Strategy Part Sixteen, Epilogue
Sep. 7th, 2003 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenBet you thought I forgot about this, huh? You can't say mild cases of dehydration don't have their side benefits. Such as free time to write.
PART SIXTEEN - EPILOGUE
Moving a household, when you haven't blown up the last one, takes time. Effort. Wes manages all the details. All Angel has to do is show up at the right times and give approving looks.
There's things to do. Servants, which Wes takes care of. People who come, clean, stay the hell out of sight. Angel wondered if Wes would be uncomfortable with this lord-of-the-mannering but it turns out that it's water to Wes's duck. They try to come when Wes isn't home, and when he is they know to get out of his way.
There's decorating. Wes bypasses everything Angel would have thought he liked and instead goes Eastern. Zen, including a garden in their side courtyard with volcano rocks, koi ponds and fountains. Very little of the West makes it into the house and for a time Angel wonders if he should store some of his own favorite things, but Wes tells him it's *their* house and Angel can do what he likes. So Angel scatters some of his stuff about, it doesn't freak Wes, and they eventually find a comfortable clash of the cultures to live in.
Sometime during all this Wes goes back to work. Heads into the office wearing Ralph Lauren dressy casuals. Makes himself known, gets into the swing of things.
On the side he's got physical therapy. The office and the house both have gyms. Wes pounds away at the equipment, building up his strength, learning to walk unaided again.
Outwardly, he seems fine.
It's only at home, with Angel, that Wes drops the act. Angel's amazed that Wes even bothers, but then he realizes that Wes doesn't have a choice. It's the only way he *can* keep up appearances out in the real world. Wes turns into his own picture of Dorian Gray - a shadowy version of himself that gets worse the better his outside self appears.
Even still Wes doesn't talk about it. He deals. It's Wes, it's what he does. Angel watches, longs to make it better, knows that he can't until Wes asks him to. In the meanwhile they dance around the issue and they buy a lot of replacement cups and glasses.
***
It's the shaking that bothers Wesley the most.
Broken bones aren't new. Cuts, scrapes, nightmares - all part of the demon-fighting bargain, really. Spend a childhood jumping like a ninny at the tiniest movement of shadow and you learn to take awareness of what creeps and crawls around in the dark as merely par for the very exotic course.
But the trembling is different.
It comes on him from time to time. No pattern, no schedule - though it's worse at home than it is in the office and for that, at least, Wesley is grateful. It's like an entity of its own, and one time Wesley asks the doctors to check. Scan him. Run some tests. Make sure he isn't *actually* possessed by a demon.
Well - other than Angel, of course.
He gets no such comfort. The displeasure is all his own.
Sometimes its hard. He'll be lying down in bed, Angel's strong chest directly behind him, and then his body jerks. His teeth chatter. His limbs refuse to behave themselves and keep still. It's like being dropped into blizzard-like temperatures without the benefit of a warm jacket and when it comes upon him he can't entirely let go of the fear that it will never *stop*. He imagines himself old, enfeebled, locked in palsy with a mind that's been rattled into insanity decades ago.
Angel is there. Powerful. Blessedly silent. He feels no need to mutter inane, trite phrases. Instead he simply moves closer and holds Wesley tight.
Those moments aren't so bad.
Othertimes are annoyances. Rapid-fire attacks of shivering. Just enough to make him drop things, spill things on himself or other people. It's a terrorist attack of humiliation, and it makes him feel as though he were five years younger again. He bears through it, bitterly, smiling tightly when Fred tries too hard to help by swooping down on the dropped items and assuring him that it will be all right and doesn't realize the last thing he wants is for anyone to notice these things in the first place.
He responds to that by working harder at his physical therapy. Driving himself to near exhaustion in the hopes he will carve down the timeline until he feels normal again.
Which leaves the final kind. The low-down, near constant tremble which centers directly on his hands.
It isn't until he tries to save Faith from being attacked by a demon that he comes to understand the full horror of this.
He tries to fire a shot, one aimed directly at the demon's fifth eye, and misses.
The shock that he feels about that is quickly followed by rage. Angel's there to pick up the slack - deflect the demon's leg so Faith can stab its heart out - which leaves Wesley free to run off and explode in private.
***
When Angel finds him he's on their beach. It's well past sundown, but the heat of his emotions is still with him.
"Son of a *bitch*," Wesley says, as though Angel had been there for the whole of his now hours-long monologue about his hatred for Connor. "He had no *right*. No *right* to take that from me."
