5. Removed

He opened the door to find Costas waiting outside, and would have closed it again except that the first thing the detective did was to thrust a roll of bank notes towards him. "My brother sold your bike. I figure you're probably running low on cash about now."

Wesley had to let go of the door to accept the money, and Costas took the opportunity to push his way inside. Scrunching the notes up in his fist, Wesley sighed, closed the door, and turned around.

"Don't worry about what you owe me, I already took it out."

He could see Costas taking in the state of the apartment, and it was a shock for himself to look at it anew through a visitor's eyes. The mess and the general aura of abandonment broadcast far too many things that were all too personal.

"Good to see you haven't let the old place go," Costas offered dryly.

Embarrassment would require too much in the way of feeling and effort. Wesley delivered his one-shouldered shrug and feebly offered tea. Costas eyed the begrimed state of the kitchen and the stacked pots, and declined.

He registered, finally, Costas' physical state; the bulky padding pushing out the line of his shirt and the care with which he moved, the strapped-up fingers on his right hand, the long, already half-healed gash across the side of his forehead.

"Detective Lockley told me you'd be fine," he blurted, guilt gaining a foothold where shame could not.

Costas shot him a steely look that wasn't particularly amiable. "And I will be. Right now, though, I'm on medical leave, thanks to the efforts of your vampire and a glass lounge table." He pulled his shirt up with an air almost of bragging and pointed out the strips taped around his midsection, peeled one back a little way to show the corner of what must have been a pretty deep cut. "Three of these, plus the cracked ribs, and the concussion. Oh, and the fingers." He waved them in their strapping, and winced.

Wesley realised himself to be unconsciously holding his arm across his chest, pressing the fading bite marks on his wrist against his own ribs even though they were already hidden beneath his sleeve, and he made himself relax, hand falling back to his side.

Costas lowered his shirt to cover his bandages, and looked back at Wesley a long time in silence. "What the hell happened?" he asked finally.

"What happened? I distracted Penn. Detective Lockley called Angel. Angel staked Penn." He turned away.

"No." The irritable dismissal surprised him enough that he turned back. "That's not what I meant. I mean, what the hell happened afterwards? You remember, when you fucking disappeared once you knew the two of us were gonna be okay? Kate said one minute you were standing there looking pale and shaking like a leaf while the ambulance people disentangled the last bits of me from the last bits of the damn table, the next she looked back and you were gone. Hell, I didn't think you could have been in any state to make it across town to this shithole without collapsing, let alone after leading Penn on some wild chase around that hotel."

"I'm here and in one piece aren't I?" he responded. "Well, no less of one piece than before, at any rate."

"Do you know how worried I was when I woke up in the hospital and they told me nobody knew where the hell you were and nobody could get in touch with you? I know I probably look like an ass saying this now, considering, but I let you go in there with us, and if something had happened..."

Wesley laughed wryly despite himself. Who was the innocent civilian here, in any case?

"Even Kate was worried." Costas dug a slim handful of what appeared to be envelopes from his jacket and threw them down on the armchair that stood between them. "You haven't even been checking your goddamn mail."

When he didn't move, the detective bent down and sifted through the catalogues and envelopes with advertisers logos on them and pulled up two with handwritten addresses. "She returned the cellphone to me, and she's hardly had time to come over in person, but she told me she'd written you twice."

Reluctantly, Wesley stuffed the folded money into a pocket and accepted the letters from Costas. After a moment considering, he gripped them with his teeth to tear them open. The pages that fell out were short and brusque, their message along the lines of 'drag yourself out to a public phone and check in, damn you, before I send a squad around to your apartment'.

"See," Costas said. "She was worried."

"If you say so," Wesley agreed dubiously.

"What do you expect?" Costas snapped. "You saved her life - you saved both our lives - and then you just disappear and we don't know if you're hurt, we don't know anything. Kate says Angel won't tell her a damn thing about what happened except that you distracted Penn and he dusted the bastard. Did you think we wouldn't be concerned?"

"I really didn't see you thinking about me one way or another," he said flatly. "It's done. Penn's dust. It's over. He didn't hurt me." It was, essentially, the truth. A little blood, a lingering ache at his wrist. Nothing, compared with the damage Penn had inflicted on Costas, if somewhat inadvertently. "I'm all right. You can go now. Forget about all of this. Get on with your life." He shoved the junkmail aside and sat down in the chair, directing a blank, expectant stare at the detective and the door.

"You're backing out on our deal?" Costas' agitated body language had gone very still.

"What deal?"

Costas leaned over him, gripping the chair's two arms. Wesley flinched away, ending up pressed hard against the backrest. "We talked about an arrangement," Costas said. "You were going to tell me all about these creatures, the vampires and the other stuff, give me the information I need to hunt them."

