Mangolias and Shadows

The main characters in this story are Wesley and Dawn. It takes place after season 7 of Buffy and fucks with Angel timeline a bit. My first hetero pairing ever, so lets party.

Magnolias and Shadows
It had been the beginning of fall when Wesley Windom-Pryce had left Los Angelis, by the time it was summer again he was in New Orleans. Renting a tiny dirty apartment, hunting demons by night, sleeping most of the day, he had become accustom to being alone, working and living alone. So when he walked into the tiny bar, the only thing he was looking for was to get drunk. He ordered whiskey and positioned himself at a table with a copy of the Barthaus Chronicles he was translating from the original Medieval Latin, to stave off unwanted company. He was on his third glass of the night and well into the tomb, when a shadow fell across the table as someone blocked out what little light there was.
“That’s Latin right?”
The voice was young, sweat and sharp, and Wesley looked up in annoyance at the unwanted intrusion. Met dark brown eyes regarding him calmly. He eyed the owner of the stare up and down. Young, the girl in front of him couldn’t be more then eighteen if that, pretty with small sharp features, long brown hair, and large dark eyes. There weren’t many reasons Wes could think of for a girl her age to be in a bar like this one, yet she wasn’t dressed like a prostitute, in beat up jeans, a black t-shirt, combat boots, and black leather jacket. He’s mind said Slayer, but the girl didn’t carry herself like a Slayer, there was no trace of that physical power underneath her girlish appearance, to Wesley she just looked like a girl.
“Yes,” He answered her question “it is Latin”
“Cool”
The girl sat at Wes’s table bringing along a glass of amber liquid.
“I read Latin”
She smiled which made her look even younger. Wes eyed her glass.
“Are you old enough to be drinking that?”
The girl gave him a look, as if he’d said something incredibly stupid and Wesley wisely shut up. She downed a gulp of whiskey without flinching and reached across the table to take the book in front of Wesley.
“And thus Wargerath rose from the stinking pit, to devour the flesh of the innocent, every third year upon the day of the waxing harvest”
She read. Then raised her eyebrows at Wes.
“Pretty interesting stuff”
“I doubt you’d really find it so”
Wesley reclaimed his book and glared at her. She propped her chin on her first and looked at him.
“Oh I think I would. I do the translating for an old friend of mine who owns a bookshop here. We have lots of books you’d probably be interested in.”
She smiled and Wes watched intrigued as her face lit up radiantly, turning, this small girl into something almost unbearably beautiful.
“Besides” she continued casually “I know all about the occult and stuff”
He finished off his glass of whiskey stomped down hard on the feelings that were beginning to rise in him. The fact that she could translate so fast, faster then him, an archaic text, that she spoke of the occult, that she was here, dressed like that, with a smile like that. . . She was far too young, he reminded himself. Barely legal, nothing good could come of this, but then Wesley had never been a good man, not even in Los Angelis. Bitterness, like blood and ashes rose up in him, unchecked, and he turned wanting to lash out at this pretty little thing, in front of him, this unwanted mystery and intrusion into his space, his life, his mind.
“Oh, I am sure.” He told her scathingly “You know all about those candles and mumbo jumbo, you teenagers do with each other over the internet”
Fast, faster then he would imagine possible, she moved a knife gleaming in the light. Then Wesley was moving reacting without thinking and had slammed her up against the wall, his hand wrapped around her throat the other around the wrist holding the knife. He could feel her pulse under his fingers; her small body crushed against his the blood rushing to his head, pounding in his vanes. She smell of oranges, whiskey and smoke, she felt small, her body straight as a boys, but her hair was unbelievably soft falling against his hands. He could feel her breath against his face and knew he could kill her with a move of his hand. Incredible the girl in his grasp never even flinched instead she held the knife up for him to see.
“Does this look like teenage mumbo jumbo to you?”
He recognized the runes inscribed on the blade instantly and gasped; a dagger of Iriles was a very powerful weapon indeed. She twisted suddenly and kicked out. Wes let go of her and staggered back. She sheathed the knife and stowed it away in her jacket. Then reached into her pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
“That was pretty impressive the way you pinned me to the wall back there, why don’t you tell me your name so we can get off on the right foot this time?”
“Wesley”
Wesley pulled out his lighter and flicked it open; the girl gave him an unreadable look with unbelievably dark eyes. Her long fingers wrapped around Wes’s wrist guiding his lighter to her cigarette. A small shudder ran down Wes’s spine, her hand was small and pale compared to his, but her grip was hard and controlling on his wrist, he could see the ring of bruises earlier his grip had left on her wrist. Darkness crept into his soul and Wes fought it back, and replaced the lighter into his pocket. She inhaled smoke and smiled.
“I’m Dawn. Dawn Summers, but it doesn’t matter really”
Something flickered in the back of Wes’s mind, then Dawn put her hand on his hand smiled, and he decided he didn’t have to remember. He smiled back at her and knew this girl, would take what was left of his soul.