Angel's looking at him, clearly assessing him for damage. "Not that I'm ignoring you, but if you *hurt* yourself today so *help* me I'll - "
"I gave him *everything else*," Wesley keeps going, knowing that it will be obvious to Angel that, physically speaking, he's as all right as he is on any other day. "Everything else that little monster wanted of me. My mind, my body - he had no *right* to this. It was *never* his to take."
"None of it was," Angel tells him.
"This *one thing* - "
"There was *no thing*," Angel, his own anger sketching his face into lines of his former self, tells him. "Wes, you wanna feed yourself a cock and bullshit story about this then fine. I get that. I support it, if it makes you happy. But you're *not* happy and you can't lie and say you are. He fucked you. He violated you. He took *everything* from you. All that and the one thing you think's worthy of bitching about is *marksmanship*?"
"It was mine," Wesley repeats, stamping a fist into the sand. "Mine alone. Everything else didn't matter."
"Yours?" Angel asks, squatting down beside him. "Jesus Christ, Wes, if you don't belong to *yourself* who the Hell *do* you belong to?"
Wesley is distracted enough from his anger to stare him down. "My *God* you are the dumbest creature on this or any other planet."
It still took the vampire a few moments. "Oh."
"The light dawns."
"I don't like making assumptions."
"Then don't *assume*. *Listen* when I tell you this."
"All right, I got it," Angel says. He twists around, sitting beside Wesley. The sand immediately dots his black clothes, as though the white grains had been waiting to pounce. "So why doesn't that make you mad too? On my behalf or something?"
"It did," Wesley tells him. "When I was with him. I hated him for taking what was yours, even though I knew that was the only reason why he wanted me."
"Plenty of reasons for guys to want you, Wes."
"His were rather skewed, I think," Wesley replies. "Regardless - it's different now. I think you bear that anger for the both of us. Rather well, actually."
"How so?"
Wesley looks over at him. "You actually go out and kill people to deal with it. Some nights I envy that."
The vampire's brown eyes become darker, almost shuttered. "Didn't know you knew."
"I know a lot of things about you, Angel," Wesley tells him. "It's a byproduct of being in love with you."
"Do you want me to stop?" Angel asks.
Wesley shakes his head. "I told you. You do it for both of us."
Angel thinks about it. "Could join me. When you're better."
"Ah, there's the rub," Wesley says, leaning against Angel's side. "If I were better, I wouldn't feel that need, would I?"
"Give it time," Angel says, putting an arm around him. "We've got plenty."
Wesley settles against Angel's body, and hates that that's all he feels capable of doing that night.
***
Sex comes slowly.
Not by Wesley's choice. Not his *active* choice, anyway. Intellectually he wants Angel. Wants to strip him down, writhe against him, and get fucked by him good and proper. Reacquaint himself with muscles and angles and hard pieces that he's been missing for so long.
Physically, though, he's not capable of it.
Wesley tries. Angel patiently endures the kisses, caresses, seductions that start out with great promise but then end, cut off, when something twitches the wrong way or a memory surfaces or the shaking starts *yet again* and forces Wesley to push away, gasping for air, fighting off a panic attack or vomiting or both as his entire body rejects the notion and makes him scramble to find freedom.
And, of course, as soon as he recovers himself the first person he wants to go to is Angel. Sometimes it is only a matter of moments before he's back in the vampire's arms, clinging to him, but this time with a wholly different desperation.
"It's okay," Angel tells him. "It doesn't have to be now."
How Angel deals with the ongoing cock tease Wesley has no idea, though he suspects the nightly excursions to do things they don't tell the others about probably has something to do with it.
Wesley thinks about it a lot. He remembers dreaming about Angel, about how the vampire's naked form is to him the Platonic ideal of everything sexual and desirable. About how it feels to be touched by him, and wanted.
One night it sneaks up on them both. They're outside, lying together in one of the lounge chairs by the pool, watching the waves lap on shore with hypnotic serenity. Angel is behind him, comfortably cool because the evening is cool. Wesley watches the waves and their ongoing motion and feels the rises and planes of the vampire's body and finds himself, randomly, aroused by it.
Angel, perhaps preternaturally sensing the need, moves his hand down, guides Wesley's hand into place. Encourages him to stroke himself, undo his jeans, take his cock out of his pants.