"We never agreed that. We talked about it. I believe I must have missed the part where we signed anything in blood. Besides, it didn't go so well last time."

Unexpectedly, Costas backed off with a low sigh. Wesley took the chance to scoot out of the chair, unwilling to be pinned down again. "I know. Look, I didn't mean to let you down. He was just - I hadn't expected the speed, and--"

"Don't." Wesley heard his voice crack, almost unable to bear hearing the detective accept the blame that was entirely his own. "It wasn't your fault. I should have prepared you both better, and I didn't."

"Bullshit," Costas said. "Some things you can't just tell. They can only be learned the hard way. You tell me a vampire has super-strength and speed, my brain registers a vampire has super-strength and speed, but it takes seeing one to make my reflexes do the same. I'll do better next time."

"There isn't going to be a next time," Wesley said angrily. "It's finished. I'm not doing it any more, and neither are you."

"The hell we aren't." Costas grabbed hold of his wrist, yanking him around, fingers pressing into week-old bite marks. "I don't know what's wrong with you, but last week you were all out to do this - you were the one pushing me--" He caught sight of Wesley's expression and his diatribe dried up, confusion evident in his eyes. "What?"

"Let go of me," Wesley hissed, oblivious to the pain as he tried to pull loose.

Costas dropped the hold as though it burned him, hands flying up into the air in classic stand-and-deliver stance. "Okay, Jeeze, you don't like being touched, I get that. What the fuck is this, Wesley? You managed to get a total personality transplant in the space of a week?"

Wesley blinked at him, holding his wrist to his ribs, feeling the damp trickle from re-opened scabs, then looked down unable to meet the accusing, mystified gaze. "I'm sorry. I didn't intend to snap."

Costas waited several breaths, fidgeting as though he didn't know what to do with his hands, until he aggressively shoved them both in his pockets, with a double-take at the last moment to negotiate the strapped-up fingers rather more carefully inside.

"He rang back," he said then, abruptly. "That English friend of yours. Guy you ran up hell of a bill on my phone asking about the research on Penn. Giles. Rupert Giles. And I thought 'Wesley Wyndham-Pryce' was one hell of a curse."

His eyes were stony and Wesley felt the back of his throat constrict as he tried to work up to a response but couldn't even make a comeback about the slur on his surname.

"He wanted to know if we got the killer. If everyone was all right. If you were all right," Costas emphasized darkly. "Said you'd told him you'd let him know how things went, and when you never called back..." He shrugged. With his hands in his pockets it made his entire jacket jump on his frame, rattling loose change.

Wesley felt the depression and resignation setting in deeper. If Giles and Costas had spoken, Giles would know now that he had lied about his position with the Council to salve his own dignity. Costas would know that he had lied to Giles. And he was glad - because he deserved their disgust, and because maybe then the detective would go away and leave him in peace. He raised his eyes to meet Costas', unflinching. "Well?"

"Well, nothing," he snapped. "I told him we got the guy. That I thought you were okay but you'd been pretty sick already and I hadn't heard from you. I told him you were probably lying low and recovering. But, damn it, take a minute and call the guy, for fuck's sake, because he sounded a decent enough guy - for a Brit - and from what I've seen I'm guessing you can't afford to alienate any of the friends you actually still have right now. And because normal people worry, and they don't deserve to have to when it isn't necessary."

Wesley did not miss the meaningful delivery of his words, even if he was battling his conflicting emotions after the spectacularly anticlimactic failure to unmask his petty deception.

His lack of response elicited a sigh from Costas, who finally gave up on trying to keep his hands imprisoned in his pockets. "Wesley," he said, an odd drag in his voice. "I didn't come here to yell at you." A soft, raw laugh. "Believe it or not, considering that's all I've done since I walked in here. You saved my life. Kate's, too. I said I didn't want you there, that you couldn't be any use, but I was wrong. What you did..."

He stopped, shook his head, searching for words. "Cops get medals for that kind of thing," he eventually said.

Wesley recoiled, and almost tripped over the edge of the bed. He stepped around it, backing off, placing distance and the armchair between himself and Costas, stopping by the window when it occurred to him if he backed away any further he'd be turning circles round the room. "You're wrong," he said, shaking his head. Appalled to discover he was trembling. His voice, too, mangling the words almost beyond recognition.

