Fic: Angel/House crossover 1/2
No Matter What, Part 1 of 2
Pairing: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce/James Wilson, M.D., Wesley Wyndam-Pryce/Angel (UST)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Passing mentions of adultery, self-hurt, alcoholism, sexual content
Spoilers: All of Angel the Series, probably only the first few seasons of House, M.D.
Word Count: 11917
Disclaimer: I don’t own the boys or their world. Not intended to be infringing on anyone’s rights or profits. House, M.D. belongs to David Shore & co., Angel the Series belongs to Joss Whedon & co.
A/N: Written for the 2011 jossverse_bb challenge. Also, huge thank you to kayama for building this crazy world with me. :)
Link to art: by the awesome, excellent, wonderful whiskyinmind!
Summary: Meet a Wesley who never stayed in Los Angeles after he set things to rights in season 4. He meets a nice doctor on the East Coast and settles down. All that goes to hell when Wes' life collides with Wilson's in a way that causes Wes to have to turn to his L.A. family for help.
The tumbler hit dark pine with a loud clatter. He'd promised himself this wouldn't happen again. He'd promised. He felt the slosh of liquid over his fingers rather than actually noticing that the amber whiskey had spilled when it had clumsily bumped the table beside him. He sat stiffly in the half-dark thinking that James was going to kill him if he saw him like this. He had promised... But that was before-
A tiny sound tried to spring from his throat and he clutched the wet glass tighter.
He wouldn't, he wouldn't, hewouldn'thewouldn'thewouldn't-
Wes sucked in a breath to steady himself and picked up the phone finally, the small beep of the buttons solidifying his resolve the more numbers he pressed. He wiped his damp hand on the deep amber leather of the armchair James had bought him for his fortieth birthday. James had hand-picked the leather, choosing the supplest, most buttery feeling bolt, custom-ordered the chair built to suit Wes' longer legs. The color was so dark it was almost mahogany or a lovely dark-cane rum color, Wes noted now. They had made love in the chair the same night, James' skin glowing with the firelight behind him while he straddled Wes' hips with abandon. His skin, his eyes, the sheen of moisture on his muscles... Wes could recall the scene so clearly.
Wes doubted he would ever forget the soft whisper of words that James had said that night. I love you. No matter what. No matter the scars, no matter the ghosts. I love you, Wes. Always. I'm yours and you're mine.
That had been a few years ago already, he noted idly. They would have been coming up on eight years together this spring... Wes clenched the glass tighter and prayed the ringing down the phone would just bloody well end so he could get on with this. He stuffed the memory down tight, his grip on the glass quickening even further without his notice. The pressure of his fingertips soon grew enough that it shot from his hand, skittering across the smooth wood of the small table and shattering on the unforgiving planks of the floor.
He cursed under his breath but didn't move, his hand only curling into a solid fist as if he might hold onto himself, unlike the ill-fated tumbler.
There was no one else he could call. He wished there were any other alternative, any other way to get James back. If there were anyone else... If this were about anyone else...
When the ringing finally gave way to air and the hurried grunt of, "Angel Investigations, we help the hopeless," in greeting, Wes felt himself close to unraveling those old memories colliding with the new, but he forced his voice into a cold calm.
"Hello, Angel."
- - -
He'd been hunting a Swerack demon along the Eastern Seaboard feeling like Los Angeles might just be behind him when he'd been blindsided by a nest of vampires - something that made him feel like he was a green rogue demon hunter all over again. It had been a close thing, but he'd actually manage to dust them all; only his abdomen didn't really make it out of the fight.
Eventually, Wes had lurched into Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital with half of his blood in his hands and half in a spare towel he had for just such situations. It was pure chance that a well-dressed WASP of a doctor had seen him bumbling across the parking lot and dropped his briefcase, running to catch him before he could crack his knees on the ground. He'd been in that situation before, too. Only, without the helping hand to catch him.
The hospital was basically a blur, people mentioning surgery, kidneys, spleens, blood loss and wondering how the hell there was so much dust in the wound. That much he'd heard. When he woke up to some regular beeping, and only a slight headache, he decided he must be patched up; it was time to go. After all, he'd never had anything good happen to him in a hospital.
Funnily enough, that same doctor had been by his bedside and was quick to inform security that Wes had really been trying to mug him at the time so he should be restrained now that he was conscious.
That had not put the doctor in his good books.
But the doctor had remained, sitting there with a strange smile on his lips and finally dropping all the charges with barely a wave of his hand when Wes was ready to be discharged and the police were attempting to get a proper statement out of the doctor he now knew as Wilson. James Wilson.
Wes supposed if it hadn't been for Dr. Wilson, he might've kept running for years.