Angel does nothing. Rests his hand on Wesley's leg, rubbing it absently, but otherwise lets Wesley take control. Kisses his shoulder and neck as he warms up to it, tugs and pulls, doesn't bother being graceful or skilled about it. Rather he abandons himself to it, existing purely on the physical, his mind helpfully supplying a flicker of images and sensations designed to get him right to the point - Angel's smile, his thigh, his cock, his hands, his laugh, his strength, his fangs - until with three sharp gasps Wesley comes, almost surprised, then collapses back against Angel's chest.
"You had to do it first," Angel says, as though he'd known this all along. They're kissing lazily, Angel's hand now tracing small, sticky circles against Wesley's skin. "Make it yours again. It'll be easier, from now on."
And easier it is. Not perfect. There are still nightmares to chase. But it's better. Angel finally begins a slow seduction of *him*, reacquainting Wesley with the understanding that in spite of Connor's best efforts, there were some things he *couldn't* do in his father's place. Nights are spent with little else done but hours spent with Angel's mouth wrapped around his cock, or his tongue teasing Wesley's ass while Wesley fists the sheets, squeezes his eyes shut, and knows without doubt he would happily die for this man without a single question.
"I love you," Wesley says one morning, when he's gotten little sleep but doesn't mind because he can still feel the sensation of Angel's dick inside of him and will for hours.
Angel grins, tries to be macho. "I've guessed."
***
Wesley runs away.
He can't help it. There are moments when it's all *too* perfect. Too safe, battles with ever-present demons and Big Bads aside. Too pleasurable. He can't stand the panic that hovers over him, convincing him that it will all blow up and destroy itself right in front of him. He gets into his car - one of the hulking SUVs that keep Angel's zippy sports cars masculine company - and drives, aiming himself no where in particular save *not here*.
Angel tracks him down each and every time.
It's in Africa, when the vampire appears in the middle of a bar, grabs the man Wesley is currently making out with, snaps his neck and observes "Did you know we have a private plane, too?" that Wesley realizes he *wants* Angel to find him. To destroy whatever is between them both and haul Wesley home. He needs it, as much as he's needed anything else in all this.
He needs to know he'll never be taken away again.
He doesn't run away as much, after that.
***
Years pass.
The nightmares eventually settle. The tremors go away. Scars fade, but not all vanish. Wesley gets his perfect marksmanship back, complete with a long list of demon kills to prove it.
The life of Wolfram & Hart ebbs and flows. The lineup of employees keeps changing - some leave, some arrive. A few members from Sunnydale join the ranks, others never even bother to call.
Angel goes through his difficulties. The Powers that Be continue to test him the hardest. Some days, in his own eyes, he fails. Others he succeeds. He goes back and forth along the scale from good to evil to good again, never really finding a single place that he feels comfortable with but, Wesley realizes, it's the ability to change that *makes* Angel comfortable. The vampire prefers his options.
They buy more things. Houses, expensive electronic equipment. Take elaborate vacations around the world and to different dimensions that most could never dream of.
They have sex, never quite getting over the honeymoon stage of constant desire to touch and be touched. The memory of years when such a thing was impossible keeps the fire from ever dying.
Angel's favorite, when all is said and done, is making love to Wesley in their bedroom, Wes underneath him, his entire body relaxed and feeling nothing but pleasure, soft gasps escaping his mouth as he clings to Angel's arms as though he doesn't ever want to let go.
Wesley's favorite is in their living room, on the white fur rug, during the afternoon when Angel's body is awash in sunlight, glowing golden, and a living miracle of love and desire.
Fred gets married. Her heart picks a demon in Accounting, a nebbishy Grakluk who polishes his glasses a lot but shows a surprising bravery the day the LA Office is attacked by Holwer demons. Wesley and Gunn both share a look over this, and finds it saves a lot of arguments to realize that they now know the end of the story. When Gunn forays the suggestion of a beer and pizza night, Wesley, for the first time, does not turn him down.
After Fred's wedding, Wesley finds Angel standing on their beach. He's barefoot, still wearing his tuxedo, and his bow tie is undone and hanging about his neck. With his broad shoulders and dark hair he could easily look like a Mafioso, but somehow the vampire manages to make the whole thing seem elegant, refined.
"Quite an event," Wesley says, standing beside him with his hands in his pockets. He thinks about undoing his own tie, but can't be bothered to make the attempt.
"I am never," Angel tells him, "*ever* going to do the chicken dance. You know, *again*."
