TITLE: “Wesley and Stephen and Jonathan and Andrew”

AUTHOR: Polly Burns

EMAIL: go_rimbaud@hotmail.com

SUMMARY: More fun with everybody’s favorite couples- the nihilistic drunk and the hyperactive child and two geeks on the lam.  In Las Vegas.  A spell misfires.  It’s a comedy.  Sort of.

SPOILER WARNINGS: This could not be any further removed from the actual shows from which I stole the characters, so I’m gonna say no.

RATING: Well, for now, we can just say PG-15, cos there are bad words, but no actual bad deeds.  They’re all talk, y’know.

DISCLAIMER: This utterly horrible work of fiction came out of my own perverted head, but!- the characters involved, Connor (Or Stephen, if you’re nasty), Wesley, Groo, Lorne, Jonathan and Andrew, are somebody else’s babies.  They have two daddies, Joss Whedon and that David Greenwalt guy, but no mommies, and especially not me.  Alex Krycek belongs to Chris Carter, even though he proved how irresponsible he is by letting him get shot in the head.  Cabaret also belongs to some people who aren’t me.  Liza Minelli and Michael Yorke belong to themselves and they can keep themselves, cos they’re old now.  Oh, in case you didn’t get the implication, I did not write Two Ladies, either.

The cities of Las Vegas and Green Valley belong to themselves.

NOTES:  Deedly-deedly-dee, two ladies/ Deedly-deedly-dee, two ladies/ Deedly-deedly-dee- and I’m a fucking hack- Whee!  Yes, I fear that this is the end.  I’ve resorted to writing would-be sex comedies.  Yes, it’s true.  Either I’ve lost my mind or I’ve lost my marbles or I dunno what.  This story ends on a sort of suspenseful note, but don’t expect a second part.  I just don’t have it in me.

 

Wesley and Stephen and Jonathan and Andrew

 

“That was odd.”  Letting his hand go slack, Wesley set the phone down on the table.  That his skin had become whiter by a couple of shades suggested that whatever he had just heard on the telephone was a little more than odd.

                “What’s that?”  Stephen didn’t look up from the object of his fascination, half of an Oreo, from which he was presently flaying the snow-white filling with his teeth.

                “That was, ah,” Wesley took off his glasses and held them in front of his face for a moment, as though unable to complete his intended motion, “That was a friend of your father’s, actually,” he looked away, “a very old friend.  I don’t know if you ever met him…  A demon.”

                “Oh.”  Stephen could remember a demon, one with green skin who had smelled like Wesley smelled at the end of the night, after drinking his allotted two inches of foul, brown alcohol.  Stephen slouched down, as though he wanted to slip down the back of the sofa’s cushions.

                “Well, he, he has a sort of dilemma- a problem at his nightclub, and he called me to come help him fix it.”

                “What would you have to do?”

                “Apparently, he lives in Las Vegas.  I’d have to go there and cast a spell and then I’d just leave, I suppose.  He wasn’t terribly specific, sounded rather frantic, actually.”

                “Are you going to go?”

                “I don’t know.”  Wesley walked halfway to the kitchen and then turned back.

                “Do you want to go?”

                “I don’t know that, either.”

                “Can I come- if you go?”

                “Of course you can, there’s no question of it.”  Wesley came back to the sofa and sat down next to Stephen.  “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

                “That’s good.”

                “We don’t have to go anywhere, if you don’t want to.”  He brought his arm up around Stephen’s shoulders.

                “What is there, in Las Vegas, aside from the demon and his nightclub?”

                “I don’t know, actually,” Wesley considered this, raised his eyebrows, “A lot of casinos, I suppose, but they won’t let you into those, I expect.”

                “Why not?” Stephen inquired petulantly.

                “You’re not twenty-one.  People gamble there and drink, too, and there are probably quite a few naked women about.”

                “That doesn’t sound all that interesting,” he sniffed.