"I'm not. And I owe you - a whole lot of things, but most of all an apology. Look, before, I thought you were this kinda awkward, weird, too-earnest English guy. You probably gathered I wasn't taking you real serious. I was wrong. What you did last week, that was some amazing thing. You could have died - you must have known you couldn't fight him--"

"No," Wesley insisted sharply. He pressed back against the side of the window, hugging his wrist to his chest hard enough to aggravate the blood flow. Stopped when he realised if he aggravated it much more, it would start to soak through and Costas would see. Plus, he really hadn't enjoyed trying to dress it using his feet and his teeth and various contortions he'd never imagined the human form, let alone his own, capable of. "You're wrong. It wasn't like that. Don't try to build it up. You were right about me the first time."

"Fine. Then you're the idiot so ready to prove something to the world you wanted to go up against a killer vampire in the aftermath of a major limb amputation."

"Well, now I have to face reality." Wesley heard the snarl that came from his lips and snapped his teeth down on it too late, swallowing hard.

"All right." Costas' body language had all the aggression of a bare fist fighter rolling up his sleeves. "You want reality? To be honest, I thought you were a jumped up jerk who seemed to consider himself a hell of a lot more imposing than he was, but I wouldn't have agreed to work with you if you hadn't had something... that crazy drive... despite all the rest."

Wesley stared, unaccountably hurt despite having known the thinness of his front. Apparently his one virtue was that he was stubborn, and what of that now? He heard bitter laughter; registered it his own and grinned at Costas because his choices seemed to be either laughter or tears. "I'm sorry. So sorry. I just... I can't..."

Costas was developing the beginnings of a worried, hunted look that suggested he wasn't too comfortable with what must at present appear the all-too-likely prospect of somebody having a major breakdown in front of him, and Wesley caught a breath, shocked back to his senses by the cold shower of remembering Costas' own state of injury and exhaustion right now. The man had indicated he'd only left the hospital yesterday himself, and Wesley recalled acutely how bad he had felt a week ago. And in any case, he was supposed to be trained, above this (a joke, but he forced the emotion back down anyway. He could not abide feeling so exposed).

Costas negotiated the chair between them, then caught himself, stalling just feet away, flexing at his sides the hands he did not reach out to offer sympathetic touch. "Wesley, don't shut me out like this. I know what this is about."

"You do?" he asked fearfully.

"Yeah. I know you picked up one hell of a battle scar, there, and maybe it's only just starting to sink in, but it's not like your life's over. What the hell do you think last week was if not all the proof you ever need that you can still make a difference? I've seen cops wash out of the force with disabling injuries and if I take anything from what I've seen them go on to do after - security agencies, PI work, sitting at home watching TV all day, or spending their retirement in an alcoholic slump - it's that it's not about what's out here." A vague indicative gesture encompassed his own form; then he tapped the side of his head. "It's about what's in here. My dad used to say that the world doesn't make or break you, you make or break yourself, all the rest is bullshit."

Wesley regarded him quietly, and wondered what he'd think of what really happened with Penn - not the ultimate proof he could be useful, but all the proof he'd ever need that he was built to crumble under pressure, as he always had. He'd only managed to fool himself a little while.

Costas offered up, with an air of reaching, "Nelson lost an arm."

"I know."

"You saved my life. I'd be dead if it wasn't for you. That has to count for something. Look, I'm not asking you to fight beside me. I just need your direction to learn to fight on my own. You were the one that started this. I can't go back to living in ignorance now I know. You have to finish." He gestured around the mess of the apartment. "And look at it this way - what the hell else are you going to do?"

Wesley had no answer for that. All he was, all he'd ever done, all he'd been prepared for, was wrapped up in the mission he knew he no longer had any capacity to fight, if indeed he ever had. Costas effectively wanted him to be his Watcher, and given his previous failures in the role, he was sure to make mistakes again, and Costas would likely be the one to end up dead for it.

But most of all he knew he couldn't face another encounter like the previous one. Remembering the feel of himself crumble, though at least he supposed he no longer needed to worry about the memory gaps that had concerned him so much about his encounter with the Kungai, since Penn had recalled them for him in all their Technicolor detail.

He looked over at Costas and shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted bitterly, resenting the detective for backing him into another corner. "I don't know."

Costas sighed and turned away, his own head shaking, exuding frustration. The quick movement provoked a wince, and Wesley saw the hand that went to his taped ribs. He wondered which one of them was the more healthy now - the site of his amputation was all but healed, and that feeling of weakness and the dizziness that had plagued him had almost disappeared the last few days.

"Come on," the detective said suddenly, spinning on his heel with a snap of decision and marching toward the door, face grim-set, hiding any pain the motion caused. "Let's get the hell out of here. I'm sick of this apartment after half an hour, I'm guessing you're sure as hell sick of it after a week."

Wesley gaped at him a moment, not sure he was serious, but evidently he was.