"I thought your YMCA was spot-on," Wesley replies.
"I've had practice."
They watch the waves for a while. Wesley thinks of all the years they've been together. All the years that, in his heart, he knows they'll *be* together. Of how only his death will prevent him from leaving Angel's side, and how his name is now on a lovely little contract which makes even *that* a non-issue.
"I'll never make you do that, you know," Wesley says, feeling coy about it.
"Practice?"
"Dance," Wesley says, looking at him. "In order to get the benefits that come from it."
Angel ponders it. Half-quirks an eyebrow. "Was that a proposal?"
"It's an acknowledgement that one would be redundant," Wesley tells him.
"You have *got* to stop spending so much time talking to the legal department," Angel says, but the look in his eyes shows that he's pleased.
"After everything we've been through - " Wesley starts.
Angel cuts him off, slipping a hand into his. "No shit, Wes. But it's nice to hear."
Wesley squeezes his hand, offers an apology. "I am sorry, though."
Angel gives him a curious look. "Sorry?"
"That it's not the ultimate for you," Wesley says. "Not that I'd care to go another round with Angelus but - I desire happiness for you. It makes me sad to know that you can't feel it."
Angel looks at him. "I *am* happy, Wes."
"Not perfectly so," Wesley points out.
"Says who?"
"You," Wesley replies, "by a strict definition."
Angel chuckles. Shakes his head. "Just when I think that *I'm* not the brightest around here."
"Pardon?" Wesley asks.
Angel tugs on his hand, pulls him closer. The kiss is long and lingering.
"Everything I bought," Angel whispers, his lips brushing against Wesley's own. "Everything I did to bring you back, you think I would leave that out of the bargain?"
"Oh," Wesley says, looking at Angel in a new light. "You mean that - "
"*Nothing* takes you from me," Angel tells him. He kisses Wes again, a press of lips to his mouth, forehead and cheek. "Not even how much I love you. How stupid would I be to not ask for *that*?"
"Smarter than I," Wesley admits.
"Maybe," Angel acknowledges. He pulls back, drawing Wesley up to their home. "Personally, I'm bigger on partnership. We can be smart together."
"We can be *everything* together," Wesley muses.
Angel smiles. It remains one of Wesley's favorite views. "That too."
They go inside, and fuck happily on the thick white fur rug.
FIN.
PART SIXTEEN - EPILOGUE
Moving a household, when you haven't blown up the last one, takes time. Effort. Wes manages all the details. All Angel has to do is show up at the right times and give approving looks.
There's things to do. Servants, which Wes takes care of. People who come, clean, stay the hell out of sight. Angel wondered if Wes would be uncomfortable with this lord-of-the-mannering but it turns out that it's water to Wes's duck. They try to come when Wes isn't home, and when he is they know to get out of his way.
There's decorating. Wes bypasses everything Angel would have thought he liked and instead goes Eastern. Zen, including a garden in their side courtyard with volcano rocks, koi ponds and fountains. Very little of the West makes it into the house and for a time Angel wonders if he should store some of his own favorite things, but Wes tells him it's *their* house and Angel can do what he likes. So Angel scatters some of his stuff about, it doesn't freak Wes, and they eventually find a comfortable clash of the cultures to live in.
Sometime during all this Wes goes back to work. Heads into the office wearing Ralph Lauren dressy casuals. Makes himself known, gets into the swing of things.
On the side he's got physical therapy. The office and the house both have gyms. Wes pounds away at the equipment, building up his strength, learning to walk unaided again.
Outwardly, he seems fine.
It's only at home, with Angel, that Wes drops the act. Angel's amazed that Wes even bothers, but then he realizes that Wes doesn't have a choice. It's the only way he *can* keep up appearances out in the real world. Wes turns into his own picture of Dorian Gray - a shadowy version of himself that gets worse the better his outside self appears.
Even still Wes doesn't talk about it. He deals. It's Wes, it's what he does. Angel watches, longs to make it better, knows that he can't until Wes asks him to. In the meanwhile they dance around the issue and they buy a lot of replacement cups and glasses.
***
It's the shaking that bothers Wesley the most.
Broken bones aren't new. Cuts, scrapes, nightmares - all part of the demon-fighting bargain, really. Spend a childhood jumping like a ninny at the tiniest movement of shadow and you learn to take awareness of what creeps and crawls around in the dark as merely par for the very exotic course.
But the trembling is different.