                “It’s a desert, Las Vegas, it’s not all that much like Los Angeles.”

                “The place where I grew up was mostly desert.”  His voice went soft, as though thinking of something fond and far-away.

                “Would you like to go, Stephen?”

                “Could we?”

                “Whatever you want.”

 

“So Lorne’s actually gonna pay you, just to stand there and chant?”

                “He sounds pretty desperate.  They can’t do anything there now, y’know, not with all the, uh, the stuff happening.  If it lasts too much longer, they’ll have to close it down.”

                “That’s not good,” Andrew nodded, “No offense, but why’s he need you, anyway?  I mean, didn’t he say that he knew this magick-guy in LA that can, like, read every language ever written or something like that?”

                “Uh, none taken,” Jonathan pushed Andrew’s shoulder playfully, sat down next to him at the edge of the bed, “Well, he’s not sure if he can get this guy to come down here, and even if he shows, they’ll still need me to take care of the minor incantations and things like that.”

                “I don’t know,” Andrew said, his voice inching up into a whine, “I don’t like the thought of you being there with, like, interdimensional portals or whatever you call them.  Couldn’t you get sucked in, or something?”

                “They’re not portals, Andrew,” Jonathan snorted in feigned irritation, like Everybody knows that, “It’s just like one reality is superimposed on top of another and there’s leakage.”

                “Leakage?” Andrew raised an eyebrow.

                “Yeah, leakage,” Jonathan rolled his eyes, “Grow up.  Anyway, if you want, you can come, too.  That way, if I get sucked anywhere, you’ll come with me.”

                “That sounded so wrong,” Andrew laughed wickedly.

                “That’s not what you said the last time I got sucked.”  As Andrew wriggled against him, he pulled him close, closer.

                “You’re such a slut,” Andrew laughed, the last bit coming out faint, as Jonathan was gently licking his throat.

                “And that’s why you love me.”

 

“I swear, if they don’t fix this thing soon, I’m going to go right out of my pretty head,” Lorne moaned, “I keep expecting my mother to pop into this reality.  It’s like a nightmare, she calls me a loser and says I’m too thin.”  He let his head fall into his hands.

                “I am sure that your mother will not slip into our dimension,” Groo said, trying not to laugh.

                “You know you want to laugh at that,” Lorne said, his voice muffled, his face still hidden.

                Groo let loose with a long string of giggles.

                “I can just imagine us,” Lorne continued, “You, me and Mom all staring at each other like some kind Marx Brothers movie.”

                “I do not know these Marx Brothers,” Groo said, attempting sobriety, but dissolving to giggles again.

                “She can be Chico, cos he always seems pissed off, like her.  You can be Harpo and not speak.  I’ll be Zeppo and not appear in this movie.”

                “But the problem will soon be fixed, will it not?  You said that you were sending for a sorcerer to fix it.”

                “We-ell,” Lorne said, “Not so much a sorcerer.  More like, um, WesleyWyndhamPryce.”

                “Who?”

                “Wesley.  Wyndham.  Pryce.”

                “The man who hit you repeatedly on the skull and stole Angel’s child?”  Groo’s hands involuntarily crumpled into fists.

                “He’s the best choice,” Lorne said sheepishly, looking at Groo and then looking away.

                “There are many perfectly suitable sorcerers in Las Vegas.”

                “Do you really want that element traipsing around here, helping themselves to free drinks, finding out where we keep the money?  You remember what happened when we hired that Ethan Rayne guy to de-hex the urinals, you remember what he did to us, then, don’t you?”

                “Not every sorcerer is going to attempt to seduce the Groosalug.  I am appealing, but not that appealing.”

                “Oh, you know you are that appealing,” Lorne had a temporary lapse in seriousness and batted at Groo’s shoulder coyly, “Any sorcerer who wouldn’t try to seduce you needs his head examined.”

                Groo blushed.  “This is not the point, the point is, is-  And, what of Jonathan?  Why can he not perform the ritual?”

