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Angel/Spike all human AU crackfic idea part 2
Part 1
Angel/Spike all human AU crackfic idea part 2
The insurrectionists’, AKA the Resistance’s, Base is in a skeevy place on the wrong side of the tracks. Most of the insurrectionists are day laborers. James works a fourteen hour day hard labor; his wife Elizabeth works at a factory job just as long. William’s sure some of the women must be whores. He’s a little terrified and repulsed by this, but resolves that it’s not their fault and he should treat all women equally.
William suspects there are other bases, with other branches full of insurrectionists. Sometimes people William doesn’t know come in and report various rebellious activities. At the Base people are often sparring to improve fighting skills, working on making weapons, and poring over blueprints. Once or twice they’ve brought the violence to the Base. The time William saw them beat up a police authority, he was sickened and shocked. But then he realized some suffering was necessary, and it wouldn’t all be theirs.
For a few of them the Resistance seems to be a full time job. Darla, Liam, and Drusilla appear to live at the Base. William still spends most the days and nights with his mother living his normal life. But during those times he is composing insurrectionists pamphlets and the like, and in the late evenings, he goes to the Base. He returns to his mother’s house in the wee hours. Drusilla often walks with him to and fro.
He learns that Drusilla was saved by Liam. William is grateful to Liam for saving her and looking after her. He knows Drusilla will always have a place in her heart for Liam, but also knows Liam and Darla are an item.
Although Drusilla is crazy, she seems to understand—unlike other in the Resistance—that William is fighting for something more intangible than bread and money. She makes William feel noble, like someone with a higher calling, like someone whom a higher power has graced. Someone who has a destiny.
William resolves to take care of her, to be her knight. Her bad treatment in the past is a symbol of what he is fighting against. William sees Dru as very pure, because she has suffered and survived. She claims she is soiled. He wants to prove to her she’s pure; he tries to honor her by refusing to touch her. He wants to marry her, to show her that their union would be sacred.
She thinks he’s a little touched in the head, and kind of adorable. He thinks she thinks that because she thinks she’s soiled, and William resolves to wait, to show her she is worthy of restraint. Her hand brushing his as they walk is thrilling to him.
And then there is Liam.
When William first sees Liam Liam is sparring with another insurrectionist shirtless (I told you this was crack). William is a little overwhelmed by Liam’s body; Liam is large and muscular. There’s a large black picture on one of his shoulders; William has been taught that tattoos are unhygienic and déclassé. On the one hand William admires the brute strength of Liam, but on the other is also disgusted by that grossness. It imposes itself on one’s senses, William feels, a sort of mindless glory, uncouth and sensational.
But in that moment of fascination with Liam’s body, William conceives the notion of Liam as the Ideal Workingman. This is the everyman, William realizes. Liam is the kind of man—unlearned and probably not that bright, but physically strong and brutally powerful—that makes William’s and his peers' lives possible. Liam’s back—that scarred, vulgarly broad back, with the horrid black brand burned into it—is the back upon which this nation was built, the back upon which the feet of the rich and intellectual trod.
William sees the beauty in this man’s body. He feels that emotion is elevated, the fact that he is able to see the beauty in this rough, uncivilized thing. But that is only part of it; William is also feeling something very base: reflexive admiration and desire for that rawness, and jealousy, because a part of him would very much like to be a man in this way and knows he never will be.
But seeing that beauty reinforces William’s ideals: he feels that in being fundamentally ignorant, but physically strong, Liam is pure (as Dru is, but in a different way). Of course Liam is untouched by politics and philosophy, William thinks in that moment. Of course politics and philosophy are not what Liam is fighting for. He is fighting out of simplicity, and in doing so, is fighting for simplicity. For the simple freedom to live this unfettered, unsheltered, uncomplicated life. William wishes to fight for the right for that beauty to exist, in William’s very academic, remote way.
Although William does not learn that much more of Liam’s past for a long time (Liam won’t talk about it), he hears from others in the Resistance that the mark on Liam’s back is not a tattoo but a brand.
He had been owned, once upon a time.
Liam (eventually putting on a shirt, thereby allowing William to at last think of something besides the way those muscles slide across each other) meets William. Rather quickly, Liam learns of William’s poetic politic efforts and expresses interest. Remember, I said William stands out like a sore thumb amongst the Resistance. They think since he lives a relatively comfortable life, he doesn’t need to fight the status quo. They don’t understand his ideals or why anyone should care. The others make fun of William’s class and idealism and poetry. But Liam seems to want to hear all about them, and doesn’t seem to notice William’s glasses.