It comes on him from time to time. No pattern, no schedule - though it's worse at home than it is in the office and for that, at least, Wesley is grateful. It's like an entity of its own, and one time Wesley asks the doctors to check. Scan him. Run some tests. Make sure he isn't *actually* possessed by a demon.
Well - other than Angel, of course.
He gets no such comfort. The displeasure is all his own.
Sometimes its hard. He'll be lying down in bed, Angel's strong chest directly behind him, and then his body jerks. His teeth chatter. His limbs refuse to behave themselves and keep still. It's like being dropped into blizzard-like temperatures without the benefit of a warm jacket and when it comes upon him he can't entirely let go of the fear that it will never *stop*. He imagines himself old, enfeebled, locked in palsy with a mind that's been rattled into insanity decades ago.
Angel is there. Powerful. Blessedly silent. He feels no need to mutter inane, trite phrases. Instead he simply moves closer and holds Wesley tight.
Those moments aren't so bad.
Othertimes are annoyances. Rapid-fire attacks of shivering. Just enough to make him drop things, spill things on himself or other people. It's a terrorist attack of humiliation, and it makes him feel as though he were five years younger again. He bears through it, bitterly, smiling tightly when Fred tries too hard to help by swooping down on the dropped items and assuring him that it will be all right and doesn't realize the last thing he wants is for anyone to notice these things in the first place.
He responds to that by working harder at his physical therapy. Driving himself to near exhaustion in the hopes he will carve down the timeline until he feels normal again.
Which leaves the final kind. The low-down, near constant tremble which centers directly on his hands.
It isn't until he tries to save Faith from being attacked by a demon that he comes to understand the full horror of this.
He tries to fire a shot, one aimed directly at the demon's fifth eye, and misses.
The shock that he feels about that is quickly followed by rage. Angel's there to pick up the slack - deflect the demon's leg so Faith can stab its heart out - which leaves Wesley free to run off and explode in private.
***
When Angel finds him he's on their beach. It's well past sundown, but the heat of his emotions is still with him.
"Son of a *bitch*," Wesley says, as though Angel had been there for the whole of his now hours-long monologue about his hatred for Connor. "He had no *right*. No *right* to take that from me."
Angel's looking at him, clearly assessing him for damage. "Not that I'm ignoring you, but if you *hurt* yourself today so *help* me I'll - "
"I gave him *everything else*," Wesley keeps going, knowing that it will be obvious to Angel that, physically speaking, he's as all right as he is on any other day. "Everything else that little monster wanted of me. My mind, my body - he had no *right* to this. It was *never* his to take."
"None of it was," Angel tells him.
"This *one thing* - "
"There was *no thing*," Angel, his own anger sketching his face into lines of his former self, tells him. "Wes, you wanna feed yourself a cock and bullshit story about this then fine. I get that. I support it, if it makes you happy. But you're *not* happy and you can't lie and say you are. He fucked you. He violated you. He took *everything* from you. All that and the one thing you think's worthy of bitching about is *marksmanship*?"
"It was mine," Wesley repeats, stamping a fist into the sand. "Mine alone. Everything else didn't matter."
"Yours?" Angel asks, squatting down beside him. "Jesus Christ, Wes, if you don't belong to *yourself* who the Hell *do* you belong to?"
Wesley is distracted enough from his anger to stare him down. "My *God* you are the dumbest creature on this or any other planet."
It still took the vampire a few moments. "Oh."
"The light dawns."
"I don't like making assumptions."
"Then don't *assume*. *Listen* when I tell you this."
"All right, I got it," Angel says. He twists around, sitting beside Wesley. The sand immediately dots his black clothes, as though the white grains had been waiting to pounce. "So why doesn't that make you mad too? On my behalf or something?"
"It did," Wesley tells him. "When I was with him. I hated him for taking what was yours, even though I knew that was the only reason why he wanted me."
"Plenty of reasons for guys to want you, Wes."
"His were rather skewed, I think," Wesley replies. "Regardless - it's different now. I think you bear that anger for the both of us. Rather well, actually."
"How so?"
Wesley looks over at him. "You actually go out and kill people to deal with it. Some nights I envy that."
The vampire's brown eyes become darker, almost shuttered. "Didn't know you knew."
"I know a lot of things about you, Angel," Wesley tells him. "It's a byproduct of being in love with you."
"Do you want me to stop?" Angel asks.
Wesley shakes his head. "I told you. You do it for both of us."