                Lorne sighed, “No offense to Jonathan, but he’s strictly little league when it comes to the dark arts.  He’s a great kid, but I don’t think I like him performing potentially dangerous rituals.  He’s going to be here, but in a helping-out capacity only.”

                The scream of the telephone split the air.  Lorne made a dash for it, frightening a wayward dryad who had arranged herself, statue-like next to the counter.  She shrieked and ran toward the ladies’ room, submerging into the ether before she made it to the bathroom.  Lorne rolled his eyes- he had seen too much of this crap.  It was ridiculous.

                Groo looked around the bar while Lorne was on the phone.  People, creatures, things he had never seen or imagined before kept appearing in the room and then disappearing again halfway to the opposite side.  Presently, it was two perfectly normal-looking guys; Groo couldn’t imagine what alternate universe they were from.  One of them looked like a sexy mercenary, or an underwear model, the other one was probably just a college student.

                “Hello,” Groo said, gave a little wave.  He was feeling very put-upon, kept his mouth a straight line to show it.

                “Um, hi,” said the college boy, looking about himself, puzzled.

                “Don’t worry,” said the mercenary/model in an obviously-contrived bedroom voice, “I’ve seen weirder things than this.”  The two of them turned and continued on, toward the other dimensional rift.  As they slipped out of the bar, Groo caught, “Did I ever tell you about the government program to make soldiers into the perfect killing machines by taking away their ability to sleep?” and, “Yeah, Alex, constantly.”

                Lorne put down the phone and threw up his hands, “It’s rainin men, hallelujah, it’s raining men.”

                “He is coming here, then?”

                “Yes, he is coming here, thank all that is good and holy.”

                “You are not worried that he will again try to break your head open?”

                “Not in the least.  I have you, I know you won’t let him break my head open.”

                “No one shall break any part of you open, not as long as the Groosalug lives.”

                Lorne perched on Groo’s knee.  “And that’s why I love you.”

 

“What the hell does this say, anyway,” Jonathan held the piece of paper close to his eyes and then further away and then further away still so that he couldn’t even make out individual letters, just furry clots of ink.

                “Let me see,” Andrew said, “Oh, ah, well, I think that’s an L.  Um…  Lavender!”  He smiled, triumphantly.  In fact, the word had been Liquidamber, but no matter…

                Jonathan sighed, “What the hell is he going to need Lavender for?”

                “I don’t know, it’s your guys’ spell.  I’m just along for the ride.”

                “And this, what the hell does that say?  D… is that an S?  What the hell begins in d-s?  Honestly, this guy may know what he’s doing when it comes to magick, but his writing is terrible.  Don’t they teach them how to print in England?  Oh, okay, I see, I think it’s Damiana.”  It was, actually, Dragon’s Blood.  “Now that makes no sense at all.”

                “Maybe it has some, uh, properties that you don’t know about,” Andrew offered gently.

                “Yeah, maybe,” Jonathan mumbled, “I mean I don’t know everything.  I’m not from England.  I don’t know how to read Coptic.  My handwriting isn’t complete and total chickenscratch.”

                “Jonathan, don’t be such a dumb broad- you’re good at a lot of things, but this English magick-guy, Wesley whatever-the-hell obviously has experience in these kinds of rituals.  When was the last time you did anything this big?”

                “I can do big stuff,” Jonathan murmured, eyes scanning the shelves filled with bags of herbs.  He reached for Mastic, but instead got his hand on Mace.  Oblivious, he threw it into the shopping basket that Andrew was holding.  “Well, okay, no I can’t, but, still.”

                “But still, what?  This guy knows what he’s doing, so let him do it.  It’s better than getting blown up or turned into frogs or pulled into a hell-dimension,” Andrew shrugged.

                “Yeah, I guess so.”

                “You know so.  Anyway, you have something he doesn’t have.”