Liam doesn’t understand his political pamphlets, William thinks. In fact, there are others—especially Darla—who seem to have a much better idea of the ideas expressed. Darla seems to know exactly what William’s ideals are, and exactly why he holds them. If she took the time to bother, she could tear him apart more thoroughly than the political clubs William used to frequent ever could, because she is not one of William’s peers with the same starting material as William. She has a more objective opinion, and in fact seems sharper than so many intellectuals William has known, because she’s eminently practical. She also thinks William’s writing is terrible, and tells Liam so.
But Liam thinks it’s beautiful. He thinks William is wonderfully clever and talented. Liam knows that the Resistance is sort of a knee-jerk reactionary group, a bunch of lower class unhappy with their lot and so lashing out at those in power. As William understands it, Liam knows they’re mostly rabble, but at the same time Liam believes they could have a higher purpose. He believes they could fight for something right and just and true. He believes in William.
In this way William feels like an older brother to Liam. He knows Liam looks up to his intelligence and ideals. And William begins to have a new vision of the Ideal Workingman. He’s not a brute who needs the intellectuals to save him. The everyman, too, dreams of a higher order. It’s not something he can comprehend or reach, but he knows it’s there, and he’s striving for it too. He lives in a world of shadows, but understands (unlike Plato’s cave) that there is light. And William thinks he can enlighten him.
So these are some of William’s changing perceptions of Liam, but they change in other, less conscious ways, too. Because all this time Liam is admiring and seeming interested in William’s poetry, he is also treating William like a man. The others not only don’t understand and don’t care about William’s ideas and philosophies, they also see him as someone with which they cannot associate. Someone not in their class, someone who can’t be “one of the guys”.
William puts his glasses in his inner pocket when he is on the Base, except when he has to read. Somehow this doesn’t seem to make a difference.
But Liam doesn’t notice—not the glasses and not William’s displacement. It’s the first time for William that he’s shared comraderie with another man, that another man has treated him equally as just another man that does manly things, another man who will want to pal around and drink and smoke and fight. Even before joining the Resistance, the few friends William has had in the past connected with him on an intellectual level. They went to clubs to discuss politics and philosophy, but they never asked him out just to shoot the breeze, to join in their sports or to go out with women.
They’d always treated him as a mind and not a body, as something fragile, a momma’s boy. Perhaps he had been. He’d never been interested in sports, or in the cheap liaisons with unclean and loose women he knew some of his friends enjoyed. But he was a man, after all, and Liam made him realize how nice it was to be treated like one, just one of the guys.
William realizes he is fighting for this, too, this easy comraderie. The right for men to bond, to go out for some drinks, to make eyes at and discuss women (though William never does), to have their fun without philosophy or politics interfering.
At first William thinks Liam is open with him in this way because Liam isn’t observant and doesn’t see that William doesn’t fit in. Liam invites William to spar with him, and William thinks Liam can have no idea of the kind of life William has led. Maybe Liam really is that ignorant, has no idea that not everyone lives by the strength of their body, that there are those richer and smarter than Liam who live by the fruits of Liam’s labor.
Liam has already taken off his shirt again. William is still startled and offended and fascinated by the sight of Liam’s broad muscles, the obscenely large biceps, the horrendous etching on the too-large deltoid. He’s discomfited, and bewildered by Liam’s obliviousness. At the same time, he’s flattered. This virile man wants to spar with him and seems to think he can. Liam pulled William onto the practice mats; his big hand wrapped around William’s wrist; Liam was disrespectful of him, violent with him, free with him; Liam touched him. Just like men do, when they’re horsing around.
Liam laughs at William’s hesitance. Liam laughs at William a lot, which is interesting, considering William has this idea of himself as teacher, with Liam as his protégé. Liam even taunts William—and even this pleases William, the slightest bit. Men taunt each other, and hurl insults. They don’t worry about each others’ feelings; they fight and slap each other on the back. No one has ever treated William this way.
“Don’t be a pussy,” Liam tells him.
William takes off his glasses and his waistcoat and his cravat. He leaves on his shirt.
Liam thrashes him soundly.
“Good,” Liam tells William. “Now again. This time, widen your stance. And don’t flap your arms like a wee lass, for fuck’s sake.” (He totally speaks David Boreanaz’s bad brogue.)
Liam thrashes him several times, all the while offering advice. Afterwards the sweat is soaked through William’s white linen shirt, plastering it to his body. Even Liam has sweat on that too-big brow. All of him is comically large, William thinks in contentment. He tells Liam this. “I suppose it gives you pleasure,” William says, “trouncing those smaller than you, with that great hulking thing you call a body.”
Liam laughs lowly, and punches him in the arm. “I only get off trashing you.”