Angel thinks about it. "Could join me. When you're better."
"Ah, there's the rub," Wesley says, leaning against Angel's side. "If I were better, I wouldn't feel that need, would I?"
"Give it time," Angel says, putting an arm around him. "We've got plenty."
Wesley settles against Angel's body, and hates that that's all he feels capable of doing that night.
***
Sex comes slowly.
Not by Wesley's choice. Not his *active* choice, anyway. Intellectually he wants Angel. Wants to strip him down, writhe against him, and get fucked by him good and proper. Reacquaint himself with muscles and angles and hard pieces that he's been missing for so long.
Physically, though, he's not capable of it.
Wesley tries. Angel patiently endures the kisses, caresses, seductions that start out with great promise but then end, cut off, when something twitches the wrong way or a memory surfaces or the shaking starts *yet again* and forces Wesley to push away, gasping for air, fighting off a panic attack or vomiting or both as his entire body rejects the notion and makes him scramble to find freedom.
And, of course, as soon as he recovers himself the first person he wants to go to is Angel. Sometimes it is only a matter of moments before he's back in the vampire's arms, clinging to him, but this time with a wholly different desperation.
"It's okay," Angel tells him. "It doesn't have to be now."
How Angel deals with the ongoing cock tease Wesley has no idea, though he suspects the nightly excursions to do things they don't tell the others about probably has something to do with it.
Wesley thinks about it a lot. He remembers dreaming about Angel, about how the vampire's naked form is to him the Platonic ideal of everything sexual and desirable. About how it feels to be touched by him, and wanted.
One night it sneaks up on them both. They're outside, lying together in one of the lounge chairs by the pool, watching the waves lap on shore with hypnotic serenity. Angel is behind him, comfortably cool because the evening is cool. Wesley watches the waves and their ongoing motion and feels the rises and planes of the vampire's body and finds himself, randomly, aroused by it.
Angel, perhaps preternaturally sensing the need, moves his hand down, guides Wesley's hand into place. Encourages him to stroke himself, undo his jeans, take his cock out of his pants.
Angel does nothing. Rests his hand on Wesley's leg, rubbing it absently, but otherwise lets Wesley take control. Kisses his shoulder and neck as he warms up to it, tugs and pulls, doesn't bother being graceful or skilled about it. Rather he abandons himself to it, existing purely on the physical, his mind helpfully supplying a flicker of images and sensations designed to get him right to the point - Angel's smile, his thigh, his cock, his hands, his laugh, his strength, his fangs - until with three sharp gasps Wesley comes, almost surprised, then collapses back against Angel's chest.
"You had to do it first," Angel says, as though he'd known this all along. They're kissing lazily, Angel's hand now tracing small, sticky circles against Wesley's skin. "Make it yours again. It'll be easier, from now on."
And easier it is. Not perfect. There are still nightmares to chase. But it's better. Angel finally begins a slow seduction of *him*, reacquainting Wesley with the understanding that in spite of Connor's best efforts, there were some things he *couldn't* do in his father's place. Nights are spent with little else done but hours spent with Angel's mouth wrapped around his cock, or his tongue teasing Wesley's ass while Wesley fists the sheets, squeezes his eyes shut, and knows without doubt he would happily die for this man without a single question.
"I love you," Wesley says one morning, when he's gotten little sleep but doesn't mind because he can still feel the sensation of Angel's dick inside of him and will for hours.
Angel grins, tries to be macho. "I've guessed."
***
Wesley runs away.
He can't help it. There are moments when it's all *too* perfect. Too safe, battles with ever-present demons and Big Bads aside. Too pleasurable. He can't stand the panic that hovers over him, convincing him that it will all blow up and destroy itself right in front of him. He gets into his car - one of the hulking SUVs that keep Angel's zippy sports cars masculine company - and drives, aiming himself no where in particular save *not here*.
Angel tracks him down each and every time.
It's in Africa, when the vampire appears in the middle of a bar, grabs the man Wesley is currently making out with, snaps his neck and observes "Did you know we have a private plane, too?" that Wesley realizes he *wants* Angel to find him. To destroy whatever is between them both and haul Wesley home. He needs it, as much as he's needed anything else in all this.
He needs to know he'll never be taken away again.
He doesn't run away as much, after that.
***
Years pass.
The nightmares eventually settle. The tremors go away. Scars fade, but not all vanish. Wesley gets his perfect marksmanship back, complete with a long list of demon kills to prove it.
