Face to Face: Day 2 - Rest
by MattK
Dawn was already breaking as the Scooby Gang stumbled into the Hyperion. No discussion was made of the battle they had just completed or strategy for the future. They were exhausted—some were all but drunk from their need for sleep. What else could be expected? In three days of extremely strenuous activity, they’d only had a few stolen hours of sleep.

An unspoken agreement to discuss those things after they slept was formed as they all broke for the rooms.

*

Knock, knock, knock

Giles rolled toward the door. "Yes?" he called sleepily.

"May I come in, Rupert?" A whispered voice called in return.

"Oh—Joyce! Certainly."

The elder Summers woman opened the door slowly, entered on stocking feet, and closed the door carefully, holding the knob turned until it was time to let the latch slide back into place. All of this was done with the air of a mother trying not to wake the children—which Giles supposed was exactly what Joyce was at the moment.

He propped himself up on his elbow and put on his glasses. "Is there something I can help you with?" He asked.

"Maybe," she answered. "I’ll get to it in a moment. First, I wanted to thank you."

"Thank me?"

"You were right," she said, a beatific smile spreading on her face.

His sleep-starved mind was running on fumes, and it was running slow. "About what?"

"Buffy," she answered. "I was *certain* that she’d never forgive me, but—" She gave a ‘here we are’ shrug, but the smile never left her face.

"Yes," Giles agreed. "Buffy is a remarkable young woman."

She nodded in agreement. "Our daughter is turning out wonderfully."

He was already nodding in agreement himself when it hit him what she had said. He froze, and his eyes widened. "I beg your pardon?" He said in a choked voice.

Joyce crossed the room and sat down on the bed. "A father isn’t a man who creates a child, Rupert," she said. "He’s the man who raises her. Even when we were married, Hank wasn’t much of a father to Buffy. You’ve only known her since we came to Sunnydale, but you’re already much more of one."

"I’m…honored to hear you say so," he said. "I would never mean to presume, of course—"

"You never did," she reassured him. "Now we come to what you can do for me."

"Yes?" He asked warily. "What would that be?"

She took a deep breath. Apparently, it wasn’t something entirely easy for her to ask, and he recognized the look on her face as the one Buffy assumed when she was determined to be bold about something. "I’ve been pretty self-sufficient since I moved to Sunnydale, Rupert. I haven’t had sex since that night with the band candy, and I haven’t slept in a man’s arms since before Hank and I divorced. But these last couple days…’self-sufficient’ just won’t get me through. I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m exhausted, too. But I just can’t face an empty bed after everything that’s happened."

Dumbstruck, Giles answered her the only way that he could.

He drew back the covers.

*

Charles Gunn was pretty much as exhausted as he had ever been. He’d been in street fights, but even against supernatural beings they were nasty, brutal, and short. Pitched battle against an army of demons was something new. His arms and shoulders didn’t just *ache*, they *burned*, and his back felt like it had turned to stone. Or maybe glass. There was no *way* he was making it back to the squatter.

He took the first room he came to on the floor above Angel’s guests. If he’d been someone else, and he’d come from somewhere else, he might have just left the door open and fallen onto the bed. But he wasn’t, and he hadn’t. He not only closed the door, he locked it.

*Then* he fell onto the bed. When he landed, though, the bed *squealed* and the next instant he was facedown on the floor, his left arm twisted up behind his back and a hand like a vice-clamp gripping his neck and forcing his nose into the carpet.

"Hi," he muffled into the shag. "Faith, right?"

His assailant paused for a moment, then released him. "Yeah. Sorry, G. I mean, Gunn." She muttered something that sounded like "Damn, too many G’s around here," then continued. "You just kinda surprised me. And that’s kinda what I do when I’m surprised."

Gunn slowly climbed to his feet, rubbing the back of his neck. "Bet it never happens twice," he said.

"One way or another," she agreed.

"So what’re you doing up here?" He asked. "Most of the guests are downstairs."

"Well, I don’t hang with them *all* the time," she said. "I need my space, you know?"

"Yeah, actually, I do," He said. "I’ll just find another room."

