Rain 
 

 
Light spills on the table 
through glass 
surprised to find itself 
focused 
by water 
water cleans, heals, quenches 
raises life from dust. 
 
 
It's a strange time of year. Cairo never accepts rain, really, never draws out moisture from the air onto the streets, except on the rare occasions, except in moments on rooftops and deliciously hedonistic pieces of bliss; except when they're laid out watching it rush past to the Nile, as they curl into their couches, their pillows, their beds, their naked arms. Like today, which is washed-out, metal, wet and flimsy, skindamp and tingling, with the spread of humanity like this, happy and rushed and breathless, familial. 
 
The rain smells like pinecones, pine needles, crushed underfoot, like freshly turned garden soil under fingernails, Wesley thinks, as he walks into town. Cooking oils, thick and nutty, a taste like the faint film of icing sugar, rising from a sieve, in the air. Spices, sharp and clean and woody, like grinding nutmeg, and coffee-rich laughter, warm and sparking in the air, winding with the rain down the flat stones. Woodsmoke rises grey over it all, smoke and clattering streets; it is almost suppertime, the world gone a deep blue, the early night.  
 
Wes touches his fingertips to a window, and the film of damp bleeds away in slow little ovals, the water slides down his skin. He touches the window, breathes in, out, slow, and is able to ignore being jostled by women in jewel-colored, drifting clothes, hems weighted down with the wet, and children with too-bright eyes, running home late and finding small puddles to jump in on their way, and men ignoring it all. He realises that his breath has misted over the window, rubs the rest of the water away with the side of his fist; the man looking back at him is translucent, a dark ghost, breathless with all of this life, with his own money in his pocket and a worn shirt open to the wet. 
 
He buys biscuits, cinnamon bread, thick and dense and heavy, hanging from his fingers in a brown paper bag. He smiles all the way down the street, head back to the sky, water in his eyes and mouth, feeling the touch of the warm air, the rain, on his face, and keeping it all close (the childsilly giggle curled into his belly, like a sprig of bubbles, spinning). 
 
He buys something beautiful. He sees it in a shop window under the melting wash of the rain, and thinks, Hello, yes, yes, this. He's never been one for small things, pretty things - but he buys it, because it is so beautiful, and perfect, and he curls his fingers around it in his pocket, to make sure he hasn't lost a single grain of it, at all.  
 
When he returns, Spike is asleep in the curve of the couch, and Illyria is making coffee in the kitchen. The radio is on, tinny, beautiful; there is the scuttle of rain and pigeons on the windowsills, outside.  
 
"Christ!" Xander yells, from the bathroom. "Wes, if that's you, your tap just bit me!"  
 
He doesn't ask why it's suddenly his tap. 
 
"He's been swearing at it," Spike murmurs, not opening his eyes. 
 
Wesley hides the bag behind his back and leans over the arm of the couch. "Awake?" he asks; resists - just barely - how easy it is to touch Spike's hair. 
 
"Mm."  
 
"Really?" 
 
"Mm-hm." 
 
"Could make sure."  
 
"D'n't tease," Spike mumbles, and shrugs his shoulders up, a sleepy hunch, warm and lazy. 
 
"Wasn't," he says. He wasn't. He loves him, in every moment. 
 
"Mmph," says Spike, and is quiet again, sleep written in his skin.  
 
I wasn't, Wesley thinks. He folds his arms and rests his chin on his hands, and kneels; he kneels, and sighs. I've bought you something beautiful, he thinks, and he wants to break it open, there, shower the sleepy, pale face with reflected water and damp-heavy silk and spheres of light, give him whatever it is, that thing that smells like pine needles and nutmeg and home, that sounds like bells.  
 
And the rain whispers on, soft and lulling and real, against the shutters and windowpanes, making their house into a snow globe, caught in time.