He absolutely did not want to go out. But... he'd never felt so alone as he had this past week. He badly felt the need to talk to another human being, even if it was the persistent detective who'd no doubt try to coax him around on their still-unresolved argument, even if it was short, stilted, awkward conversation as he tried to avoid the subjects he did not want to talk about.

He nodded slowly and picked out his jacket from the mess on the floor.

"Damn it," Costas said explosively as he slammed open the door, all but yanking Wesley out after him. "I knew you hadn't been out of here all week."


"I still can't believe you brought us here," Wesley half-shouted, trailing in Costas' wake through the crowds.

The detective jerked his shoulders without turning around. "I can't drink. I can't drive. Not a lot I can do, with the damn medication and the whining English guy in tow - but I haven't seen a whole lot of the open air this last week and damned if I'm not gonna see some today."

Stumbling on the wooden boards underfoot, catching himself barely, Wesley shaded his eyes from the blazing mid-afternoon sun and apologised and excused himself to the people he pushed by to catch up with Costas, forging on ahead.

"...place is nice. My sister brings her kids here some weekends. I used to hang out here myself as a kid. And anything to try get you to lighten up already."

"I hardly think that's--" He sighed as Costas stopped to shoot a glare back at him. "All right, so we're here. What in Heaven's name are we going to do here? Eat pink fluff on a stick and attempt to win a giant purple... whatever those stuffed creatures at the back of that stall purport to be?"

"Yeah, if you like. Most people call it cotton candy." He squinted. "They're either bears or mice. Anybody's guess why they're purple."

Wesley pondered on the idiosyncrasies of the life which had led him to be here like this, his feet skidding on the polished boards of a sun-drenched pier, the noise and agitated humanity of a funfair assaulting his senses, bullied by an LAPD detective he was beginning to suspect not entirely rational at present.

Amid the clumps of families, mobs of teenagers, and twenty-something couples dressed in bright summer colours and chatting happily away in the sunlight, he rather thought that he stuck out like a sore thumb in his borrowed clothes and battered jacket. Costas' apparent obliviousness only compounded his embarrassment, and the urgent feeling that he needed to go find a small dark hole in which to hide for, oh, about a decade.

He angled his body to squeeze past two inordinately fat people, jarred one of them in the process and delivered a breathless "I'm so terribly sorry", then felt his face redden as the woman gawped openly at his cut-off shoulder. He hurriedly strutted after Costas, protesting, "You do realise I've spent much of the past week avoiding being around large crowds of people?"

"It's not like they're gonna hurt you." A quality in Costas' voice sparked a suspicion that possibly the choice of location for their afternoon foray had other motives from those to which the detective had confessed.

Certainly this was just about the most exposed place Wesley could imagine. He had never felt quite so visible before.

"They probably think I'm one of the attractions!" he said, pointing out a freak show exhibit. A fat lady not much different in girth from his recent adversaries waved and blew him a kiss. Still ruffled from the previous encounter, he stuttered and stared like a fool.

"So? Charge them," Costas responded, stopping briefly to herd him onward with a shove in the small of the back. "You were the one saying you needed a new direction, since you're giving up the demon hunting."

"There's no need to be snippy. And I'll thank you not to play head-games with me, detective."

"Jack. It's Jack."

"Excuse me, I thought I'd just established one of the many reasons why we're not friends?" His steps sharpened; his hand bunched into a fist at his side.

Costas stopped and swung around, causing people to bump into them a moment until the crowd readjusted to the obstacle and began to flow around them. "You're a freak," the detective said, stabbing him in the chest with a finger. "And it's got nothing to do with the arm. I tell you my name's Jack, not 'detective', not 'Mr Costas', I figure I'm pretty much saying my name's Jack. Who said anything about friends? It's not like you didn't tell me to call you Wesley practically the moment I met you."

"Well, it's not my fault that the rest of the world barring my family has a problem with 'Wyndham-Pryce'," Wesley returned.

Costas, very distinctly, sniggered. He started moving again, easing them back into the flow of people. "Anyway, unless you were planning on shutting yourself away forever, you were gonna have to face the world sometime." The remark was almost casual - almost. "Besides, they're staring at me too. Are you surprised? We look like two extras from some old war movie."

"They won't be staring at you forever," Wesley insisted, then gulped as he replayed the remark in his head. "Er... are we heading towards anything in particular here?" he asked, gratified for a change of subject as he noted the focused nature of the Costas' path.

"Food," the detective supplied succinctly. "Seems hours since breakfast, and I'm guessing you haven't eaten yet today."

Wesley grimaced. He did not much like to imagine what culinary delights would be available for their enjoyment anywhere in this place, and had little trust in Costas' palate to assuage the concern.