"You don’t have to go," she said quickly. He turned back to her, and he had a strange, watchful, questioning look that reminded her of Angel on his face. She felt herself blush and silently cursed. *Shy*. She hadn’t felt shy in a long time. But then, she hadn’t dealt with a guy who might want more than to get into her britches in a long time, either. That look, like Angel’s, asked too much of her. "If you don’t want to," she finished lamely.

Suddenly, his face lit up with a broad grin that was *entirely* unlike anything she’d ever seen on Angel. "Sister, there is nothing I want less." As if to prove it, he kicked his boots off, swung one leg up and dropped onto the bed, then rolled to the other side to give her room. She didn’t use much of that room, however. She curled up to his side, resting her head on his shoulder as he put his arm around hers.

She waited for his other hand to come into play, to start grabbing for things. But it never did.

Suddenly, she was wide awake. Getting done and getting gone was one thing. Sleeping with a guy was quite another. It meant—well, it meant that you were sleeping, and he might wake up first, and then he could do, well, anything he damn well pleased, couldn’t he?

Besides, even if that wasn’t a factor, you’d still wake up together, and that was a definite turn-off. Stubble and morning breath. Gross.

She began to stroke his chest. "Hey," she said.

"Yeah?" He said fuzzily. He must have been starting to drift off. Which confused her even more. He was in bed with a girl, and he actually intended to just sleep? That was a first.

Her hand started a slow pilgrimage down his torso. "We don’t have to go to sleep right away, you know."

He grinned up at her. "No?"

She got up on her elbow and shook her head. "No. We could have a little fun first." She grinned. "Bump the headboard a little. I’m always horny after a fight."

Belly.

He chuckled, then his face fell. "Oh, damn. Wait. I don’t have any protection."

Beltline. "How many guys has that ever stopped?"

He caught her hand. "It stops me," he said. His voice wasn’t harsh. It was soft and even a little kind, but she knew right away that he meant it—and this was one guy who didn’t change his mind when he meant it.

Her face flaming, she yanked her hand out of his and sat up. Good reason or not, rejection was still rejection. And it was still humiliating. "Yeah, well babies aren’t a worry for me anymore," she snapped. Then she froze. *Oh, fuck. Why in hell did I tell him that?*

He was silent for a long moment, and she waited for him to decide *this bitch is crazy* and get up and go. Instead, he asked: "Who was he?"

"What?"

He leaned up on his elbow and looked her in the eye. "You said ‘anymore’, so it once was. If it wasn’t cancer—and you seem too young for that—then a guy was involved. Disease or damage, you probably got it from some guy."

The night and exhaustion have a way of stripping the heart bare. Perhaps that’s why people make love in beds. In any case, Faith heard herself answering before she even had time to think about it: "His name was Frank. He was just this…*guy* my mom was dating. I was eleven."

She waited for the pity, the promises that it would all be all right, accompanied by the sidelong, wary look at the messed-up, broken girl. Instead, he just nodded. "The same thing happened to Alonna," he said.

"Who?"

"My sister." He lay back down and stared up at the ceiling. She settled back down onto her elbow. "It was the first time I ever failed to protect her. I killed the fucker who did it—just one more pimp with his head bashed in by some junkie, you know? And then I swore it would never happen again."

"Did it?" She asked.

"Once," he answered. "And it was the last time."

Anyone else might have asked what he meant, or just assumed that he had reinforced his vow. But she knew better. She knew *just* what he meant. She stayed silent. What was there to say?

"But hey, enough of this bad shit, huh?" He said. "Let’s get some sleep. Now, don’t get me wrong, ‘cause you are *damn* fine, and I may change my mind when we wake up, but for now, let’s *just* sleep."

"Sounds good," she said. If she were someone else, she might have been confused by his abrupt shift. But it made perfect sense to her: they’d seen each other’s scars. Why stare and pick at them? She rolled back to the mattress and put her back to him so they could spoon.

As he did so, he sleepily muttered "It’s safer that way, anyway."

Faith stiffened. In her head, she knew that anyone could pick up an STD. One time and bad luck was all it took. But in her experience, it had been mostly used as a rhetorical stone to throw, part of an accusation that she was skanky. Grounds to ostracize her. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d heard "I don’t want to catch something" or even "I don’t want my dick to fall off" in her one year of high school.