“I humbly submit to supplying your few thrills in life.” William smiles, feeling for once at peace with the world. This is what men do; they sweat and fight and insult each other. Then they go to their women.
William is totally a Liam/Darla shipper. Liam and Darla fight a lot. Darla is frequently absent, and William suspects Darla is unfaithful. At first William thinks Liam doesn’t suspects, that Liam is too much of an innocent to know. Then William realizes Liam not only suspects; Liam knows more than he does. Thus their fights.
William saw them fight, once. It wasn’t just yelling and screaming. Liam hit her, and in that moment, several of William’s innocent assumptions fell apart: the idea of Liam as this noble savage, as this ignorant but perfectly honorable halfwit. William had never seen a woman struck before, and even in his wild imaginings, he hadn’t thought how horrible it would be, how ghastly.
But then Darla gave back as good as she got. Somehow—despite her tinyness, despite her grace, the way she seemed to hold herself above the low violence of the Resistance and even Liam’s vile physicality—she has Liam on the floor in three seconds flat. She has her knee on his chest, and William can see her petticoat, and he’s never seen a woman’s petticoat before, except once when his ailing mother fell. But Darla hadn’t fallen.
Darla undoubtedly won that fight, and William doesn’t know quite what to think. He wants to condemn Liam for daring to lay a hand on a woman, but finds he cannot. This is why Darla and Liam work; this is how they fit together. They are both low, both coarse and uncouth. They are both iron-willed and uncompromising—fine, hard, true metal that shines bright under fire. They are made for each other.
Of course they are nothing like Drusilla and her William. William would never hurt Dru in that way; he is her protector, her white knight. And Drusilla is far too fragile, too broken, to be his equal in such a way. Dru makes up for it by exceeding him in her beauty, her purity. Her starry eyes and the visions with which she speaks far exceed his feeble poetry. William and Drusilla match each other in other ways, William thinks. They were made for each other too; one day they will be a holy union.
William sometimes imagines Liam and Darla in bed.
He knows it’s wrong to have sexual relations out of wedlock (er, these would be William's Victorian Fool For Love beliefs at work). William would never do so with Drusilla, but he is of two minds regarding Liam and Darla. On the one hand, they are low creatures, and don’t abide by society’s laws. On the other hand, they are so strong, powerful—they flaunt convention, they are above society, no law applies to them. William holds both these convictions without sensing the contradiction in them; he looks down on them and up at them at the same time.
He wonders if they are as loud in bed as they are arguing across the Base.
Liam invites William again to spar, and William sees that Liam wasn’t blind to the fact that William was different, had never done such a thing before, was weak. Liam is just that way with everyone.
That is why the Resistance follows him, William realizes. Liam treats everyone equally. Everyone is his friend. He fights, he spits, he drinks, he pals around with everyone. He flirts with all the women equally. He flirts with Darla just as much and no more than with the next woman, though Darla has a power over him no other women do. William would not have allowed Liam to flirt with Drusilla, but that he knows Liam thinks of her as a sister. He saved her and respects her, and flirting is his rough, ignorant way of showing her he thinks no less of her.
That’s how Liam leads this Resistance. He puts everyone on a level, and makes everyone feel like a part of something. He is the everyman after all, William realizes, but it’s more than just a mindless brute strength. It’s the ability to make everyone the every man with you.
And the Resistance does follow him. They follow him and Darla, but Darla is more wily; she puts her hands in behind the scenes. William has a suspicion Darla tells Liam what to do, and more than half the time Liam does it, but she never attempts to command anyone else. Liam doesn’t attempt to command either, but he does. The Resistance parts in his wake. When Liam talks wine and women, the Resistance talks wine and women. When Liam talks seriousness and insurrection, the rest of the people, they fight.
William observes all this with detached intellectualism. He does not feel a part of it, but finds it interesting to observe the flock mentality. This is, of course, why the upper classes and those in power mock the people, and also fear them: that they would so heedlessly follow someone they admire for brawn rather than brains. They follow because they love to drink and party with him and listen to his bawdy stories. They want to follow someone just like them, not a genius, not even someone especially bright, just someone exceptionally likeable.
But there’s a part of Liam that is above all this, the part that longs for William’s intellectual enlightenment. Liam comes alone to talk to William about William’s revolutionary ideas, William’s political passion, William’s poetry in pamphlets.
At first William thinks it’s because Liam doesn’t think it’s important enough to discuss in front of everyone. Then he thinks Liam is embarrassed. But more and more, William thinks it’s because he’s special, because Liam sees him as even more than just “one of the guys”. They have things in common the others don’t. Liam recognizes that in William which is above the rest of them.
