Rearview by Yhlee
Summary: Angel, Booth, no conspiracies. Really.
Spoilers: Bones: early Season One. Angel: entire series.
The restaurant wasn't Caritas, but
it had something of that--Cordelia would have said "vibe." It was
easier to think of Cordelia lately, the way it was easier to think about
everything. He'd lost people before, including himself. Now he followed rain, or
snow, or slipped into the occasional sewer. It was always about rain, now; maybe
it always had been. The demon he was following adhered to similar travel
constraints. He just hadn't expected it to lead him to D.C.
Now that he was here, it made perfect sense. A homecoming, as it were.
He didn't see sunlight anymore, except in clandestine glimpses. He'd had the
last of that. Where glass was concerned, small things bothered him: the yellow
gleam on a broken bottle, three-eyed traffic lights (he didn't drive anymore),
and now, the cup in his hand. It contained water, only water. Water was stingier
with reflections than glass was.
He knew perfectly well why he'd dropped in. He'd showed up, dark clothes and
briefcase and all. Sid had come to take his order at the bar. Stopped. Gave him
a long, unsurprised look, and said he had just the thing. Which meant Sid
didn't, and knew it, and it was okay. That hadn't happened in a long time. It
felt--not good, exactly, but restful.
The water didn't taste of sewers, or platelets for that matter. Small moments of
grace. He tapped his fingers, listening to voices without listening to words.
Too bad he had nothing to sketch with, or on. He had run out of his stash of
business cards somewhere back in Seattle. Wolfram & Hart could afford to
lose a few hundred business cards. He liked to think of some intern in an office
trying to find a pattern to the sketches on the backs of those cards. There was
no pattern but people. Art was a way to watch people without the agonizing
awareness of their rich-sweet taste, their fight-flight motions.
Of course, museums were full of living, moving people, which defeated the
purpose. He needed a TV, but hauling it around would have been a pain.
Sometimes, in dreams, he remembered chocolate ice cream. It always ended up
tasting something like blood.
He felt more than heard the hesitation behind him. No: it was a different kind
of waiting. "Buy you a drink?" said a voice.
He made a noncommittal noise without looking up. "If you--" He heard
an indrawn breath. Looked up. A face. A man's. People tended to have faces. Dark
hair, dark eyes--yeah, faces frequently had hair and eyes, and--oh.
You'd think that after all the anatomical studies, some conducted with bonesaws
and needle-fine knives, he'd recognize the architecture of his own face. Except
it wasn't his, and the blood beneath that skin was wholly human.
"Let's talk," the other man said in a clipped voice, gesturing toward
the door.
"All right," he said. The sky had been losing its last blush of sunset
when he got here. Over two hundred years had taught him the tick-tock of day and
night, equinox and eclipse. He got up and left several bills for Sid. Even
without looking at them he knew what they added up to. He'd been better at sums
than he'd ever let on to his father.
"You first."
"All right." He knew that the other man had barely tasted his drink;
that there was a gun. The first worried him more than the second. Bullets were
metal, and metal had no memory (You know better than that, Wesley would have
said). But some answers were easier to take with alcohol in you.
He'd really believed that once, or else failed to disbelieve it. He mostly knew
how many pubs he'd been tossed out of.
Numbers had never been his friends.
Apparently they were going to talk in an SUV. The things people drove these
days. Hell, people drove. Once he would have mistaken that for a thing
of hell.
He missed the Plymouth.
"You're not someone I know," said the other man.
"Probably not," he said. "Name's Angel." Brief would be
best.
"You have ID?"
One of those business cards would be handy about now, even if it had one of the
others' names on it. (He hadn't been discriminating, in the aftermath. Any
memento had been good enough.) "I know an ex-cop in L.A.?" This man
had the same kind of briskness. Maybe the same kind of father issues. Who knew?
"Very funny."
"Can I at least ask who's asking?"
The other man held up the badge.
"Tell me how to pronounce that."
Booth did. His hands were taut on the wheel, and they weren't even going
anywhere. Something to hold onto, maybe. "I want to know who you are."
So do I, he almost said, which would not have been appreciated. "What do
you want to know?"
Booth looked irritated for a second. Then his shoulders relaxed. "I don't
believe in coincidences. I've seen some pretty damn look-alike people, but one
walking into--no. Something has to be going on."