"You don’t know where I’ve been," he finished. Then his breathing became deep and regular.

For the first time in her life, Faith drifted into a sound sleep with a man’s arm around her.

*

Knock, knock, knock

"Oz, please let us in. We need to talk to you."

Knock, knock, knock

"Oz, can you hear us?"

Of course he could hear them. How could he not? If he listened carefully, he could hear their heartbeats. But he refused to listen. Facts were facts, and he didn’t want them trying to make him feel better about those facts. Both the Man and the Wolf hated lies.

So he just lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, his hands folded on his chest, and ignored them.

"He can hear us. He’s just not paying attention. He makes up his mind, and he refuses to talk about it any more."

Damn. Willow usually wasn’t so good at reading him. But then, he supposed this was relatively billboard.

Oh, well. What was she going to do about it?

The security chain suddenly slid sideways and popped out of its slot with a click.

Oh. Yeah. *That’s* what she’s going to do about it.

"Okay, okay," he called as he levered himself up off the bed. "I’m coming."

He crossed the room, and in very sharp, abrupt, un-Ozlike motions, he turned the deadbolt and flung the door open. Those three actions cost him the last of what remained of his strength, and he leaned drunkenly against the doorjamb.

Willow and Tara stood outside. Actually, "stood" might have been the wrong word. They were actually leaning up against each other, using the mutual pressure to keep from falling. They were pale, hollow-eyed, and haggard. He suspected that he didn’t look much better.

"Go away," he said. He was too tired to be polite.

"Not until we talk to you," Willow said. Then she pointed at herself. "Resolve face, Oz."

And it was. If he closed the door, they would use strength they couldn’t spare to open it. So he stepped back and pushed swung the door open for them. "Come in."

They obeyed, coming in and crossing to the bed, where they sat down.

"You should be in bed," he said as he closed and locked the door again.

"But we are," Tara said, pulling a corner of blanket over her lap to make the statement true.

He was about to snap "You know what I mean" when he realized that Tara had made a joke. A pretty weak joke, but the first one he’d heard her speak.

Bad timing.

"Not funny," he said. Tara’s face fell. Willow patted her on the back and looked up at him reproachfully. Good. He could live with them being mad at him if they’d just *leave*. "Why are you here?" He demanded.

"We *wanted* to talk to you about what happened at the *warehouse*, Rude-o," Willow snapped.

"Nothing to say," Oz said, starting to pace. He *would not* sit down on the bed with them.

"I wanted to thank you for saving—" Tara began.

"Stop," Oz commanded, stopping short and cutting her off with a flat sweep of his hands. "Just stop. What *happened* is I almost *killed* you. *Again*."

"But it wasn’t you," Willow protested. "It was the Wolf."

"And even the Wolf wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t so scared of the fire," Tara added.

"Kinda the point," Oz said, resuming his pacing. "If it was an accident or mistake on my part, I could learn from it and promise not to do it again. But it’s something I can’t control—"

"And you can’t stand that, can you," Willow said, her anger rising. "You always have to be so cool, so detached, so *in control*."

Oz ignored her. "—Except to turn it on and off, and sometimes not even that. I’m dangerous."

"So’s Angel," Willow said, getting to her feet and advancing on her first love. "So’s Spike. So’s Faith. Hell, so is Buffy, so is Tara, so am *I*! We’re a bunch of really dangerous people, Oz! Nobody else is running!"

"Stop it," Tara whispered.

"Angel did," Oz said. "For the same reason I did: he couldn’t always decide who he was dangerous *to*. Now he can. I still can’t. You’re all dynamite. I’m nitro. Even if you make a mistake and blow up something you didn’t mean to, you can learn from that mistake—"

"If we survive it," Willow countered.

"St-stop ih-ih-it."

"—And avoid it later on. Me? There’s nothing to learn. I’m just a big boom waiting to happen. That’s why, when this is over, I’m getting back in that van and heading for Montreal."