And he was right, because it saw them, presently, sitting on a low wall close by a hot dog stand dining on a meal of grease served with a side helping of onions, the one significant attractive feature of it being the ease with which it could be eaten one-handed. After the first bite, though, he barely noticed the grease.

"All right, so I'm guessing you haven't eaten much at all this past week," Costas said sarcastically.

"Not much at all," Wesley agreed, repeating the words given him out of sheer laziness, finding it difficult to care for evasion. But he could very much care to devour another of...

"You want me to--?" Costas began, digging his wallet out as Wesley stood up.

"No, no." He patted his pocket. "I'm not destitute any more, as you recall. I'm sure you've subsidised me quite enough."

Costas waved his wounded ego aside with a flap of his hand, causing onion to drop from the hot dog he happened to be holding in it, promising, "I'll get you addicted to these yet," as Wesley headed back to the vendor.

Wesley pondered the remark as he queued, paid, and ambled back to where the detective sat. It was quite clear his insistence that his arrangement with Costas was very much over was simply not sinking in.

The bricks of the wall were warm, saturated by sun, and it soaked through his clothing when he perched back down there. The sun warmed his skin and caught at stray strands of hair fallen over his eyes - growing out of its cut and steadily approaching 'too long' after the weeks in the hospital and since - turning them almost blond, until he awkwardly brushed them back and out of his sight. The hot dog was in theory vile but in practice his hunger made it acceptable, and he had to at least admit to himself that for the first time in a week he felt... almost alive.

He crumpled the empty wrapping up and tossed it over into a nearby wastebasket.

"Nice shot," Costas observed (Wesley could see his own papers crumpled up on the ground at the base of the wall). "You ready to move?"

"Yes." He stood and brushed down his clothes. "Seriously, det-- ah, that is, Jack... why a funfair?"

"Why the hell not?" Costas asked as though offended.

They pottered around the fair a while, looking at the stands and rides, not speaking much. Wesley asked about Detective Lockley, and received a roll-eyed long-suffering look he was beginning to recognise as Costas' 'Lockley expression' and the information that the woman had spent the past week running around like a headless chicken trying to wrap up the remnants of the Pope case in some sort of order that made sense in the records without actually possessing a body to prove the perpetrator dead.

"She wasn't injured, then? I thought perhaps she wasn't being entirely honest when she told me - and the ambulance crew - that she was fine," Wesley queried.

"Sprained wrist. Ended up not going to get it sorted until the day after. She said she thought it was just twisted. She was probably bruised all to hell, but I'll never know since she covers herself up like a nun."

Wesley was amused by his evident disgust at that latter fact.

As the afternoon drew to a close it found them sitting on the edge of the pier, beyond the last of the stalls where people were anyway starting to drift off home, legs hanging down over the sea, handing a bag of donuts back and forth. At Costas' side was the large purple... mouse, as it had been lengthily debated and finally concluded, that they had acquired from a shooting gallery with brightly coloured targets that Costas had proceeded to miss with remarkable efficiency until finally swearing a lot and prodding Wesley into trying. "Beginner's luck," he'd concluded irritably, the purple creature wedged under his arm as they walked away, and; "My niece will love it, I'm sure."

Wesley took another donut, and distractedly said, "Is your plan to ply me with junk food until I agree to continue this alliance?"

"Pretty much." Costas grinned.

He shook his head. "It won't work. My mind's quite made up on the issue, I assure you. I almost got you and Detective Lockley killed."

"But you didn't. And a whole lot of people that would've ended up Penn's appetisers will live, now. And you don't seem to get that, for Kate and me, it's what we do. It's what we chose to do. Protecting the innocent, and all the rest."

"Why? - I mean, why did you become a police officer? You said before that your family didn't want you to."

Costas was quiet a moment, and Wesley was ready to apologise for prying when he said, "A couple of cops arrested a friend of mine when I was seventeen. Turned out he was innocent of any charge, but he ended up with three broken ribs and a broken nose. Coincidence, of course, that he happened to be black. I figured things needed to change. I also figured... you have to be in the system to change it." He shrugged.

Wesley nodded slowly, and offered the last donut to Costas.

"You can have it."

"No, no. You paid for them."

"Plying you with junk food, remember? Besides, you did save my life. I figure it's worth at least a donut."

"I'm sure it's worth considerably more than that," Wesley said, and took the donut.

Costas waited until he'd finished and licked the sugar from his fingers before climbing awkwardly to his feet, flexing his limbs and wincing from too long sitting still. He said, "What the hell. Let's go get a damn drink."

"I can't drink," Wesley protested, scandalised. "I'm still on medication. And so are you - you even said so yourself, earlier."