It is in this way William is Liam’s follower just as much as anyone else, and William doesn’t even realize it. William sees himself as that teacher, to Liam’s protégé. He is the older, wiser counsel, with Liam as the wide-eyed, innocent pupil. He’s the big brother.
But William spends more and more of his time at the Base wanting to be with Liam. To be with him when there are all those others hanging off “the leader’s” every word, when William is the one who leads the leader, the one with the special relationship with this man everyone admires. William likes to look around those others who are so happy just to be included in Liam’s social circle, and know that he knows a side of Liam these others can’t see. A side in which William is the superior, and Liam the willing supplicant. A side Liam admires, though they mock it. A side only Liam understands.
William is proud that this strong, uncompromising man looks up to him. Liam’s faced a thousand hardships, if the brand on his back is any proof. He’s seen more of the world than William can imagine. Although at twenty-one he’s a full seven years younger than William, Liam is wiser in experience. And yet he looks up to William. He knows William is not an innocent, that his ideas are not mere naiveté. And William thrills with pride over this. Because of this, William would unknowingly follow Liam anywhere. He would be the younger brother.
William still likes the way Liam treats him like a man, too. He likes sparring with Liam. He thought before that Liam didn’t know he didn’t know how to fight. Then he thought Liam was just that way with everyone. Now he realizes that Liam is singling him out. William is special to Liam. William is the sensitive type, yes, but Liam sees that doesn’t make him less of a man. In fact, Liam admires that in William, sees it as a strength. He sees William’s words and ideals as a strength, and wants to see that strength in William’s body.
William spends most of his time at Base talking with Liam, sharing his poetry and ideals, and sparring. Then he walks home in the early morning gray with Drusilla. His life, he feels, is very nearly perfect. Here is this strong, virile man who is—yes, his friend, to whom William can bring light, while being respected as a man. And then he has this woman he worships, who is pure and good and with whom he can be gentle and sensitive, and she will find that strong and manly, too.
Around this time, the Resistance begins planning and executing raids on State facilities. At first William doesn’t know about it, though he is at Base practically every night. When he does find out, he’s hurt that he wasn’t in on it. He thought he and Liam were close.
James and Elizabeth are in on the raids. Even that guy Penn gets to play a part, and he scoffed at William’s uselessness even more than the others were prone to do. The others weren’t prone to; Liam wouldn’t let them.
“Penn used to be Liam’s favorite pet,” Darla told William, in a rare bout of sharing. “Before you.”
“Jealousy will drive you mad,” Drusilla told him later.
William wondered if Penn was jealous because he was close with Liam. If he was close with Liam, he should get to participate in the raids.
“You will,” Liam told him. “We need you for a special project.”
The special project is to write pamphlets that will be distributed so that the public will know why these attacks are coming. William is strangely disappointed. He wanted to do something active.
Liam tells him this is the most important part. Without the pamphlets, this would just be mindless violence. “Before you,” Liam says, “it would have been. We didn’t know our Cause. Where we stood. We were just senseless brawlers. We weren’t trying to make a difference.” So basically, Liam convinces William his writing is the most important thing ever.
It’s around that time, too, that William begins to see Liam isn’t ignorant at all.
Oh, he’s ignorant of William’s ideas, that’s true enough. He doesn’t know the sesquipedalian words William uses, and isn’t familiar with classic or current philosophy or political jargon. He doesn’t know anything about classic literature and is a downright blank slate when it comes to poetry.
But he knows strategy. He knows how to anticipate an opponent’s moves. He knows how to acquire, distribute and efficiently make use of resources. He knows how to command, and how to read a man when he is wavering.
William knows none of these things. He prides himself on his intelligence, but watching Liam plan these stunts, William realizes he knows nothing that is actually useful. He does not have this calculating kind of brain. He was made for dreaming.
Liam must have sensed even this, because he says, “You’re the mind behind this. The reason we’re finally able to move forward. No more petty crimes. No more selfish concerns. We need your dreams, William. I need them. Without them, without you, I’m nothing.”
By now William’s idea of Liam as the everyman, the Ideal Workingman, the ignorant brute—all were shattered. Liam was the reason revolutions happened. He was the brains behind all of it. William was merely—inspiration.
But that is not small task, William realizes. There does need to be a reasoning behind the rabble, or else Liam was right, it was all just senseless violence. There needs to be a voice behind the movement, a mouthpiece that speaks to the people and brings them over to the Cause. Liam needs him; he is the essential half of the team. No wonder Liam won’t risk him in a fight. He’s too important.
So William works furiously on his pamphlets. It doesn’t make him any less jealous of anyone else who gets to spend that extra time with Liam. He’s even jealous of Penn. But Penn is undoubtedly jealous of him.