                Jonathan regarded the list again, made small check-marks next to the things they had already gotten.  “Mmm, and what’s that,” he absently sucked on the end of his pen.

                Andrew smiled sunnily.  “Me.”

 

“Well, that went rather well, I think,” Wesley managed to get out before he succumbed to another fit of coughing.

                Dark red smoke was still coming out of the club’s doors and windows.

                “You almost killed us!” Jonathan yelped.

                “That’s not good,” said Andrew, who was leaning against the wall trying to keep from passing out.  Jonathan had told him to put his head between his knees, but the thought of it just made him laugh.

                Wesley’s little boyfriend, Stephen, was standing in front of the main entrance, apparently enchanted by the smoke and the few patches of fire that they had not managed to put out.

                “Minor miscalculation,” Wesley murmured, as though speaking only to himself.  He took off his glasses and wiped away some flecks of ash.

                “Lorne isn’t going to be happy,” Andrew said.

                “Yeah, he’s gonna kick your ass all the way back to England,” Jonathan said, though Wesley wasn’t paying attention.

                Just then a car pulled up, Lorne’s car.  Good, at least I get to watch Lorne kick his ass all the way back to England, Jonathan smiled to himself, that almost makes this worth it.

                Lorne got out of the car.  And had to be restrained by Groo.  “What the hell is this happy horseshit?  Wesley, it’s like de ja vu all over again- how many times is my nightclub going to blow up?  What did you do?”

                “The, erm, the herbal mixture wasn’t, ah, mixed properly,” he narrowed his eyes and looked in Jonathan’s direction under his lashes.

                “Me?” Jonathan said in an unattractive high-pitch.

                “A touch too much sulfur.  When I ignited it, well-”

                “There were sparks,” Andrew put in, “And then the stage curtains caught on fire.”

                “There was smoke,” Jonathan snapped, “Lots of it.  Nasty, English smoke.”

                “Jonathan,” Andrew hissed, “Don’t be that way.”

                “I don’t care what kind of smoke it is, it’s expensive smoke!  It’s expensive, it’s keeping me closed for who knows how long, it’s giving me a nervous breakdown!”

                “It’s kind of pretty,” Stephen said.  Everybody looked at him, but he had already turned away again.

                “As if my insurance premiums weren’t high enough!  Do you think that they give good rates to people with green skin and horns?  Cos they don’t!”

                “We’ll help you fix the place,” Jonathan said, “It’s probably not as bad as you think.”

                “It is,” Lorne moaned, “It’s all that and more.”  He turned to Groo, “Help Miss Daisy back into the car, will you, sweetheart?”

                Groo smiled indulgently and opened the car door for him.  As Groo went around to the driver’s side, Lorne rolled down the window and gave them all one last evil look.  “I suggest that the four of you forget your differences, get very cozy and figure out how you’re all going to pay for this.”

                And then they were gone.

 

Nobody stuck around for very long.  Andrew and Jonathan went back to Green Valley, to their small, cheery apartment.  Wesley and Stephen found their rental car on the next block after wandering for a half an hour in search of where Wesley had parked it.  They returned to their dark, palatial suite in the large, wedding cake-colored hotel.  And, for a time, everything was as utterly normal as anything ever was in their respective lives.  And then-

                Even after they had eaten dinner, Andrew still felt terribly hungry.  After being asked, Jonathan admitted that he was also hungry.  They took a ride down the steep hill upon which they lived and went for ice cream.  That did it, for a while.  Then they began to notice that it was, perhaps, a different kind of hunger.  After a brief grope in the multi-tiered parking structure, they drove back to the house.  By then, the sun had already set and it was becoming a lovely, cool spring night.  Jonathan opened the window in the bedroom, suddenly feeling oppressively feverish.  They pulled off each other’s clothes and rolled around in bed for a while, but alas, no joy.  Something was off.

                “Why don’t we just watch T.V. for a while,” Jonathan suggested.  The words seemed to have been pumped into him from some foreign source.  Because he didn’t actually want to watch television, he wanted to get off, but the two seemed to be linked, somehow.