The detective rolled his eyes; there was a fiendish spark in them. "First thing I did when I got home last night was empty a couple of cans. Hasn't done me any harm yet. Come on, let's go find a bar."

Wesley glared at him. "You--" He sighed, shook his head, and let it go. Today had been a better day than the seven preceding it, and on balance, that did count for a great deal. He shifted clumsily, trying to climb to his feet with only one arm for leverage. Costas extended a hand almost nervously, as though half expecting to be bitten, and Wesley supposed with a guilty start that he had in fact done much to foster that caution. After a moment's consideration during which he calculated that, yes, he could manage on his own if he took an extra moment, he clasped the offered hand. Costas' palm was warm, fingers sticky with sugar. The detective saw him on his feet before loosing the hold.

Costas wordlessly clasped his shoulder before turning to lead their way back up the pier. Wesley stared down a moment at his empty palm, before jolting himself back to reality and following.


It was getting dark when they drew up outside his apartment building in the taxi. A little unsteady from the alcohol which was mixing uneasily with his pain medication, Wesley helped Costas - somewhat more unsteady - out of the back.

Drink-saturated grimness lined his thoughts and a deep ache his limbs. He didn't hurt so much as he had after the chase the previous week, though he still had some of the bruises from falling down all those stairs, but still, today had included significantly more activity than he'd been accustomed to seeing of late. He had done nothing with his time to try to combat the drag of inactivity on his body, or reclaim his physical fitness.

The fact that he was rather appalled with his own apathy, thinking on that, unnerved him. Being numb had kept his heart beating since Penn had destroyed the rest of him. He wasn't sure he was going to survive starting to feel again.

Wesley left Costas propped against the side of the taxi a moment and hurried around to the driver's window to pay. The driver was eying the street nervously, visibly judging the neighbourhood and finding it ominous.

"Please, keep the change." He missed exactly what the driver said in response, but suspected sarcasm. He managed to remove Costas from his slump against the bonnet just in time as the vehicle started to move. "I still think we should have taken you back to your place," he told the drunk detective.

They had in the last several hours toured around rather more of LA's less reputable drinking establishments than Wesley had ever wanted to experience. None of them, apparently, were Costas' usual haunts, which was a source of some relief, and in one of them they were almost lynched when the detective made a carelessly loud reference to his occupation, but Costas did not seem to much care.

Wesley distinctly did not want to get beaten up or knifed and left in a back alley somewhere. The minor confrontation had sent him into a cold sweat and he'd had to sit down on the sidewalk after they'd made their exit - passing the episode off to Costas as a bout of pain from his truncated shoulder.

Throughout somewhere in the vicinity of a dozen bars, he had endeavoured to do no more than sip the drinks Costas had pushed upon him. Even so, as he attempted now to steer the detective across the street to his apartment building he began to suspect he had imbibed more than he'd thought. Or possibly it was the reaction with his medication that threw him off-balance and made the world turn circles. He had not been drunk enough times in his life to be certain.

"God, no," Costas groaned, and he had to rack his brain a moment as to precisely what he'd said that this marked a response to - ah, the question of taking him home. Costas' next line was indistinct, but the word 'wife' and the shudder with which he punctuated his speech carried over quite clearly.

"You're married?" Dear Lord, the poor woman would have his head for allowing her seriously injured husband to troll around half the seedy bars in LA.

"Divorced," Costas said succinctly, and yes, he remembered hearing reference to an ex-wife a few times before, and allowed himself a partial sigh of relief.

With the painstaking aid of many small and detailed questions he managed, in a slow, tedious process as they mutually staggered through the hallway and up the stairs, to extract the information that the ex-wife was in fact currently staying with Costas (apparently they still got along well enough) in order to see him all right for his first day or so out of the hospital because the doctors had been concerned about his being alone. Costas had left that morning promising her he would be gone only a few hours.

Wesley swore steadily under his breath as he fumbled for his keys on the landing, noting with intense irritation that his neighbours had taken a brief hiatus from their arguing in order to have violent, noisy sex.

"It's a curse," he groaned aloud. He jerked the keys and twisted to bash the door below the handle with his elbow, and it clicked open.

"Curses too, huh?" Costas said.

"No, I didn't mean--" he said, flustered. "Although, yes, there are curses too. But I didn't mean that I was literally cursed. Just figuratively." The last word took several attempts to get right. It sounded like he was trying to gargle with it.

They fell through the door, Costas' shoulder hitting the jamb first attempt and the detective feeling around the shape of the doorway with both hands before proceeding again. "Goddamn," he said, flinching at the sight of the apartment, and reiterated, "How can you live like this?"