"And asking me straight-up was the way to find out?" He was starting
to enjoy the give-and-take, especially since Booth kept slipping between
irritation and ruthless focus. He could relate. "You were going to say
something to me even before you saw my face."
Booth looked at him hard. His hands were tense again. "You have secrets. A
lot of them. Just sitting there staring at a glass of water you have secrets. I
know it, but I can't tell you why."
I'm out of practice, he thought. It was too easy to forget how to pass for
human; too easy to remember. "I won't say you're wrong." He glanced
away from Booth, and realized he'd screwed up. The rearview mirror was at an odd
angle, and it pointed toward him.
Booth, of all things, relaxed.
Seeing such an open laugh on that face should have been disconcerting, but he
wasn't used to thinking of himself as having a face at all. It's lonely, he had
told Giles. That hadn't changed.
Booth said, "Bones put you up to this, didn't she?"
Bones?
He didn't remember stepping into any bright swirling portals into alternate
universes. He really didn't. He settled for looking noncommittal. He was good at
that.
"Or Angela put Bones up to it first."
He folded. "Who put what to who what?"
"Your English on vacation?" Booth may or may not have noticed the
flinch. "They've been going on and on and on about some new
holographic thing. I didn't think they had anything portable working yet. Or
that they'd let it out of the lab, but hey. Test it in the real world."
"That's not it. I don't do holographic things," he said. "I look
at you. I see my face, or what I remember of it. It hasn't happened in a long
time."
Booth twisted in the seat and gave him a good long stare. "You're not
kidding." Booth sounded more bemused than surprised.
He knew a way to change that. There was no need yet.
"Just what kind of thing are you?"
"I'm a thing," he said. Maybe that was the best way to put it. The
people who would have told him otherwise weren't here. "I don't breathe. I
don't have a heartbeat." And added, before Booth had a chance to parse
that, "I'm hunting another thing. Among other things, it likes to travel in
rotten weather."
"We did have that thunderstorm a week ago," Booth said, fingers
tapping. "What kind of thing?"
He nodded at the mirror. "Do you mind?"
"It bothers you?"
"It doesn't. That's why."
The backwards logic convinced Booth, which was telling in itself. "You have
a pulse?"
He rolled back the sleeve and offered his wrist.
It took a good five minutes to convince Booth.
"And you're hunting," Booth said.
His mouth twisted. "I'm not going to tell you to relax, because you won't.
It's not that kind of hunting." And not that he was free of the temptation.
He knew how long it would take Booth to reach for the useless gun. Or open the
door, but Booth wouldn't run.
He liked his blood laced with terror or torment, no matter how much he wanted to
deny it. Sometimes, in dreams, the chocolate ice cream tasted like this, too.
Two guilty visits to Ben and Jerry's had not convinced his tongue or his dreams
otherwise.
Booth said, "And I'm supposed to help you with this. After hours."
He looked up in surprise. "I didn't say anything about help. I know you're
here; you know I'm here. I'll stay out of your way." He'd learned, after
Kate. He hadn't had the heart to look her up.
An oncoming car took a right turn; the headlights swept across their faces, and
Booth's expression went hard. "It doesn't work that way."
"That was a snap decision," he said, a little sarcastically.
"Get used to it," said Booth. "What are you hunting?"
Reluctantly, he said, "Something"--best not to say demon--"from
a few decades back. We crossed paths. I thought it'd gone down. It's still
moving, and it's come here." How to say this. "It's not entirely
physical, I don't know what it calls itself now, and it has tentacles." He
wasn't sure he'd delivered the details in the right order.
"That's awfully vague. Look, do you have dinner plans"--Booth paused
and snorted--"or shall I start this thing up so we can talk indoors?"
"I don't have to be anywhere," he said, thinking: I don't have
anywhere to be.
*
Booth's office was not cluttered so much as full of things, files and pens and
slides. Possessions. An invitation might almost have been necessary, in a way it
had never been for Wolfram & Hart offices. The turnover there had been
remarkable. There were no swords or sai on the wall, no volumes of poetry, and
this reassured him that Booth was, in fact, someone separate and untouched by
demons. Well, as untouched as anyone could be around the US government. He
carefully avoided knowing about the current roster of senators.
