Chapter Text
“You do realize,” Wesley said, “that our level of speed will make no difference whatever to the end result?”
“I’m aware of it,” Brian said testily. He slackened his foot on the accelerator, but his spirits and the needle crept up again quickly. Minutes later they swerved into the drive of the vicarage with a lurch, and Brian, grinning, beat a sharp, deafening tattoo on the horn with both fists: Shave and a haircut, six bits.
“Or,” Wesley said with the same mildness, “we could go up to the door and knock politely.”
“Now where would be the fun in that?” Brian said, just as the vicar emerged, pulling on her windbreaker and casting a dry smile at them in the front seat. She crossed the headlight beams at a quick but sedate pace and got in behind Brian.
“All right?” Brian said.
“Yes, I’m ready,” Anne said. “And this must be....”
“Oh, right, you haven’t met. The Reverend Anne Langland -- Wesley Wyndam-Pryce.”
“Ah yes,” Anne said, as Wesley reached a hand back to shake hers. “You must come from Wyndam Hall then.”
“You know it?” Wesley said, surprised.
“I haven’t been there, but my cousin stayed there a number of years to study with Peter Gates.”
“Yes, he was my tutor as well. Who was your -- I suggest putting on your seat belt -- your cousin?”
“Richard Farrar.”
“Oh! You are related to the Farrars?”
The rest of the trip to the hospital was spent in comparing genealogical notes, with the result that Brian was muttering under his breath when they arrived in the maternal ward. At once, Anne was given passage back to the birthing rooms, and Wesley and Brian were shooed off to sit down in the waiting area.
“I wondered why she put her collar on for this!” Brian said indignantly. “That is entirely unfair.”
“Do you really want to be back there?” Wesley said. “Trust me, it’s better to be present for a labor at a certain distance.”
Brian harrumphed, but subsided into one of the chairs without any more argument.
They waited. Wesley took up a magazine and divided his attention between it and the other people in the waiting area; Brian also picked up a magazine, but after only a few minutes tossed it back to the table and drummed his fingers on the chair arm between them. There was no use telling him to calm down, so instead Wesley allowed himself to be absorbed into an article about Aztec ruins.
Presently Brian emitted a quiet little giggle. Wesley was going to ask him what was up, after he finished this paragraph, but then Brian did it again: an almost gurgling chortle that sounded strangely unbalanced. Wesley looked up. Brian was hugging himself, bubbling with ever more unbalanced laughter. “You’ve lost it, old man,” was on the tip of Wesley’s tongue to say, but then Brian rolled in his chair and broke out in a peal so truly wicked that the words were arrested in Wesley’s throat.
It didn’t stop there. Brian gripped the arms of his chair, and the mad peals of wicked laughter mounted so that the others in the waiting area stopped their conversations to look at them. Wesley resisted the impulse to hide behind his magazine. “Brian,” he said, but it was too late.
He had to admit it was impressive: just when he thought the maniacal laughter had to have reached its peak, Brian’s lung capacity boosted it to new heights. It was creating a disturbance in the waiting room and beyond. Wesley put his face in his hand and watched between his fingers as Brian lay back rigid and let it rip to full screams, his face growing red under the strain. Wesley was pretty sure they could hear it all over the hospital by now. Every mad scientist in the county was probably running for the hills.
Brian’s screams of wicked glee rose up and up in pitch -- and then abruptly switched off. Brian sat up and reached for a magazine, clearing his throat delicately with the utter decorum of a history don. Wesley took his hand away from his face and watched openly as Brian shook open his magazine, the color subsiding from his cheeks, and settled back to read. The silence in the room was complete.
“I did ask for it, didn’t I?” Wesley said calmly.
“Indeed you did,” Brian said. He was only a little hoarse.
The reverberations from Brian’s maniacal laugh were just beginning to settle when a furious woman in scrubs came out with a bang of the door. “Right,” she said, “which one of you is Brian Whitaker?”
Slowly Brian raised his hand, glee and guilt warring in his face.
“You,” she said, and the glee fled from Brian’s expression. “Elisabeth Bowen sent me with a message for you: ‘You bastard, you’ve put me off my stroke. I’ll have to start all over pushing again.’”
“Oh dear,” Brian said. Wesley dry-washed his face to avoid a smile. “Tell her I’m exceedingly sorry.”
The nurse was unappeased by Brian’s contrite tone and academic diction. “Are you not aware that this is a maternity ward? Do you realize what sort of medical emergencies you could have provoked?”
“I’m really very sorry,” Brian said, this time truly contrite. “It won’t happen again.”
“I thought she was going to throw us out on our ears,” Wesley said quietly after the nurse had gone. A woman sitting across the area from them was still shooting poisonous looks their way, and her children were whispering and giggling.
“It was touch and go,” Brian agreed. And added cheerfully, “It’s no fun if you don’t get in trouble.”
*
A long time later the door opened and Anne came out, tucking a sanitary gown over her arm. Brian half rose, and Wesley put down the sudoku puzzle he was working. “Well,” she said, “it’s a boy, just as they thought. Mother and child are fine.”
“But,” Brian said, confused, “we didn’t even hear him crying.”
“No? Well, he was; quite lustily. I expect he’ll have to grow a little to match your lung capacity.” She smiled at Brian, and he flushed.
