoughtfully, "this is all kinda harder work than I expected."

“Yes,” said Wes, “and of course, you have an awful lot of enemies in LA now. I can understand why you left there. But it’s not so clear to me why you chose to come to New Jersey.”

"They said it was the Garden State," Angel muttered, sinking his head between his shoulders.

Wes looked around him. His first impressions of the state had come when, jet lagged and suffering from massive culture shock after nearly 10 months isolation in a monastery, he had stumbled through a huge ugly airport and then taken a terrifying drive along a maze of mammoth highways bordered on both sides by enormous oil refineries belching noxious fumes. The fear had grown in him that Angel was so used to hell dimensions that he'd sought one out for a retirement home.

Now he'd arrived at Angel's new home, though, he had to admit that this Victorian era fixer-upper set in a semi-rural area was a lot better than he'd feared. Although Angel's house might be a bit termite-ridden, and the outside was in need of a coat of fresh paint, it had a certain character. It also boasted a backyard that melted into a stand of pine trees.

Angel sneezed. “Damn colds,” he said bitterly. “I swear every cold and flu bug in America has been lining up to get me since I ...changed.”

“Well,” said Wes, looking around him at the scattered pile of gardening books, magazines, cushions, rugs, crumpled tissues, empty coffee cups and other evidence of occupation scattered around the chair, “If you’ve been spending all your days sitting outside in the rain, in the cold, I can’t say I’m that surprised.”

“I like the sun,” said Angel.

They both looked up at the grey, cloud-covered sky.

Angel sneezed again, and shivered. “There are times when being human sucks.” Then his eye fell on the coffee machine in front of him, and he brightened a little. “But on the plus side, there’s coffee.” He looked directly at Wes for the first time. “Would you like some coffee?” he said eagerly. “I’ve learnt how to roast it myself.”

Wes looked down at the coffee machine perched precariously on the uneven plank floor before them. His eye followed the Heath Robinson arrangement of three short extension leads; each plugged into one another, leading across the rain lashed porch, and into the house. There was a puddle forming around the plug and socket connection nearest the edge.

“You do know that water and electricity don’t mix?” he said mildly.

Angel looked defensive. “Of course I know,” he said, “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“But you are mortal,” said Wesley. “Human. And liable to electrocution." He pointed accusingly at the puddle.

“Yeah, I've been a real boy since last May,” said Angel, “all as per the prophecy.” His tone was flat.

“Earlier, I think,” said Wesley, “you’ve been growing more and more human, by degrees, all the time I’ve known you." After one last disapproving glance, he gave up on the puddle around the extension lead, and leaned forward, his tone becoming urgent. "The process got finished last May, but it started long ago. It just sort of crept up on you. On all of us, really."

“I guess,” said Angel reluctantly, looking out at his sodden garden again, hand clenching unconsciously around the soreness of the blister. “Once I got my soul back. I sure started feeling like crap as soon as that happened. Guilty.”

“Actually, no I don’t think so. I've been reflecting, in the monastery. On a lot of things. Souls, and prophecies, and curses, and what makes us human.” Wes sat forward in the chair and turned to face Angel, his face intense. “Nothing happened for as long as you thought that your soul was a curse. It’s since you started to care about people, to love them. First Buffy, and then Cordelia, Gunn, Fred, and the others. And Connor above all. You started loving like a man - and hating like a man. Looking back, that day when you tried to smother me in the hospital was rather encouraging...”

Angel's head jerked up and he stared at Wesley's earnest face, then quickly down again. “Encouraging, huh? It sure didn’t feel like it at the time. If Gunn and Lorne hadn’t been there I’d have killed you.” He looked down at the pruning shears, and picked at his blister a little.

“Yes,” said Wes, “I know. But look at how you would have killed me. No fangs, no bumpy forehead, no biting.”

Angel sighed. "So, I hated like a man. That doesn't seem like such a great thing to do."

"Hated and loved," said Wes earnestly. "You may not have been human then, but you tried very hard to believe that nothing human was alien to you. It made you a Champion. And, eventually, it made you a man."

Angel reached down for a tissue, playing for time. Wow, Wes was getting kinda intense. As he bent down Bob Flowerdew slid from his lap, on top of a battered copy of Gardening for Dummies. He flushed. Clumsiness seemed to be a human characteristic too. He kept his head down, scanning his sizable collection of how-to books, then picked up Earthly Delights, and went over to kneel on the wet grass, by a sickly-looking planting. Back turned to Wes, he plucked a stray weed with one hand while using the other to dab with the tissue at his runny nose. The rain had ebbed to an occasional drizzle that was almost soothing against his skin. But the wetness pockmarked the open page of his book, and after pretending to read it for a moment, he tossed it back under the shelter of the porch.

Wes waited patiently on the swing.

“And you were Prophecy guy. Still are, I guess.” Angel turned, and, for the first time, looked properly at Wes. “In fact," he said, trying to lighten the tone, "you even kind of look like Jesus now. Didn't they feed you in that place?” For Wes had lost weight, and his face had an aesthetic hollow cheeked look. His hair tumbled down to his collar, and he had grown a considerable beard, also slightly curly, and a little bit ginger.

"There was food available." Wesley was silent for a moment, and then he added bitterly, “I'm more Judas than Jesus though, wouldn’t you say? Although," he steepled his fingers together, his tone becoming cool and analytical, “in the interests of historical accuracy I should point out that both Jesus and Judas were Semitic, and therefore very unlikely to have blue eyes. You’re being led astray by western Christian tradition.”