"No, you’re not!" Willow shouted. "You have a problem, and I’m going to help you with it! Then you can leave, if you want. That’s what love *means*. You’d remember that if you weren’t too busy protecting me from yourself to care!"

"St-st-st-st-stop ih-ih-ih-ih-it! Tara shouted.

Willow whirled, slapping her hand to her mouth. "Oh, my God, Tara, I’m *sorry*. I didn’t mean—"

"It’s all right, Willow," Tara said, waving the apologies down. "It’s all right."

"It’s *not*," Willow insisted, sitting down and taking her hand. "I shouldn’t have said that."

"You never forget your first love," Tara said, smiling wanly. "I still carry a torch for Jenny Liederman."

If they’d had more energy, they might have broken down into peals of laughter. As it was, Willow smiled gratefully, and Oz just gave a chuckle and a grin.

Tara smiled along with them, then her face turned serious. "Want to make sure something like this morning never happens again?" She asked.

The other two froze, staring at her.

Finally, Oz nodded. "Yeah."

Tara waved them over to bed. Willow sat back down beside her, and Oz took a seat on the other side of Willow, where he took her hand and gripped it with silent, but frantic hope. He was surprised but pleased when she gripped back.

"I told you that when I found out about you, I started studying werewolves," Tara explained. "I was hoping to find a cure. I’d never known any werewolves before, and I wanted to help."

"And you found one?" Willow asked eagerly.

"Not exactly."

Willow and Oz’s faces fell.

"I found the name of a spell that bonds your spirit with the Wolf. You change when you want to, and you keep your mind when you do." Their faces rose again. Willow’s eyes and mouth gaped in joyful astonishment, and Oz almost had an expression. "The book I had didn’t have the spell in it, but it had the name of a book that did—and I saw that book on the shelves when I was looking at Mr. Pryce’s gun cabinet."

Willow whirled to Oz. "That’s wonderful! Isn’t she amazing? We can—"

Oz waved her down with his free hand. "The catch?" He asked.

Tara chewed on her lip a little before answering. "You and the Wolf become one," she answered at last. "You get a few of its instincts, but you can take those out on some rabbits and squirrels. The big catch is that you’ll always be a werewolf. No cures."

Oz sat for a long moment, looking at his lap, contemplating that. "But it becomes a superpower," he mused. Then he looked back up at Tara. "I get to choose who I’m dangerous to."

She nodded.

"I’m in."

Willow squealed in delight and hugged first Tara, then Oz, then each of them several more times.

"When can we do it?" He asked once Willow had settled on squeezing both of them at once.

"Midnight," Tara answered.

"Of course," Willow said. "The moment when one day becomes another—the moment of change. We can do it tonight if you want."

Oz nodded. "Sounds good," he said. "Better rest up."

The two witches agreed that was a good idea, but the trek back to their room seemed immeasurably long, and they were reluctant to start it. They dawdled just a bit, chatting—Oz accepted Tara’s gratitude for saving her that morning.

In the end, they wound up sleeping curled up together like puppies on Oz’s bed.

*

Angel took a blood bag from his refrigerator, bit into it, and drank the whole pint cold.

A moment later, he fell onto his bed, asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. But that sleep was neither sound nor restful: he descended from consciousness into fevered dreams of fire and blood and shadow.

Floors above, Buffy began to writhe and moan in her sleep.

Riley stirred to half-wakefulness beside her and began to stroke her back and make comforting noises: "Shhh…shhh…it’s okay. It’s just a dream. You’re safe here…I’m with you, your family’s all around…it’s all right…"

Did some part of him, some instinct unfettered by his conscious mind in his semi-conscious state, realize what was happening? If so, he didn’t remember when he awoke. In fact, he never quite remembered what he said to calm Buffy down.

It was simply this: "You, too, Big Man. They’re just dreams. Whatever he showed you, we aren’t going to let it happen. We’ll keep her safe."

In his apartment, Angel settled into his bed—and a deep sleep—with a faint smile on his lips.

In their room, a similar smile drifted across Buffy’s face as she, too, settled back into sleep. Riley draped a sheltering arm over her, and joined them in dreams.

And for a time, the Hyperion slept.


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