TBC
Angel/Spike all human AU crackfic idea part 2
The insurrectionists’, AKA the Resistance’s, Base is in a skeevy place on the wrong side of the tracks. Most of the insurrectionists are day laborers. James works a fourteen hour day hard labor; his wife Elizabeth works at a factory job just as long. William’s sure some of the women must be whores. He’s a little terrified and repulsed by this, but resolves that it’s not their fault and he should treat all women equally.
William suspects there are other bases, with other branches full of insurrectionists. Sometimes people William doesn’t know come in and report various rebellious activities. At the Base people are often sparring to improve fighting skills, working on making weapons, and poring over blueprints. Once or twice they’ve brought the violence to the Base. The time William saw them beat up a police authority, he was sickened and shocked. But then he realized some suffering was necessary, and it wouldn’t all be theirs.
For a few of them the Resistance seems to be a full time job. Darla, Liam, and Drusilla appear to live at the Base. William still spends most the days and nights with his mother living his normal life. But during those times he is composing insurrectionists pamphlets and the like, and in the late evenings, he goes to the Base. He returns to his mother’s house in the wee hours. Drusilla often walks with him to and fro.
He learns that Drusilla was saved by Liam. William is grateful to Liam for saving her and looking after her. He knows Drusilla will always have a place in her heart for Liam, but also knows Liam and Darla are an item.
Although Drusilla is crazy, she seems to understand—unlike other in the Resistance—that William is fighting for something more intangible than bread and money. She makes William feel noble, like someone with a higher calling, like someone whom a higher power has graced. Someone who has a destiny.
William resolves to take care of her, to be her knight. Her bad treatment in the past is a symbol of what he is fighting against. William sees Dru as very pure, because she has suffered and survived. She claims she is soiled. He wants to prove to her she’s pure; he tries to honor her by refusing to touch her. He wants to marry her, to show her that their union would be sacred.
She thinks he’s a little touched in the head, and kind of adorable. He thinks she thinks that because she thinks she’s soiled, and William resolves to wait, to show her she is worthy of restraint. Her hand brushing his as they walk is thrilling to him.
And then there is Liam.
When William first sees Liam Liam is sparring with another insurrectionist shirtless (I told you this was crack). William is a little overwhelmed by Liam’s body; Liam is large and muscular. There’s a large black picture on one of his shoulders; William has been taught that tattoos are unhygienic and déclassé. On the one hand William admires the brute strength of Liam, but on the other is also disgusted by that grossness. It imposes itself on one’s senses, William feels, a sort of mindless glory, uncouth and sensational.
But in that moment of fascination with Liam’s body, William conceives the notion of Liam as the Ideal Workingman. This is the everyman, William realizes. Liam is the kind of man—unlearned and probably not that bright, but physically strong and brutally powerful—that makes William’s and his peers' lives possible. Liam’s back—that scarred, vulgarly broad back, with the horrid black brand burned into it—is the back upon which this nation was built, the back upon which the feet of the rich and intellectual trod.
William sees the beauty in this man’s body. He feels that emotion is elevated, the fact that he is able to see the beauty in this rough, uncivilized thing. But that is only part of it; William is also feeling something very base: reflexive admiration and desire for that rawness, and jealousy, because a part of him would very much like to be a man in this way and knows he never will be.
But seeing that beauty reinforces William’s ideals: he feels that in being fundamentally ignorant, but physically strong, Liam is pure (as Dru is, but in a different way). Of course Liam is untouched by politics and philosophy, William thinks in that moment. Of course politics and philosophy are not what Liam is fighting for. He is fighting out of simplicity, and in doing so, is fighting for simplicity. For the simple freedom to live this unfettered, unsheltered, uncomplicated life. William wishes to fight for the right for that beauty to exist, in William’s very academic, remote way.
Although William does not learn that much more of Liam’s past for a long time (Liam won’t talk about it), he hears from others in the Resistance that the mark on Liam’s back is not a tattoo but a brand.
He had been owned, once upon a time.
Liam (eventually putting on a shirt, thereby allowing William to at last think of something besides the way those muscles slide across each other) meets William. Rather quickly, Liam learns of William’s poetic politic efforts and expresses interest. Remember, I said William stands out like a sore thumb amongst the Resistance. They think since he lives a relatively comfortable life, he doesn’t need to fight the status quo. They don’t understand his ideals or why anyone should care. The others make fun of William’s class and idealism and poetry. But Liam seems to want to hear all about them, and doesn’t seem to notice William’s glasses.