He spent a long time explaining the demon's particulars: the way it went sideways
wherever there was fog or other vapor (it liked water sprinklers)--the way it
drowned people, then drew out the water. As demons went, it was both subtle,
which was why it had survived so long, and unspectacular. He found himself
clarifying more points than he had expected to. Too much time around people who
knew the workings of demons and hell dimensions and incantations, not enough
around civilians--all right, ordinary people. Booth was good at picking up on
the important points.
And Booth came to the one that would matter to him: "Is this going to be a
question of national security?"
That hadn't occurred to him. "Jesus, no." Booth started. "What,
are you a religious man?"
"Let's not go there."
He shrugged. He became nostalgic for King James sometimes. When people had
Bibles they tended to be these new translations. Maybe it was odd to be picky.
"It's not national security. It's not going to want that kind of
attention."
"Why?"
"There doesn't have to be a why. As far as I can tell, it wants to be left
in peace to drown-dehydrate people and move on."
Booth rose. "I'll drop a few words in likely places." His gaze went
elsewhere. There was a woman. Maybe more than one. Of course. You couldn't keep
these things out of the world, let alone the government.
He heard the other man's breathing. Lungs weren't optional while you were alive.
After all that time focused on blood and bone, it was an important reminder.
"You know where you'll find me," he said.
"Yeah." Booth sounded convinced against his will.
Leaving the office, amid all those shadows, was distressingly easy.
*
He didn't have any useful contacts out here, and didn't want to make any, but
the demon made itself known in small taunts, leaving people unconscious, or
sputtering with water barely in their lungs, leaving a miasma he couldn't
mistake. It liked fountains. There were plenty of fountains. It left coins in
arcane arrangements, although he was almost certain that it couldn't complete a
spell without certain rare aids.
He continued tipping on glasses of water, although he occasionally found himself
sipping whatever beer was on tap.
The demon's trail circled toward a water fountain, of all things, the kind that
always had a wad of gum to be cleaned out. Some kinds of yuck were constant
whether you were human or other. He wasn't going to wait for Booth much
later--when had he decided to wait? It wasn't as if the FBI was the kind of
backup he expected.
The door opened, and he knew the tread, the smell. "Same place, same
time," Booth said, and slapped down some money. "Your tab's covered.
Let's go."
"You take good care of this," he observed, running a thumb along the
fender. Not that it showed his reflection, either.
"In."
"Touchy, aren't we?" And took shotgun before Booth could respond.
"There's this guy I know," Booth said, "who's into conspiracy
theories. I mean, he won't stop talking about the Red Woman assassination."
"The what?"
"That's exactly what I mean." Booth rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I
had him--rummage in some files. Does something called 'The Initiative' sound
familiar?"
"There have to be lot of government projects with the word--"
Booth twisted in his seat. "Don't be coy," he said.
"Angelus."
He made his face blank.
"What's with the Latin, anyway?" Booth's tone was vexed.
He said, carefully, "If your files are any good, you know how old I
am." When had they stopped teaching Latin in this country? He couldn't
remember.
"And all this time they've left you alone." Booth still sounded
annoyed. "Along with everyone else on the list. Demons. Vampires. Things."
He laid his hand over Booth's and put pressure, light but precise, on three of
the carpals. Booth's mouth tightened. "I lay low," he said. "They
knew what I could do and I wasn't doing it." He didn't have to wear his
other face (the real face) to know what kind of smile he had. He had long
practice in reading the reactions.
Well, there had been that thing in Sunnydale, and that other thing in L.A., but
the world was still here.
He removed his hand. "I know where the demon is," he offered.
Booth dropped the subject, maybe because there was nothing he could do about it
that didn't involve stakes or tranquilizers. "All right." He turned
the overhead light on. They pored over a map. "You realize we're going to
look ridiculous fighting something half-visible around a water fountain?"
"We won't be fighting it, just containing it. Then we waft it out and
finish it off."
Booth said incredulously, "Waft?"
"It's not very corporeal. You have a better word?" He thought about
it. He didn't either.
Booth shook his head. "I don't know why I got involved in this. It's not
like I don't have to deal with enough magical technology."
Fred, he thought, and tried to forget.
"If I'm going to be bait," Booth said, "you'd better be as fast
as the records say they are." And dead, he didn't say. Undead. He sounded
queasy.
"You can find someone else as--"
"No," Booth said hastily, sounding even queasier. "I signed up
for this."
He kept his voice neutral. "If you say so."
Actually, he was a little queasy himself.
*