Protocol, Part Twenty-Nine

[thebratqueen]

Previous parts can be found here.

PART TWENTY-NINE

There was a routine of sorts in place. Wesley woke up, dressed, had a simple breakfast with Connor, then went about the business of the day. Someone was still needed to keep things running, and running smoothly. The relief of the end of the battle meant more mouths to feed, and an influx of those who had not yet come to understand Wesley's place in their environment.

There were bumps, as was to be expected. They were dealt with, as Wesley had dealt with them before. He was surprised, however, to find that there were not as many encounters like this as he had anticipated. Then he heard reports of George and the others fighting, and vampires who had stayed on the homefront would appear in the common room looking a bit worse for wear, but who would then give him a polite nod, and a word of greeting, and a wink which suggested that perhaps he need not worry too much about these matters.

Education was the other thing which seeped slowly through their culture. Inter-species slurs, though still given, were not tolerated nearly as much as they had been before. Also there came greater understanding of the nature of Wesley's job, though most still did not know how to talk about it.

"So you're *trained* to you-know-what?" was a question frequently asked of him, often by those who had somehow managed to pull him aside for the semblance of privacy.

"Yes," Wesley would answer, since for him this was matter of fact. "I am to please my Lord in all areas. Pleasing him physically is but one of them."

At that point the questioner, who was typically male, would find the conversation to be too uncomfortable and he would clear excuses out of his throat and shuffle off to be elsewhere.

His small clutch of companions was no longer with him. They were *there*, to be certain, but their partners were home, and safe. Expressing sympathy was harder when they had no lack of their own. Wesley found it easier to leave them to their celebrations and thus free them from any obligation to wear sorrow on his behalf.

At night he continued to curl up with his book, which he carefully hid from Connor and any other prying eyes before the morning came. As days passed, it became harder and harder to sleep. He reread the passages, tried meditation, paced restlessly. He even attempted to take catnaps in the greenhouse. Nothing worked. A fear had settled inside of him and would not be shaken off. It made him feel sick. He ate less food, and used artful words to pass the practice off as a requirement of waiting for Angel to return.

He was tired, and lonely, and his chest was filled with something he could not name or identify. It was almost enough for him to break his self-imposed silence and attempt to write Lorne and Andrew back home, but the thought of his father's eyes on the words he would pen was enough to make fists out of his hands and leave the paper blank.

Finally, one night he had been awake for so long that the entire world seemed like a waking dream. But no dream this, a nightmare. The shadows were too dark, and could not be chased away. His skin twitched. His eyes saw rats and insects in every corner. Breathing was tight, every one felt like his last.

He gave up just a little, then. He took one of the heavy armchairs and shoved it into the corner. Angel's armoire was there, no different from when he had left it. Wesley opened up the doors, telling himself this was a proper thing to do, as it did not violate a rule to visually ascertain that his husband's clothing did not require some form of attention, and then closed his eyes as he sat in the chair, letting the faint scent of the memory of Angel wash over him, and ease the burning in his lungs.

***

It was after a few nights of this that Angel came back.

No bursting in of the door this time. Instead quieter, more discreet. And the moment Wesley saw Angel being held up by Spike and Faith both, he immediately understood why.

"Bloody Hell, what happened to him?" Wesley demanded.

"Didn't think you were allowed to swear," Spike said, grunting a little from the effort of carrying literally dead weight. Angel was unconscious, or close enough too. Too big to be carried by either the thin vampire or the tiny Slayer, they had improvised a kind of stretcher, but even that was bulky and awkward.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Wesley replied, just as easily pretending to forget about the moment of vulgarness as Spike found to make fun of it. He followed them into the bedroom, lighting lamps and clearing the way for Angel to be placed on the bed. "What *happened*?"

"Bigtime hurt," Faith answered, stretching her shoulders out now that her burden had been safely deposited.

"But not unfixable," Willow, who had hung in the background, assured him.

Wesley knelt by the bed, studying the patchwork of damage on his husband's form. His face was bruised, his arm and leg apparently broken. Blood stained what remained of his clothes. Fingers were swollen, and bent out of shape.