Grudgingly, while he'd been stuck in bed, he and James had gotten to talking and-Well, it had been amazing how James hardly seemed to have said anything at all. He was just so interested and he'd actually seemed like he was listening so all the words somehow started slipping out of Wes, bit by bit. Granted, he wasn't letting loose any deep, dark secrets but it was more than he'd said to any one creature since he'd left California a year ago.
He'd saved Angel, drug him out of the ocean and revived him with his own blood... And then he was gone. His guilt over Connor would haunt him for the rest of his life, but he wasn't going to let it eat at him while staring at the people who he'd thought were his friends.
James, though, he'd somehow made all that anger recede. They'd gone for coffee - tea for himself - they'd gone bowling. They'd gone to museums, gone for walks between patient appointments at the hospital. Wes had even taught James how to play darts - incidentally that was also when James seemed to put two and two together (namely the half-mast erection Wesley hadn't been able to avoid letting James feel due to a rather buxom blonde at the nearest table who'd insisted on leaving her chair out whenever she left her girlfriends, thus cramping them together. There were also a few more lingering touches that had actually been intentional on Wesley's part if not completely...intended in the groping way that James understood them) and he'd awkwardly asked Wes on an actual date.
The date itself? Had been a spectacular disaster, of course.
Wes' tie had been brand new. Blue and green diagonal stripes with some kind of lush, supple texture that he didn't understand how it couldn't be magic, but the saleswoman assured him that it looked perfect with his eyes.
He was on time when he reached James Wilson's condo, a warm glow from the upper windows and a neat little hedge along the front steps. He'd mustered just enough courage so that his ensuing knock on the door hadn't sounded nervous, but there were butterflies swarming and thundering in his stomach and throat. Wes knew this was a monumentally bad idea. He wasn't the sort of man who made it through dating into actual relationships. He knew right behind his heart in that secret lockbox that held all the things about him, that he wasn't meant for the long-term, marriage and two point five children plus a Scotty dog and vacations at the beach. He didn't have that right. But somehow...
He was on James Wilson's doorstep, blushing and wondering what the protocol was for holding hands on a first date. Things he shouldn't be wondering. Yet, there he was. Wondering.
He'd tried to put it into an equation or at the very least an analogy, but it could have been any number of factors about James that were drawing Wes to him.
That he was gorgeous with a smile and a heart to match did not hurt. The man was also smart, witty, determinedly hard-working, and-It was the eyes all over again, really.
Brown, warm, interested, caring eyes. Eyes that seemed to want Wes just as much as he wanted them. Well, not just the eyes. He preferred entire people. Not that he was biased towards those without all their limbs-
Lord, it was a good thing he was not speaking because there was James, smiling, slipping out the door and locking it, seemingly having quite a firm hold on how these date things went.
So that part wasn't so bad.
It was what happened between the doorstep and the car that really screwed things up.
You see, he hadn't exactly informed James of his occupation as a demon hunter. James knew about his side-work as a translator for some of the universities and government branches in the area. He didn't know about the slicing and dicing and flame-throwing.
The Gorvash - he'd later done more research and realized it was a Vorgash, which was why his first attempt at decapitation hadn't done a thing - it came out of nowhere. Wesley should have smelled it, really, but it seemed he'd been too engrossed in the scent of James' cologne and the twinkle of light he'd caught in James' eyes, and so the rumpled, stinking, giant of a beast had lunged at them quickly. It was much more quick than its bulk had suggested to Wes, but he had James pushed over the hedge and out of sight before the Gorvash lunged again.
Thankfully, his car (with his emergency weapons) had still been unlocked and he'd achieved quartering the demon in a swift amount of time after the fruitless decapitation. He didn't know what he might have done if he'd gotten James injured. It was unthinkable.
As it was, the shocked eyes that had been peering over the hedge at him afterwards had been-something he wasn't quite prepared for on a first date.
Wes had sat with James for a long time in the car, James silent, but his hand latched tightly into Wes's. That had certainly dispelled all worries about when and where hand-holding might be appropriate tonight.
"You'll be fine. I'll hunt down the other one tomorrow night. I should go, you'll be safer-"
"Food would be nice." His hand was clasped tightly to Wes' and wouldn't let go of it, not even to drive, although James kept saying it wasn't safe to drive like that. They ate at the pub a few blocks away that had good pizza, James said. Wes insisted on simple and familiar rather than his well-intentioned plans and eventually James let go of his hand to put a few quarters in the ancient jukebox.
"Would it be too forward of me to ask if I could come over tonight?" James had suggested after they'd wrapped up the last few pieces of pizza in foil. James had phrased it as if it were somehow suggestive, but Wesley saw fear nearly every day of his life and he recognized the not very well hidden version screaming on James' face.
