Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

A day after Wesley and Gunn had -- successfully, thank you very much -- retrieved the Nyazian scroll from that man's home, the two of them were working on translating the text at the hotel's front desk when loud voices could be heard from downstairs. As far as Wesley knew, Cordelia and Angel were just sparring as usual, though he thought Fred might have gone down to watch this time, but it certainly shouldn't be an activity that required shouting.

He glanced at Gunn. "Nah, this is on you, man," Gunn said at once.

( Wesley sighed, and went downstairs to investigate. )

--

( In which there is translation, exposition, and a visitor. )

[[also from 3x07 "offspring." nfb, nfi!]]

If this weren't Wesley Wyndam-Pryce -- a man who, frankly, would go on to make some truly horrifying mistakes that would greatly upset the fabric of his universe, some of them within the next few months -- it might be easy to say that going to the crime scene and taking a sample of Billy's blood from the patrol car door was one of the worst mistakes he'd ever make. But this was Wesley, and his bad decisions were soon to be legendary, so that wouldn't be entirely fair.

( It was a pretty big mistake, though. )

[[nfb/nfi, adapted from angel 3x06 "billy" once again. THIS IS SO GROSS AND I FEEL GROSS. warning for just aaall the sexist language/violence/whathaveyou ever under the cut, though it's cut a lot from the episode because icky. and i'm gonna go barf now.]]

Technically speaking, Wesley had left Fandom as soon as he could on Saturday afternoon. Practically, however, it wasn't until Tuesday morning that, exhausted, he stepped back into the hotel with exactly half of his original luggage in hand.

And he was promptly nearly tackled by a wall of energy in the form of Fred. Despite everything, he had to smile -- it was endearing, even as tired as he was.

"Wesley!" Fred squealed, hugging him with surprising force before bouncing backward to look up at him. "You'll never guess what happened this weekend. Go on, guess, I'll wait."

She actually did seem to be waiting. Wesley paused. "Er," he said. "Killer... lobster demons?"

He wasn't really sure why that of all things had popped into his head.

"No, silly!" Of course. How could he have been so foolish. "My mom and dad showed up!"

Well. That was certainly significant. "Really?"

"Yuh-huh!" Fred agreed. "And at first I was scared 'cause I didn't want 'em to see me an' know all about what happened to me, so I tried to run away and there was this icky bug demon tryin' to attack everyone so we got sidetracked, and my mom killed it, or at least we thought she killed it. And then we went back home, I mean here to the hotel, and everythin' was good for a while until I kept thinkin' about how it didn't make sense for me to be here, not when there's already you and Gunn and Cordy, so I started to leave with my parents until I realized there had to be more of the bug things, and that goes all the way back to when Angel took me for ice cream the other night, but anyway I came back and I catapulted it with a thing I made and I decided to stay after that and here I am."

Wesley blinked. "Here you are," he echoed, fixing her with a sincere smile. "I'm glad you decided to stay."

"I'm glad too," Fred said, looking up at him with that oddly intense gaze of hers.

There was a moment's pause. Wesley wondered -- would now perhaps be a good time to--

"Well," he said. "Since I seem to have missed all the action, how would you like to go out for some pizza, Fred?"

Her eyes lit up. "Sure!"

"Excellent," Wesley said, and it actually really was.

"Let me just go get Cordy and Gunn," Fred said, before sticking two fingers in her mouth and whistling sharply. Then she set off toward the stairs to the basement, where they were probably fighting over setting the rat traps again. "Cordy! Gunn! There's gonna be pizza!"

Wesley exhaled slowly, suddenly re-feeling that exhaustion that had gone away once Fred had started talking. Then he set down his bags and started rummaging for his wallet.

[[NFB/NFI/OOC-okay! i totally made this up because i didn't want to do a catchup for this episode and brat_inslayage agreed it was unnecessary, but holy crap fred is hard to write from scratch. events taken from angel 3x05 "fredless," la la la.]]

It was hard to say, Wesley reflected, whether this past summer had been eventful or not. Yes, he, Cordelia and Gunn had been fairly busy most of the time -- killing Nester demons in Hancock Park, making contacts among the demon community, visiting Lorne -- but it seemed to him that "eventful" was a word reserved for a whole different level of busy: a week in a hell dimension, for example, or some sort of long-term Fandom invasion.

His persective might have been somewhat skewed, come to think of it.

But really, with Angel gone -- he'd departed for Sri Lanka nearly three months ago to deal with his grief over Buffy's recent death -- there just wasn't anything too huge going on in the Los Angeles demon world. Or even in Sunnydale, as far as Wesley knew, though that might have to do with Willow and Dawn not taking his calls. No, without Angel around, everything in Wesley's world was just... ordinary. Standard demon hunts, clients, visions, the usual.

( Today's bout of perfectly-ordinary demon hunting involved a Mu-rite demon clan, a group of very misguided demon summoners, and a whole lot of demon pus sticking to Wesley, Gunn and Cordelia's clothes as they trudged through the hotel courtyard into the Hyperion. )

[[hey look, the kickoff to a year of spam! oh, season three. you are not nice to this boy at all. taken and adapted a bit from angel 3x01, "heartthrob," which, fun fact, aired eleven years ago today. a pattern that will continue with the rest of the posts for this season, just cuz.]]

Wesley was still finishing up his schoolwork and starting to wonder if he oughtn't get started booking a portal back to Fandom when there was a noise at the front door, and he looked up.

( In which ''beige Angel'' is an ass. )

[[aaaaand done. about half of this is from angel 2x10, "reunion." nfb/nfi.]]