                Not bothering with clothes, they nestled together on the sofa and sat in the lilac light of the luminous screen.  Nothing on any channel seemed satisfactory.

                “Why don’t we watch a video?” Andrew said.

                And they watched every episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus that they had on tape.  And then Red Dwarf.  And Dr. Who.  And then it was four in the morning, and they were still wide awake.  Desperate, Jonathan kept on changing the channel, until, finally, something managed to hold his attention.  It was the softly accented voice of Michael Yorke.  Neither Andrew nor Jonathan had seen Cabaret before, or even heard all that much about it, but suddenly, it was becoming their favorite movie.  That voice.  If they just closed their eyes…

 

“This bed’s too big,” Stephen said, “I can’t sleep.”

                “Hmm, yes, I know what you mean,” Wesley said, even though, rationally speaking, he had no clue what Stephen was talking about.  The bed was the perfect size for two people, and they were, of course, just two people.  Perhaps it wasn’t the bed that was wrong, perhaps it was them.  Wesley had the strangest desire to be held, to be touched constantly, to have many different hands all over him.  It was the most peculiar thing- he’d always been slightly prudish about sex and now he was fantasizing about an orgy?  Really peculiar…

                Stephen had turned on the television.  From the perimeter of his own thoughts, Wesley heard a vaguely familiar voice.  “I’m simply desperate,” said the voice, which was female.  No, it wasn’t the voice that was familiar, it was the person.  The large, innocent dark eyes, the cap of black hair, pale, creamy skin-

                Oh, fuck me, I’ve got a hard-on for Liza Minelli-

                “What is this?” Stephen asked, “Why are those people singing for no reason?  And why are they wearing so few clothes?”

                “It’s a movie.  It’s called Cabaret.  Um, Stephen?”

                “Yes.”  Stephen looked at him.  Wesley knew that he loved this boy, more than he’d ever thought possible, it hurt him to think that he suddenly was not enough…

                “Does, erm, does that girl remind you of anybody?”

                “Yes, she looks like the boy we met earlier today, except he was prettier.  I don’t like her make up.”

                “Mm, yes, that’s what I thought.”  He bit his lip.

 

Some people have two people, and some have three-

                “Oh, but three’s not enough!” Andrew exclaimed, though he didn’t quite know why.

                “No, no, three isn’t enough,” Jonathan agreed.

                Andrew put his arms around Jonathan, crossed his wrists behind his neck.  “Because I want to be with you, but something’s missing.”

                Jonathan nodded.  “Two somethings.”

                “Yeah.  It would be me, and you, and somebody young, younger than us, sweet, sort of scruffy.”

                “And somebody older,” Jonathan said, “But not too old.”  Andrew nodded enthusiastically, “Still charmingly boyish.

                “Like Timothy Dalton.”  Andrew’s eyes were glassy.

                “Except not.”

                “I don’t want to go to bed.”

                Jonathan nodded.  “I know, bed is so-”

 

“-empty!” 

                “Yes, I know exactly what you mean.”  It didn’t dawn on Wesley that the scene was rather absurd.  He was pacing around the room, not wearing a stitch, the contents of his glass occasionally spilling up over the rim and onto his bare skin.

                “And, you know I love you, but there aren’t enough of you.”  Stephen looked up, in thought.  “And you’re not blonde.”

                “No, no, I’m certainly not.”

                “So what are we going to do?”

                “Well, I suppose we could, hmm, I don’t actually know.”

                “We have to do something.  I’m going crazy.  I didn’t like being this frantic over one person- it’s a lot worse when it’s about three!”

                “You felt this way about me?  Frantic?”

                “Yes.  You know I did, before we fucked.”

                Involuntarily, Wesley winced at the f-word.  He was entirely too British for his own good.

                “Sorry,” Stephen said, “before we had sex.”