The sight of the apartment, and the smell, Wesley thought, reassessing as he entered. He blanched and staggered through the debris to open the window wide. "I don't - I didn't realise it had become quite this bad. I... I didn't notice."

"I mean, you've got that English, classy thing going, for a start. Shouldn't you kinda have a whole private mansion or something, with that accent?"

He turned, to see Costas had shucked off his jacket onto the floor and slumped back in a chair. He barked a bitter laugh at the remark. "Oh, my family has some properties." Though probably less grand than Costas was thinking, he allowed. "But I don't believe I'll be seeing any of them again anytime soon."

Costas looked uncomfortable at that, and Wesley remembered he'd seen the letter.

"But you are right. I ought to be doing better than this." He stared fixedly down through the window to where a gang of youths were enthusiastically climbing on a dumpster at the mouth of an alley across the street. He bit his lip, and looked back to the detective, his mouth suddenly feeling very dry. His head ached and he felt very, very sober. He recoiled, in the end, from voicing his thoughts.

"You'll help me," Costas said for him, as he worked his throat and no sound came out.

He nodded. "Yes," he said finally, a bare whisper. He rested his hand on the window frame, ran his fingers down the edge, stared out into the dark as a viable alternative to meeting the detective's gaze. "I'm no use to myself or anyone else like this. I should - I have to do something. Even if I have to make myself... I... But you should know, I've failed before, more than once. It's unlikely it won't happen again."

"Wesley." Costas sounded tired. "I don't think there's many people in the world couldn't say that of themselves if they were being honest."

"Most of their mistakes haven't endangered lives."

"That might be true - but most of the ones I know are cops."

He drew in a sharp breath. Not relief; a different kind of fear. The prospect of not giving in contained more dread than hope. Even so - he knew, logically, that there were ways even a coward could serve.

Costas stood up from his chair, then, and Wesley noted that he was looking rather grim.

"What's wrong? Oh, good lord--"

The detective dived out of the apartment, his steps crashing along the landing towards the shared bathroom.

Wesley contemplated following, then decided it would be less of an embarrassment for all concerned if he did not. He sighed and sagged against the window sill, trying to pick threads of coherent thought from the misty strings enveloping his brain. Outside, the youths had moved on, leaving the dumpster overturned in their wake and its contents strewn over half the street.

Costas' cellphone had spilled from the jacket on the floor. He left the window and picked the phone up, switched it on, then hesitated and set it between his teeth while he fished in his pocket for his wrist watch. Too late, probably, to ring Giles now, he decided guiltily. He would do so in the morning.

He bent to replace the cell and it beeped shrilly in his hand. Startled, his limbs jerked wildly, and the cellphone flew from his fingers. He made several quick grabs which would surely have looked embarrassingly cartoonish had there been anyone there to see them and finally forestalled its dive. Gripping it in his fingers, he stabbed at the keys with his thumb and raised it to his ear.

"W--" he began.

"Jack, you asshole, where the hell are you and why the hell has your phone been turned off all day?" a female voice demanded, almost causing him to drop the phone all over again.

"I--"

"Do you know how worried I've been, waiting around for you to show up? Do you know how many of your friends I've called around, trying to find you? I practically had them put a fucking missing persons out, you bastard--"

Wesley determinedly took a breath and cleared his throat loudly to interrupt. "This is Wesley Wyndham-Pryce speaking," he said. "Ah, can I help you?"

There was a brief, surprised silence on the other end.

"Oh, God," the woman said faintly. "I'm so sorry. I thought--" Suspicion crept into her voice and some of the volume and aggression returned. "Wait a second. I know I punched in the right number. Where's Jack? Is he there? Is he all right?"

"He's, uh, fine..." Wesley said hesitantly.

"Has he been drinking?" came the next sharp query. She seemed to take Wesley's silence as all the answer she needed. "Damn you," she all but spat. "Don't you know he's on medication?"

"I--"

"Where are you?" she asked in a tone that brooked no argument. "I'll bring the car around and pick him up."

Wesley pondered making a stand in Costas' defence, but he had in any case been wondering how he was going to get the detective home, so he stammered out his address and was left feeling like he'd been knocked down by some large armoured vehicle when she cut the connection. He stared at the cellphone in faint horror for a minute before replacing it inside the jacket, picking the jacket up and folding it over the back of the chair, and venturing after Costas.

It was with some relief that he found the man already making his way back across the landing.

"Better," he filled in with a nod of his head before Wesley could ask, sounding rather more sober.

"Your wife - or so I assume - rang."

"Fuck. Irene?"

"So I assume," he repeated.

Costas winced. "Fuck."

"She said that she'll be coming here to pick you up in the car."

A groan greeted the information. "You gotta be kidding me."

"I'm sorry."