Angel sat back on his heels. He looked at his palm again, picking away at the blister. “I'm being led astray by that 'Jesus of Nazareth' movie - saw it in the seventies, during my rat eating days." He pulled the blister from his palm and gazed fascinated as the hole filled up with blood, "And Wes, you're sure no Jesus, but you're not a Judas either."

Wes sighed and looked around for the box of tissues. He pulled out a few and went to kneel beside his friend in the wet, taking Angel's hand in his and soaking up the blood. "You need to watch out for infection as well," he said patiently. "Now that you're-"

"-just human," Angel finished for him.

They knelt quietly, side by side, staring at the sad little plant.

"I wonder if it'll survive," said Wes.

"Certainly not forever," said Angel. "Nothing alive is forever." He looked down and was surprised to realize Wes was still holding his hand. He shifted his grip, returning the pressure of the other man's fingers.

"I'm very glad you're here, Wes, finally. There aren't a lot of people left I can talk to."

"Me either," said Wes.

There was another silence as they thought about who wasn't here.

"Besides," added Angel. "I don't really like most people much. Funny, after all this. I thought once I became human, I'd be a party animal, but instead, it's like that old poem. How does it go? 'I wish I liked the human race. I wish I liked its silly face?'"

"'I wish I liked the way it walked. I wish I liked the way it talked,'" said Wes. "'And when I was introduced to one, I wish I thought, What jolly fun!'"

Angel felt Wes's hand tense under his own. "Kinda ironic isn't it?" he said. "I save the human race, I get to rejoin them, and then find that I can't live with my neighbours because all they go on about is the garbage day changing and how the Parkway tolls are crazy ..."

Wes kissed him.

Angel startled backwards, nearly toppling over.

"Sorry," said Wes, sounding almost equally startled. "Not sure where that came from." He got quickly up on one knee - and then fell back as Angel dragged him fiercely downward on the wet grass and dirt, pressing him to the ground.

Angel looked down at him for a moment, his expression unreadable, then he suddenly rolled, on to his back, releasing Wes once the roll was complete. Wes bent over Angel, a little breathless, feeling their legs tangled together, watching the rain falling on to his face.

He bent and tasted Angel's mouth first, then his cheek, then the side of his neck. He lingered a long time over the pulse in the other man's throat, feeling it speed up at his command, thudding harder each time his hand moved lower on Angel's body.

He found that somehow his hand had ripped open Angel's shirt. He bent his head to lick a nipple that his fingers had already teased erect. Angel's body was covered with a sheen of perspiration, and Wes dragged his tongue along his abs, savouring the salty tang that spoke of humanity and arousal. He had spent months in the Monastery trying to find a way to make himself desire to live. Now, at the touch of Angel's human flesh, desire returned in a rush, and suddenly he was a starving man, desperate and hungry.

The thing he had hated most about being a vampire, Angel thought, was the chilling cold that never quite let go of his heart, no matter how much blood he drank, no matter what passions inflamed him. He'd expected the fulfillment of the Shanshu prophecy to warm him in a way that made up for every human weakness it had also bestowed. But it hadn't been like that. He'd still felt an inner cold.

But now Wes' touch was warming him, making the blood pound in his ears as they rolled over again, tugging at clothing, anxious to feel bare flesh against his own. Wes was trying to help, but still it was taking too long to undress, because they were both unwilling to move apart long enough, too feverish to strip off their now soaked and muddy pants or slide the torn limp fragments of a shirt over a shoulder.

They rolled almost under the porch, barely noticing when they crashed into Angel's pile of gardening books, and then away again. Wes winced as the corner of The Edible Garden hit him in the shoulder, then forgot it instantly, as Angel's hands clasped his buttocks, and dragged him closer. Angel shrugged aside Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden as he pulled them both away from the porch, in another roll through the mud, closer to the plantings he'd been brooding over earlier.

Wes' body shuddered, but not with cold. It was damp but warm there, on the dark, fertile earth, and Angel's body was a greater heat above his, each of them clutching the other clumsily, too forcefully. Everything around them smelled of life and growing things. It was imperfect but beautiful, and oh, so comforting.

Suddenly, all Angel could hear was the throb of his own blood in his ears, and he felt a moment's panic as he lost control. But Wes was in the same state, and suddenly it was over, each of them clasped in the other's hand, their lips meeting with a frantic effort to prolong the moment.

They rolled apart, Angel staring in consternation. "Sorry, Wes," he mumbled, and then he sneezed.

Wes raised himself a little dizzily. "Ah," he said after a moment, sounding embarrassed. "We seem to have done a bit of damage."

Angel stared at him, and then looked around the garden. His new turf was squashed flat, and the plant he had been leant over so tenderly a few minutes before was bent pathetically to the earth, the stalk broken in several places. His gardening books lay scattered face down on the wet ground.

"I hope the plant is the only thing I damaged. Wes, I'm sorry I made such a mess of ... you know."

"It wasn't exactly perfect," admitted Wes. Then he grinned. "But it was good. I haven't felt like that for a long while."

"I'm not sure I want to settle for 'good,'" said Angel, frowning. "I used to be able to do a lot better. I'd hate to think I lost everything to become human." He sat up, and brushed some wet grass off his elbows.

Wes reached out to push back a lock of Angel's muddy hair. "Well, in that case, there's another human thing we could do."

"What's that?" said Angel, looking over at him suspiciously.

"Try again." And Wes moved closer, and pulled Angel back into his arms.

The End.

Feedback is very welcome!

[email protected]

Return to Keswindhover's home page