                “And you don’t, you don’t feel this way about me anymore?”

                “I do,” Stephen sighed, “But it’s different.  I’m not afraid anymore, I don’t have to worry about you not liking me, or leaving me.  I trust you.”

                “But the fear is part of what makes it good.”

                “Yes.  I feel… hungry.”

                For something out of the ordinary.

                “For something out of the ordinary,” Stephen murmured, as though the words had been funneled into him.

               

“Sweet oil of Olay!” the words just popped out of Lorne, as though they had been stuck in his throat and somebody had just Heimliched them out of his body.  The phone was ringing, so loud that it seemed to light up the dark bedroom like an emergency flare.  Next to him, Groo was having a nasty confrontation with something in a dream.  The phone rang again.

                “Hello?”  This early in the morning, everything was a question.

                “Erm, yes, Lorne- so sorry to wake you- this is Wesley.”

                “Who else would it be?”  He threw up the hand that wasn’t holding the phone.

“Mm, yes, I was calling to ask you if you could provide me with Jonathan and Andrew’s phone number- actually, their address would be even better.  I wanted to discuss, um… a, er, a new spell… for, ah, to… fix some of the damage to your club.”

                “At five in the morning?”

                “Well, the, ah, early bird…”

                “The early bird what?  Does some kind of mind-altering drugs that make it think it’s okay to call people this early in the morning?” he shouted.  Whatever Groo was fighting with in his sleep must have been winning, judging by the sounds coming from the other side of the bed.

                “I don’t mean to be a bother, it’s just, this is very important.”

                “All right, all right.  Get a pen…”

 

And then sleep.  Sleep was like a wonderful rich desert- like pudding.  Lorne was immersed in a pool of sleep pudding.  It was luscious, like having a second skin of velvet.  It was-

                This time, when the phone rang, Lorne had no preposterous utterances- he only screamed.

                “What is it?” he bellowed into the receiver, his hand so tight around it, he might have been wringing something’s neck.

                “Uh, Lorne, this is Jonathan.”

                “Yeah.”

                “Um, yeah.  I was calling to uh- hold on,” in the background, Lorne heard Andrew whisper not so quietly, Did you ask him? and Jonathan’s reply, I can’t if you keep pestering me.  “Uh, hello, Lorne?”

                “Yeah?”

                “Um, we wanted to know if you could give us the name of the hotel where Wesley and, um, his boyfriend are.  Huh, what’s that?,” more Andrew stage-whispers,  “Oh, yeah, can we have their room number, too?”

                “Lemme guess, you wanna think up a new spell, right?  One that’s gonna repair the damage you did today, no, make that yesterday, cos it’s not today anymore, cos it’s five in the frickin morning!”

                “Uh, yeah, that’s, um, that’s it.”

                Lorne sighed, “Get a pen.”

 

It was Wesley and Stephen that got to where they were going first, simply because Andrew threw a tantrum about hating all of his clothes and locked himself in the bathroom for an hour. 

                “Fine,” Jonathan said into the bathroom door, “I’ll just go and have a great time without you, and in one of the rare moments I’m not fucking Wesley and his boyfriend senseless, I’ll go to a gift shop and buy a postcard and write on it, Dear Andrew, having a swell time having hot sex with Wesley and his boyfriend.  Sorry you were being a child and would not come out of the bathroom.  Love, Jonathan.”
                “You’re a bitch,” said Andrew.

                “Yeah, well, so are you- Oops, there’s the doorbell.  I bet it’s somebody else you could be having sex with if you hadn’t locked yourself in the bathroom cos you’re such a girl.”

                “Rot in hell!”

                Jonathan skipped- he did not usually skip, and would have made that perfectly clear to anyone who had seen him skipping just then- to the front door, and smiled like Snow White as he opened the door-

                And there, bold as love, were Wesley and his boyfriend, whose name Jonathan couldn’t quite remember, but it didn’t actually matter all that much anyway.