Liam doesn’t understand his political pamphlets, William thinks. In fact, there are others—especially Darla—who seem to have a much better idea of the ideas expressed. Darla seems to know exactly what William’s ideals are, and exactly why he holds them. If she took the time to bother, she could tear him apart more thoroughly than the political clubs William used to frequent ever could, because she is not one of William’s peers with the same starting material as William. She has a more objective opinion, and in fact seems sharper than so many intellectuals William has known, because she’s eminently practical. She also thinks William’s writing is terrible, and tells Liam so.
But Liam thinks it’s beautiful. He thinks William is wonderfully clever and talented. Liam knows that the Resistance is sort of a knee-jerk reactionary group, a bunch of lower class unhappy with their lot and so lashing out at those in power. As William understands it, Liam knows they’re mostly rabble, but at the same time Liam believes they could have a higher purpose. He believes they could fight for something right and just and true. He believes in William.
In this way William feels like an older brother to Liam. He knows Liam looks up to his intelligence and ideals. And William begins to have a new vision of the Ideal Workingman. He’s not a brute who needs the intellectuals to save him. The everyman, too, dreams of a higher order. It’s not something he can comprehend or reach, but he knows it’s there, and he’s striving for it too. He lives in a world of shadows, but understands (unlike Plato’s cave) that there is light. And William thinks he can enlighten him.
So these are some of William’s changing perceptions of Liam, but they change in other, less conscious ways, too. Because all this time Liam is admiring and seeming interested in William’s poetry, he is also treating William like a man. The others not only don’t understand and don’t care about William’s ideas and philosophies, they also see him as someone with which they cannot associate. Someone not in their class, someone who can’t be “one of the guys”.
William puts his glasses in his inner pocket when he is on the Base, except when he has to read. Somehow this doesn’t seem to make a difference.
But Liam doesn’t notice—not the glasses and not William’s displacement. It’s the first time for William that he’s shared comraderie with another man, that another man has treated him equally as just another man that does manly things, another man who will want to pal around and drink and smoke and fight. Even before joining the Resistance, the few friends William has had in the past connected with him on an intellectual level. They went to clubs to discuss politics and philosophy, but they never asked him out just to shoot the breeze, to join in their sports or to go out with women.
They’d always treated him as a mind and not a body, as something fragile, a momma’s boy. Perhaps he had been. He’d never been interested in sports, or in the cheap liaisons with unclean and loose women he knew some of his friends enjoyed. But he was a man, after all, and Liam made him realize how nice it was to be treated like one, just one of the guys.
William realizes he is fighting for this, too, this easy comraderie. The right for men to bond, to go out for some drinks, to make eyes at and discuss women (though William never does), to have their fun without philosophy or politics interfering.
At first William thinks Liam is open with him in this way because Liam isn’t observant and doesn’t see that William doesn’t fit in. Liam invites William to spar with him, and William thinks Liam can have no idea of the kind of life William has led. Maybe Liam really is that ignorant, has no idea that not everyone lives by the strength of their body, that there are those richer and smarter than Liam who live by the fruits of Liam’s labor.
Liam has already taken off his shirt again. William is still startled and offended and fascinated by the sight of Liam’s broad muscles, the obscenely large biceps, the horrendous etching on the too-large deltoid. He’s discomfited, and bewildered by Liam’s obliviousness. At the same time, he’s flattered. This virile man wants to spar with him and seems to think he can. Liam pulled William onto the practice mats; his big hand wrapped around William’s wrist; Liam was disrespectful of him, violent with him, free with him; Liam touched him. Just like men do, when they’re horsing around.
Liam laughs at William’s hesitance. Liam laughs at William a lot, which is interesting, considering William has this idea of himself as teacher, with Liam as his protégé. Liam even taunts William—and even this pleases William, the slightest bit. Men taunt each other, and hurl insults. They don’t worry about each others’ feelings; they fight and slap each other on the back. No one has ever treated William this way.
“Don’t be a pussy,” Liam tells him.
William takes off his glasses and his waistcoat and his cravat. He leaves on his shirt.
Liam thrashes him soundly.
“Good,” Liam tells William. “Now again. This time, widen your stance. And don’t flap your arms like a wee lass, for fuck’s sake.” (He totally speaks David Boreanaz’s bad brogue.)
Liam thrashes him several times, all the while offering advice. Afterwards the sweat is soaked through William’s white linen shirt, plastering it to his body. Even Liam has sweat on that too-big brow. All of him is comically large, William thinks in contentment. He tells Liam this. “I suppose it gives you pleasure,” William says, “trouncing those smaller than you, with that great hulking thing you call a body.”
Liam laughs lowly, and punches him in the arm. “I only get off trashing you.”