A sigh. "Doesn't matter, I guess. At least it means I don't have to spend the night sleeping on the floor of this dive. No offence." He waved a hand, dismissing the issue, and the motion put him off balance, making him stumble. "Hell. I gotta sit down before I fall down."

"Yes, I think perhaps you may have overdone it." The faint noise of something breaking carried through the wall and he shot a glare at his neighbours' door as they went back inside the apartment.

While they waited, he somewhat ashamedly started to tidy the place into a kind of order. The idea of the very strident woman on the cellphone walking in on the place in its current state disturbed him considerably. Costas watched and made occasional comment, too drunk for subtlety, and Wesley wished he wouldn't, intensely self-conscious as he filled the sink and approached the dirt-encrusted pile of plates and cups with the sort of grim foreboding one might approach a battle.

Predictably, the knock at the door came before he could finish.

The woman he opened to was tall and markedly thin in a way that made him want to check for a pulse, her ash-blonde hair very short cropped and an overall impression of harshness about her. She wore pale colours, in businesslike cut. She blinked at Wesley, then extended a hand as though forcing herself to courtesy.

"Irene Danner. Mr. Wyndham-Pryce?"

"Yes." She was the first person in a long time not to trip over his surname on the first attempt, and for that alone he managed a smile. Her handshake was very firm, all bony edges. He welcomed her inside.

"I didn't realise you were... injured," she said, still staring. "Are you a police officer?"

"He's freelance," Costas said, standing up straight and visibly attempting to salvage some dignity. "Irene, I'm sorry."

Irene's thin eyebrows climbed her forehead as her gaze meandered over to her errant husband. Her eyes narrowed and a faint smile crooked her lips as if to agree with that assessment. Costas was thereafter temporarily removed from consideration while she turned back to Wesley. "I should apologise for my behaviour when you answered the phone."

"It's perfectly all right, Ms. Danner," he assured her.

Awkwardness out of the way, she smiled efficiently and moved on. "Let's get you home," she said to Costas with a little 'huff' of long-suffering despair. Her annoyance, hard on the surface, had an undercurrent of rote, and there was much undercurrent of familiarity and affection. Barring her irritation over the worries of the evening, it was obvious their estrangement was not a bitter one.

"No." Costas pulled away from her grip and contemplated Wesley narrow-eyed. He nodded to himself in some kind of decision. "You. We're moving you out of this place. Right now."

"W-what?" Wesley stuttered, caught off-guard.

"No friend of mine is living in a dump like this when I live in a house that has at least three rooms I barely ever set foot in. Get packed. You're coming back with me."

"I most certainly am not," Wesley retorted. "I'm perfectly fine here. I don't need your charity."

"To hell with charity. Don't you know I risk my life every time I walk down this street? And how did you get this place? That little redhead nurse took some shine to you, right? You're living on charity now. At least you agreed to help me out, and can consider that help your rent."

"He's right," Irene said, impartially droll, looking between the two of them with some amusement and considerably more doubt. "This place is appalling."

"He's drunk," Wesley said. "I hardly imagine he'd be suggesting this sober."

"I am not drunk," Costas insisted. He tried to scrape up a pile of Wesley's belongings in some attempt at enforcing the removal and almost fell, swaying as the motion set him off-balance. He glared around, defying anyone to comment. "And I was already thinking of it earlier. Right now we both need some watching. This way we can watch each other. Irene can go back to work and stop fretting over her deadbeat ex. I'd say it works out pretty good all round."

"Quite," Irene said.

"I... I really couldn't," Wesley insisted, his voice quavering between anger and a humiliating squeak of fright. Bloody hell, at least in this place he had some privacy to be hopeless in. Nobody had to know how long it took him to get dressed, cook a meal, complete the most simple, pathetic tasks of everyday life.

"I'm not leaving you... here... like this alone," Costas said sporadically, lurching in ungainly fashion around the apartment, gathering things up which he returned periodically to pile into the arms of his bemused ex-wife. "Not for anything like... this last week... to happen again. You need someone right now." He paused and straightened to deliver with more force, "Call it a fucking intervention or whatever the hell you will, but you're coming back with me. It doesn't have to last. Just till you've got your feet on the ground again and we've sorted out..." He cast Irene a sideways glance. "The other stuff."

Wesley opened his mouth to repeat his protest, then closed it.

He could not muster the energy to combat the detective's drunken determination. He wasn't sure he wanted to. He was tired, in a way that went bone deep and settled there in a constant, incessant ache. Tired of living like this, tired of being alone. He sighed and gave a one-shouldered shrug of acquiescence, letting himself surrender.

What Costas suggested was logical enough. And he had little else left by which to live.