“Will we get to see him?” Wesley asked, but before Anne could reply, Rupert came in behind her with a wide smile on his face such as Brian had never seen. He was still wearing his sanitary gown, so it was difficult to distinguish the wrapped morsel of humanity in his arms; Brian shot to his feet, but waited as if balanced on a fine point of gravity for Rupert to invite him closer with a glance before he approached.
With Wesley at his shoulder he looked at the tiny bundle in Rupert’s arms. The baby’s face, folded round in the receiving blanket, was no bigger than Brian’s palm, and his eyes were buttoned tight shut. He was ruddy-skinned and pocket-cheeked -- slightly misshapen, Brian thought, which naturally one would be after passing face-first through a tight space. And below the valence of these thoughts stirred something powerful, something evoked by the scent of blanket and baby skin, by the tiny dark eyelashes, by Rupert’s broad and wet-eyed smile.
“What will you call him?” Wesley asked. He sounded calm, as he had so maddeningly been all evening, but Brian could hear the note of wistful pleasure in his voice.
Rupert gave a small laugh, a sound that also was new. “Elisabeth insisted that we call him after me; but I convinced her he should have her surname as well.”
“Ye gods, not another double-barreled surname,” Wesley said, and he and Rupert both laughed.
“I think we’ll call him by his second name,” Rupert said, “Andrew.”
“Andrew Wells will think you’ve named the baby for him,” Brian said, with a small snort.
“Well, let him,” Rupert said. “It won’t hurt anything.”
Brian hadn’t taken his eyes off the baby, but now Rupert said, “I’d better take him back to his mother now,” and Brian reached into his jacket pocket for his digital camera.
“Wait, we need a picture first. Anne -- will you -- ?”
They posed -- Brian and Wesley on either side of Rupert and his son -- and Anne obligingly took a couple photos, and allowed Brian to take one of her. “Let me see them,” Wesley said; Brian handed over the camera and let him and Anne look the shots over. “Oh, this one is perfect,” she said, and Wesley agreed. “That one will travel round the world before the night is out,” he said.
Rupert looked at them conferring, heads together, over the camera, and murmured to Brian, “Wesley and Anne seem to have hit it off.”
“Are you kidding?” Brian muttered back. “They’re like second double cousins once removed or something,” and Rupert laughed again.
“Congratulations,” Brian said.
“Thank you,” Rupert said, with his gaze bent on his child’s face. “I’d better get back.”
“Yes,” Brian answered, “and I’d better collect my blue-eyed boy and be off home.”
“Yes, term starts tomorrow, doesn’t it?”
“Indeed it does,” Brian sighed. “Otherwise I’d be marching you down to the pub and getting us all smashed. Consider it done in spirit.”
“I will.” Rupert grinned at him. “Good night.”
Brian watched him go, and stood there even after he was gone, till Wesley’s hand on his shoulder recalled him to the present moment. “Shall we go home?” Wesley said quietly.
Brian nodded.
*
Buffy called Brian twice on the way back home. The first time, she demanded details: height, weight, name -- “Giles was completely incoherent” -- and Brian had to give the phone to Anne so he could drive. The second time, after they’d dropped Anne back at the vicarage, Brian let Wesley answer.
“Yes, we have a couple of pictures. Yes, I’ll upload them right away. No, we didn’t get to see Elisabeth -- but I think Giles took some pictures with his own camera, so perhaps -- yes. Yes, I will.”
Back at the flat, Wesley commandeered Brian’s laptop so that he could upload the pictures for Buffy. Brian didn’t object, as there was no way he could tie down his thoughts to the opening of term anyway. He hung over Wesley’s shoulder and watched the pictures come up on the screen.
It was obvious which one Wesley had picked out as the photo that would go round the world: there they stood, three men grouped around the little bundle of baby, Brian’s hand on Rupert’s far shoulder and Wesley’s bright and upright stance; and Rupert’s face, unashamedly radiant, looking straight into the camera’s eye. Brian was still looking at it when his mobile rang a third time.
“Oh my God,” Buffy said.
“I know,” Brian laughed.
“Oh my God! I’ll talk to you later, okay? I have to call Will.”
As Brian put down his phone, Wesley handed him a small glass of scotch. “It may not be advisable to get fully inebriated in the traditional fashion, but we can’t not have a toast,” he said.
Brian agreed. “To the Bowen-Giles family,” he said, lifting the glass.
“Hear, hear.” And they put the scotch straight down.
It was after he’d washed the glasses and was drying his hands that his hilarity tumbled hard and the power that had stirred in him as he looked at the baby’s face now gathered heavy in his throat. He swallowed it down and went to lock up for the night; but it wouldn’t swallow, and a minute later Wesley came out of the bathroom to find him sobbing helplessly against the end of the bookcase wall. Brian waited for Wesley to take him and try to soothe him out of it: but Wesley merely stood next to him and waited for the paroxysm to pass.
Presently Brian drew a long, hitching breath and straightened up to wipe his face. He met Wesley’s rueful smile, and searched for something to say to him.
Before he could find it, Wesley said: “No apologies. No explanations,” and Brian laughed as helplessly as he had wept.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Shall I accompany you to the opening of term tomorrow?” Wesley said, as Brian plied his handkerchief and folded it away.
“I would be delighted if you did.”
“Good. I’ll drive,” Wesley said, and Brian gave him a backhanded whap against the chest. Wesley grinned.
“Come to bed,” Brian said.
“Thought you’d never ask.”
They were falling asleep when Brian thought of what to say. He murmured into the darkness: “There’s nothing we really leave behind.”
“No,” Wesley murmured back. “But it’s all right.”