"Easy enough to fix," Spike told him, when Wesley gave him a questioning look. "All of it. Hair to toenails."

"Vamps are wicked strong," Faith said. She snapped her fingers, the sound ringing through the air around them. "Heal up just like that."

"I gave him some herbs and stuff," Willow said, taking things out of her bag. Bottles and pouches were lined up on the nighttable. "He can take them with juice or water. It'll go faster if he does. It'll make him sleep and get better."

"He should have blood," Wesley said. Then, on its heels. "Someone needs to tell Connor. He's out - "

"Xander's on it," Spike said. "And plenty of blood in the kitchen. Can plump him up like a tick if we want to."

Wesley's hand twitched on the bedspread. He looked at his skin, grown even paler from his time indoors. "Human would be better still, would it not?"

"Let's try the animal first," Spike said. "Get that nasty edge off. Worry about going for fancy meals later, okay?"

Wesley thought that this was likely not an accurate interpretation of the solution to the problem, but he was not allowed to hurt himself without a direct order, so there was nothing he could do about it. "Connor's only out hunting. He can't have gone far."

"We'll keep an eye out for him," Faith said. "Send him on over soon as he gets back."

"In the meanwhile we can stay and help if you want," Willow said.

"No, thank you," Wesley said. "You've had your own troubles. You should rest, and recover. He's my husband. It's my honor to take care of him."

Willow didn't seem persuaded. "You sure?"

Wesley nodded. "Positive."

***

The others left. Wesley then set about taking care of Angel. He cut away the ruined clothes. He brought out a washbasin and used soft cloths to bathe him, going through several as the blood they sopped up rendered them of no use anymore.

He redressed Angel's bandages, taking as much care as he could to not jostle the arm and the leg. Then, knowing how much a clean form could soothe the spirit, he brought out a razor, and warm soap, and cleared away the faint lines of stubble that had formed on the vampire's cheeks and chin. That done, he found another blanket, a thick quilt of the weight that Angel liked, and used it to cover him in lieu of moving him simply so he could get under the sheets and other bed linens.

Wesley then took care of himself, washing away what dirt he had collected, and changing into cool clean garments. He added wood to the fire, basking in its light.

Then he went into the bed, slipping under the second blanket. To do too much would be to presume, but he could be near. He could move close enough so that they were almost touching, and press his fingers into the space of the indentation between Angel's body and the blanket below, and sigh and smile to think of having his husband near.

Angel's wedding ring glinted in the firelight, and Wesley focused on that, and rubbed the band of his own in kind.

***

He wasn't aware of the torture ending when it ended. His mind had put a glossy sheen over it, giving Angel the painkiller of his fantasies since it meant he would not give way so much as to actually talk, or admit that any of this was having an effect on him.

When Spike and the others came to get him, he realized it after the fact. Everything on a time delay. Oh yeah, torture had stopped. Oh yeah, that was Faith over there.

Oh yeah, he was home again.

His eyelids felt hot, and full of sandpaper. His body was humming, and though that in and of itself was pain he knew that it only meant there was even better, white-hot lightening style pain in his future, since about the only thing that hurt a vampire more than torture was having to go through the preternaturally fast healing that was supposedly a gift for his species.

But he had lots of senses, and smell was always the strongest.

"Wes?"

There it was, that soft, musical voice. "My Lord?"

It wasn't enough. He needed more. More of his senses filled, so he could remember he was home again. "C'mere."

Hesitation. "My Lord, you're not well yet."

He knew that, but saying more would take too much out of him. Which he knew only proved Wes's point. But he remembered one thing, and that was orders. "C'mere."

One more pause, and then a warm mortal body was pressed up against his chest. "Yes, my Lord."

Angel spider-crawled his free hand towards the heat. He rested it on Wes's back, or what felt like Wes's back. "Sleep with me."

Wes's body was stone still, but his voice sounded happy all the same. "As you wish, my Lord."

"I do," Angel told him. His own desire to drift off was about to overtake him.

"I'm glad you're home, my Lord," Wesley said.

"Me too," Angel said.

