For LaT's Isn't It Iconic? challenge, written for Sheila about this icon of hers:
"I'm not entirely certain that this is -" Wesley tries to say but, laughing and excited, Virginia stuffs half a croissant in his mouth, then grabs his hand and resumes leading him up the stairs.
She can hardly believe that he's never been up here; the roof of his building is flat, carefully shingled with cedar, and affords a massive view. The view's of a knot of access roads and the back of a skeevy park, but it's a view, and the air is fresh, and for a morning at least they can have it all to themselves.
"I've got your pager and cell in my jacket," she says as Wesley looks around suspiciously. Crumbs cling to his lips and he blinks against the bright morning sun. "So if your - what're we calling them? Your posse needs you, you'll be here."
He smiles slowly at her and cups her elbow, squeezing gently. "My posse?"
She kneels and flaps out the blanket before unpacking the picnic basket. "Your associates, employees, *I* don't know -"
Embracing her around the waist, Wesley pulls her close; Virginia slides against his chest and looks upward. Fresh from bed, unshaven, he looks, to her eyes, just as he always should: Happy, alert, very much at ease. He catches her looking and drops his eyes, kissing her forehead and holding her a little tighter.
"Thank you," he murmurs, indicating with his free hand the food before them on the blanket, the jug of juice -- orange-tangerine, her favorite, and it took her an hour to squeeze it last night -- and loaf of challah. She nods, about to answer, but his hand rises, long, pale fingers spreading over the horizon. "Thank you."
"Can't take credit for that," she says, and pushes herself upright. "Much as I'd like to, I never got a handle on climate charms. Just the snacks."
"And the occasion?" he asks, leaning forward and uncapping the bottle of olives while she slices the cheese.
"No occasion. Not per se, anyway."
Wesley looks over his shoulder, eyebrows tightening. He's doubtful. He gets a small pucker of skin between his brows that nudges down his glasses when he does that, and his lips tighten. He's thinking, and analyzing, and Virginia grins at him.
"Really," she says and slides her hand up his back. His eyes close, his face loosens, and any minute now - there it is - his head drops and he lets out a long, contented sigh. "Things are crazy. Everyone needs to get away."
She believes that, wholeheartedly; she'd like it if Wes could try to believe it. She wakes at night and finds his pillow cold; he's snuck out into the living room, wrapped in the blue cashmere robe she gave him, and huddled over his books again. At dinner last Saturday he just blanked out, right in the middle of her story about the faeries who once occupied the attic of their house in upstate New York. When she asked him what he was thinking about, he gave her a weak smile and blinked rapidly, mumbling about vampiric genealogy. Do you think, sweetheart, that a contamination could occur if one is re-sired by one's own granddaughter?
He cannot escape Angel. He's been fired, entirely unjustly (although good riddance to that self-styled alpha-male), yet his mind constantly returns to the hotel, to the questions that Angel himself cannot answer, to the mission. She used to think that Wesley was more dedicated to the mission than Angel could ever manage to be; recent events have only proved her correct.
"The Houdini of the picnic basket?" Wesley offers her an olive, black and fleshy, the skin glowing with points of green. Virginia closes her lips around it and the tips of his fingers. Behind the glasses, his eyes widen, then narrow as he smiles.
"Something like that," she says when she's swallowed, then presses her mouth, slick with the salty oil off the olive, to his.
When they kiss, she's certain, he's thinking of nothing else.