“I humbly submit to supplying your few thrills in life.” William smiles, feeling for once at peace with the world. This is what men do; they sweat and fight and insult each other. Then they go to their women.
William is totally a Liam/Darla shipper. Liam and Darla fight a lot. Darla is frequently absent, and William suspects Darla is unfaithful. At first William thinks Liam doesn’t suspects, that Liam is too much of an innocent to know. Then William realizes Liam not only suspects; Liam knows more than he does. Thus their fights.
William saw them fight, once. It wasn’t just yelling and screaming. Liam hit her, and in that moment, several of William’s innocent assumptions fell apart: the idea of Liam as this noble savage, as this ignorant but perfectly honorable halfwit. William had never seen a woman struck before, and even in his wild imaginings, he hadn’t thought how horrible it would be, how ghastly.
But then Darla gave back as good as she got. Somehow—despite her tinyness, despite her grace, the way she seemed to hold herself above the low violence of the Resistance and even Liam’s vile physicality—she has Liam on the floor in three seconds flat. She has her knee on his chest, and William can see her petticoat, and he’s never seen a woman’s petticoat before, except once when his ailing mother fell. But Darla hadn’t fallen.
Darla undoubtedly won that fight, and William doesn’t know quite what to think. He wants to condemn Liam for daring to lay a hand on a woman, but finds he cannot. This is why Darla and Liam work; this is how they fit together. They are both low, both coarse and uncouth. They are both iron-willed and uncompromising—fine, hard, true metal that shines bright under fire. They are made for each other.
Of course they are nothing like Drusilla and her William. William would never hurt Dru in that way; he is her protector, her white knight. And Drusilla is far too fragile, too broken, to be his equal in such a way. Dru makes up for it by exceeding him in her beauty, her purity. Her starry eyes and the visions with which she speaks far exceed his feeble poetry. William and Drusilla match each other in other ways, William thinks. They were made for each other too; one day they will be a holy union.
William sometimes imagines Liam and Darla in bed.
He knows it’s wrong to have sexual relations out of wedlock (er, these would be William's Victorian Fool For Love beliefs at work). William would never do so with Drusilla, but he is of two minds regarding Liam and Darla. On the one hand, they are low creatures, and don’t abide by society’s laws. On the other hand, they are so strong, powerful—they flaunt convention, they are above society, no law applies to them. William holds both these convictions without sensing the contradiction in them; he looks down on them and up at them at the same time.
He wonders if they are as loud in bed as they are arguing across the Base.
Liam invites William again to spar, and William sees that Liam wasn’t blind to the fact that William was different, had never done such a thing before, was weak. Liam is just that way with everyone.
That is why the Resistance follows him, William realizes. Liam treats everyone equally. Everyone is his friend. He fights, he spits, he drinks, he pals around with everyone. He flirts with all the women equally. He flirts with Darla just as much and no more than with the next woman, though Darla has a power over him no other women do. William would not have allowed Liam to flirt with Drusilla, but that he knows Liam thinks of her as a sister. He saved her and respects her, and flirting is his rough, ignorant way of showing her he thinks no less of her.
That’s how Liam leads this Resistance. He puts everyone on a level, and makes everyone feel like a part of something. He is the everyman after all, William realizes, but it’s more than just a mindless brute strength. It’s the ability to make everyone the every man with you.
And the Resistance does follow him. They follow him and Darla, but Darla is more wily; she puts her hands in behind the scenes. William has a suspicion Darla tells Liam what to do, and more than half the time Liam does it, but she never attempts to command anyone else. Liam doesn’t attempt to command either, but he does. The Resistance parts in his wake. When Liam talks wine and women, the Resistance talks wine and women. When Liam talks seriousness and insurrection, the rest of the people, they fight.
William observes all this with detached intellectualism. He does not feel a part of it, but finds it interesting to observe the flock mentality. This is, of course, why the upper classes and those in power mock the people, and also fear them: that they would so heedlessly follow someone they admire for brawn rather than brains. They follow because they love to drink and party with him and listen to his bawdy stories. They want to follow someone just like them, not a genius, not even someone especially bright, just someone exceptionally likeable.
But there’s a part of Liam that is above all this, the part that longs for William’s intellectual enlightenment. Liam comes alone to talk to William about William’s revolutionary ideas, William’s political passion, William’s poetry in pamphlets.
At first William thinks it’s because Liam doesn’t think it’s important enough to discuss in front of everyone. Then he thinks Liam is embarrassed. But more and more, William thinks it’s because he’s special, because Liam sees him as even more than just “one of the guys”. They have things in common the others don’t. Liam recognizes that in William which is above the rest of them.