"You're much more comfortable than a book," Wesley added.

Angel was drugged enough that it never occurred to him that there was no sense to be found in that statement. "Good."

***

Angel woke up and Connor was there. Wes was not, which left the two of them alone.

Connor was sitting on the side of the bed. His forehead was creased. He looked worried. "Don't *do* that."

Angel had to rack his drug-hazed mind to try to remember if they'd be having a conversation. After doing so for too long threatened to make him lose sight of Connor entirely, he gave up. "What?"

"That. All of it," Connor said. "Don't - don't ever - you know, just because you're *immortal* doesn't mean - just *don't*, okay?"

It was a testament to their family line that Angel managed to understand all of that. "I protect you."

"Not like *this*," Connor snapped. "You don't do this."

Angel knew Connor was looking for some kind of promise that he wouldn't make the same choice again. But he would. He would make the same choice every single time, if it meant saving his son.

He wanted to say something about that. To explain to Connor that a father's love was a powerful thing, and a magic he didn't yet understand even though it would always protect him. But he was too weak to keep speaking, and he didn't want to fall back asleep just yet.

He reached out for Connor instead, wrapping a hand around Connor's forearm and holding it there. Connor turned around, covering Angel's hand with his own, and sat with him. It was the sort of touchy gesture that Connor had expressly forbidden since he had turned thirteen, but this time he allowed it. Angel basked in the feel of it, and reminded himself that someday he would have to explain to Connor how a son's love held magic too.

***

"Should have kids."

Angel said this one day as Wesley was changing his bandages. The wounds were still there, which Spike explained was an indication of how deep they had once been. On a mortal, Spike said, it's likely the body would have been cut in two. On a vampire it meant days and weeks of healing.

"My Lord?"

"Should have kids," Angel said.

Wesley was growing used to this pidgin form of language that was the only thing Angel could manage in his current state. Short statements, often repeated, because the mind and body were not capable of more. It was also not uncommon for Angel to be unaware of the passage of time. A sentence could be started and not finished until hours later, with Angel himself none the wiser of it happening.

Wesley dabbed at Angel's chest, working a healing ointment into the skin. "My Lord desires children?"

"You," Angel said. There was nothing for a long while. Wesley finished the chest and moved on to the right shoulder. He saved the left arm for last, as it hurt less when the muscles around it had been relaxed as much as they were capable of.

The right shoulder done, Angel said, "should have kids."

Wesley sat back, thinking about it. He realized this was a single sentence. "My Lord desires that I should have children?"

"Babies," Angel said. He shifted his weight. It bent the rules slightly, but Wesley reached out to keep him still. He kept forgetting that he wasn't supposed to move in that manner, and it only caused him pain. Having found him too drugged to ever be reminded of this, it was easier to simply act to hold him down. Luckily the drugged status worked both ways, else Wesley would not have had a prayer of controlling the vampire. "Big, fat… on your knee."

Wesley assumed these were mental images that Angel was sharing. "I have been trained to take care of children."

Angel seemed pleased about that. "Good. Should have kids."

Wes debated getting into this discussion. "My Lord is aware that I *cannot* have children?"

"Can too."

"I lack the working parts, my Lord," Wesley reminded him.

Angel's eyebrows frowned. "Parts work *fine*." Then, with a smile. "Miss your parts."

Wesley blushed at that. Then marveled that anything sexual was capable of causing that reaction in him. "I only meant, my Lord, that together with *your* parts I lack what is needed to give you children."

"Parts work fine," Angel repeated. He was falling back to sleep again.

"My parts serve you, my Lord," Wesley said. "That is all that matters."

"You should…" Angel started, but stopped before he could get to the final words again.

Wesley shook his head, bemused, and went back to taking care of him.

***

"I thought about you," Angel said one night, when he was awake enough to be aware of things like the pop and hiss of the fire, and the sight of Wes looking up at him.

"My Lord?"

"I thought about you," Angel said. "While I was away. I missed you."

There it was. That hidden smile that reminded him of sunshine. "I missed you too, my Lord. Very much."

Angel smiled back at him, and figured he must be doing something right.