The life of Wolfram & Hart ebbs and flows. The lineup of employees keeps changing - some leave, some arrive. A few members from Sunnydale join the ranks, others never even bother to call.
Angel goes through his difficulties. The Powers that Be continue to test him the hardest. Some days, in his own eyes, he fails. Others he succeeds. He goes back and forth along the scale from good to evil to good again, never really finding a single place that he feels comfortable with but, Wesley realizes, it's the ability to change that *makes* Angel comfortable. The vampire prefers his options.
They buy more things. Houses, expensive electronic equipment. Take elaborate vacations around the world and to different dimensions that most could never dream of.
They have sex, never quite getting over the honeymoon stage of constant desire to touch and be touched. The memory of years when such a thing was impossible keeps the fire from ever dying.
Angel's favorite, when all is said and done, is making love to Wesley in their bedroom, Wes underneath him, his entire body relaxed and feeling nothing but pleasure, soft gasps escaping his mouth as he clings to Angel's arms as though he doesn't ever want to let go.
Wesley's favorite is in their living room, on the white fur rug, during the afternoon when Angel's body is awash in sunlight, glowing golden, and a living miracle of love and desire.
Fred gets married. Her heart picks a demon in Accounting, a nebbishy Grakluk who polishes his glasses a lot but shows a surprising bravery the day the LA Office is attacked by Holwer demons. Wesley and Gunn both share a look over this, and finds it saves a lot of arguments to realize that they now know the end of the story. When Gunn forays the suggestion of a beer and pizza night, Wesley, for the first time, does not turn him down.
After Fred's wedding, Wesley finds Angel standing on their beach. He's barefoot, still wearing his tuxedo, and his bow tie is undone and hanging about his neck. With his broad shoulders and dark hair he could easily look like a Mafioso, but somehow the vampire manages to make the whole thing seem elegant, refined.
"Quite an event," Wesley says, standing beside him with his hands in his pockets. He thinks about undoing his own tie, but can't be bothered to make the attempt.
"I am never," Angel tells him, "*ever* going to do the chicken dance. You know, *again*."
"I thought your YMCA was spot-on," Wesley replies.
"I've had practice."
They watch the waves for a while. Wesley thinks of all the years they've been together. All the years that, in his heart, he knows they'll *be* together. Of how only his death will prevent him from leaving Angel's side, and how his name is now on a lovely little contract which makes even *that* a non-issue.
"I'll never make you do that, you know," Wesley says, feeling coy about it.
"Practice?"
"Dance," Wesley says, looking at him. "In order to get the benefits that come from it."
Angel ponders it. Half-quirks an eyebrow. "Was that a proposal?"
"It's an acknowledgement that one would be redundant," Wesley tells him.
"You have *got* to stop spending so much time talking to the legal department," Angel says, but the look in his eyes shows that he's pleased.
"After everything we've been through - " Wesley starts.
Angel cuts him off, slipping a hand into his. "No shit, Wes. But it's nice to hear."
Wesley squeezes his hand, offers an apology. "I am sorry, though."
Angel gives him a curious look. "Sorry?"
"That it's not the ultimate for you," Wesley says. "Not that I'd care to go another round with Angelus but - I desire happiness for you. It makes me sad to know that you can't feel it."
Angel looks at him. "I *am* happy, Wes."
"Not perfectly so," Wesley points out.
"Says who?"
"You," Wesley replies, "by a strict definition."
Angel chuckles. Shakes his head. "Just when I think that *I'm* not the brightest around here."
"Pardon?" Wesley asks.
Angel tugs on his hand, pulls him closer. The kiss is long and lingering.
"Everything I bought," Angel whispers, his lips brushing against Wesley's own. "Everything I did to bring you back, you think I would leave that out of the bargain?"
"Oh," Wesley says, looking at Angel in a new light. "You mean that - "
"*Nothing* takes you from me," Angel tells him. He kisses Wes again, a press of lips to his mouth, forehead and cheek. "Not even how much I love you. How stupid would I be to not ask for *that*?"
"Smarter than I," Wesley admits.
"Maybe," Angel acknowledges. He pulls back, drawing Wesley up to their home. "Personally, I'm bigger on partnership. We can be smart together."
"We can be *everything* together," Wesley muses.
Angel smiles. It remains one of Wesley's favorite views. "That too."
They go inside, and fuck happily on the thick white fur rug.
FIN.