It is in this way William is Liam’s follower just as much as anyone else, and William doesn’t even realize it. William sees himself as that teacher, to Liam’s protégé. He is the older, wiser counsel, with Liam as the wide-eyed, innocent pupil. He’s the big brother.
But William spends more and more of his time at the Base wanting to be with Liam. To be with him when there are all those others hanging off “the leader’s” every word, when William is the one who leads the leader, the one with the special relationship with this man everyone admires. William likes to look around those others who are so happy just to be included in Liam’s social circle, and know that he knows a side of Liam these others can’t see. A side in which William is the superior, and Liam the willing supplicant. A side Liam admires, though they mock it. A side only Liam understands.
William is proud that this strong, uncompromising man looks up to him. Liam’s faced a thousand hardships, if the brand on his back is any proof. He’s seen more of the world than William can imagine. Although at twenty-one he’s a full seven years younger than William, Liam is wiser in experience. And yet he looks up to William. He knows William is not an innocent, that his ideas are not mere naiveté. And William thrills with pride over this. Because of this, William would unknowingly follow Liam anywhere. He would be the younger brother.
William still likes the way Liam treats him like a man, too. He likes sparring with Liam. He thought before that Liam didn’t know he didn’t know how to fight. Then he thought Liam was just that way with everyone. Now he realizes that Liam is singling him out. William is special to Liam. William is the sensitive type, yes, but Liam sees that doesn’t make him less of a man. In fact, Liam admires that in William, sees it as a strength. He sees William’s words and ideals as a strength, and wants to see that strength in William’s body.
William spends most of his time at Base talking with Liam, sharing his poetry and ideals, and sparring. Then he walks home in the early morning gray with Drusilla. His life, he feels, is very nearly perfect. Here is this strong, virile man who is—yes, his friend, to whom William can bring light, while being respected as a man. And then he has this woman he worships, who is pure and good and with whom he can be gentle and sensitive, and she will find that strong and manly, too.
Around this time, the Resistance begins planning and executing raids on State facilities. At first William doesn’t know about it, though he is at Base practically every night. When he does find out, he’s hurt that he wasn’t in on it. He thought he and Liam were close.
James and Elizabeth are in on the raids. Even that guy Penn gets to play a part, and he scoffed at William’s uselessness even more than the others were prone to do. The others weren’t prone to; Liam wouldn’t let them.
“Penn used to be Liam’s favorite pet,” Darla told William, in a rare bout of sharing. “Before you.”
“Jealousy will drive you mad,” Drusilla told him later.
William wondered if Penn was jealous because he was close with Liam. If he was close with Liam, he should get to participate in the raids.
“You will,” Liam told him. “We need you for a special project.”
The special project is to write pamphlets that will be distributed so that the public will know why these attacks are coming. William is strangely disappointed. He wanted to do something active.
Liam tells him this is the most important part. Without the pamphlets, this would just be mindless violence. “Before you,” Liam says, “it would have been. We didn’t know our Cause. Where we stood. We were just senseless brawlers. We weren’t trying to make a difference.” So basically, Liam convinces William his writing is the most important thing ever.
It’s around that time, too, that William begins to see Liam isn’t ignorant at all.
Oh, he’s ignorant of William’s ideas, that’s true enough. He doesn’t know the sesquipedalian words William uses, and isn’t familiar with classic or current philosophy or political jargon. He doesn’t know anything about classic literature and is a downright blank slate when it comes to poetry.
But he knows strategy. He knows how to anticipate an opponent’s moves. He knows how to acquire, distribute and efficiently make use of resources. He knows how to command, and how to read a man when he is wavering.
William knows none of these things. He prides himself on his intelligence, but watching Liam plan these stunts, William realizes he knows nothing that is actually useful. He does not have this calculating kind of brain. He was made for dreaming.
Liam must have sensed even this, because he says, “You’re the mind behind this. The reason we’re finally able to move forward. No more petty crimes. No more selfish concerns. We need your dreams, William. I need them. Without them, without you, I’m nothing.”
By now William’s idea of Liam as the everyman, the Ideal Workingman, the ignorant brute—all were shattered. Liam was the reason revolutions happened. He was the brains behind all of it. William was merely—inspiration.
But that is not small task, William realizes. There does need to be a reasoning behind the rabble, or else Liam was right, it was all just senseless violence. There needs to be a voice behind the movement, a mouthpiece that speaks to the people and brings them over to the Cause. Liam needs him; he is the essential half of the team. No wonder Liam won’t risk him in a fight. He’s too important.
So William works furiously on his pamphlets. It doesn’t make him any less jealous of anyone else who gets to spend that extra time with Liam. He’s even jealous of Penn. But Penn is undoubtedly jealous of him.
TBC