"I insist," Wes had said with no hesitation. "I think I even have an extra toothbrush," he said with a sort of lop-sided smile trying to keep things light.
He'd tucked James into his pull-out couch in his simple, well-worn apartment within moments of showing him inside, James' face turning to exhaustion. James hadn't objected to Wes' coddling, merely saying quietly that he would make Wesley breakfast in the morning for going through all this trouble and he'd appreciate it if Wes left his bedroom door open. Just in case.
There had been several conversations over the week after that. Many involving James curled against Wes' side on one or the other of their sofas.
James didn't seem inclined towards any more dates.
Thankfully for Wes' heart, it didn’t seem like they needed any.
- - -
"He's gone," Wes said, struggling not to let his voice break. The rest of his words sounded like a garbled telegraph to his ears but he gave Angel the quickest synopsis of the situation that he knew how to with all the necessary information before his voice could give out on him without his consent.
He had no doubt that Angel knew exactly who 'he' was. Though Angel had been invited to the wedding, he hadn't deigned to show his face. As if Wes wouldn't get that prickling feeling on the back of his neck when Angel was nearby. It would always be that way, Wes knew. There was simply no shaking Angel once he became a part of your heart. Wes suspected Buffy knew something about that.
There had been a lovely gift inside their house when they got back late and drunk from the reception that night. James had been set to call the police, but Wes had felt strangely calm and...accepted by their guest (invited in by whom, he didn't know, but Wesley was quick to re-cast the spells to un-invite Angel, lest anything went awry someday). The knowledge that Angel had been there, had more than certainly wandered through their things, and yet had left his blessing for the union had filled up a tiny empty spot inside him.
Wes suspected that Angel had been relieved that Wes had found someone, well, because that was Angel. Constantly pushing others away in order to keep them safe. He was, it seemed to Wes, the vampire - wild, dangerous, calculatingly blood-thirsty creature of the night - who was more afraid of you than you were of him. Or even more so and more accurately, Angel's fear of himself was more than any other person's fear of him might be. It was a slippery slope Angel walked, and Wes had never belittled the possibility of Angel's quick descent into darkness, but he also imagined that Angel perceived himself as already having a foot in the doorway and that it was his own force of will that kept him out of it rather than his connections and loyalties to those he loved. Angel would always be at the ready to shove those in his life away at any sign that he might slip and stumble. Which Angel fully expected he would.
So, yes, it must have been quite a relief for Angel to have one less person, one less second to worry about saving if that big day ever came and he had to race against the clock to make sure those in his life were safe. It truly must have helped him to have Wes out of his life.
That didn't mean Wes couldn't hear the broken heart in the back of Angel's silence on the phone.
Angel was like that. When he loved, he loved bigger and harder than even he himself imagined. Possessive to a degree that made him blind to how much he really did care about those in his life.
It was the one thing Wes knew he could count on even after all their falling outs. It was how Wes knew that Angel would help no matter how awkward or painful the situation might be.
- - -
"I'll be honest, I really don't have that much experience with men," James had murmured a few weeks after that spectacular first date, his fingertips smooth and soft on Wes' cheek, his eyes shy, but his want shining brightly and earnestly.
"I don't mind that at all," Wes had said back, feeling that darker possessive beast in him crawling to the surface and making him feel ridiculously glad that James would be all his. "I'm in no hurry, James." His hand had sat so gentlemanly at James' waist, heat of his fingers seeping through James' button-down.
"What if I am?" James' smile had been so bright, brighter than the fire flickering behind them in the fireplace. It was strange to feel this feeling blooming hot and full in his chest as he looked at this man in front of him. James' questions about 'his' world hadn't stopped, but Wes found that he didn't mind them so much - it had felt good to tell James about his life as if he were finally unburdening himself of decades of secrets. Granted, he hadn't told James all the gory details, but his rapt attention had encourage Wes to say more than he would have told any other...civilian. James encouraged him, too; knowledge was power, he insisted and it seemed to quell some of James' nerves and anxiety about this world that he'd never seen or heard of until now.
It was bizarre really that James had taken to it so easily. James claimed it was due to his scientific mind matched with the magic of medicine - that sometimes patients made it when they shouldn't and others didn't when they should. Wesley suspected it was something a little more macabre than that, but he didn't question something that seemed to work for the both of them. Like right now. James' hand slid down the middle of Wes' chest and a spark lit so hot at the small touch that he found himself aching to feel James' gentle hands on every cell of his skin.
"I suppose I wouldn't object," Wes had teased lightly before covering James' lips with a heat and passion he couldn't seem to put into words.
It was hands and touches, lips and long deep kisses after that, James surprising both of them by pushing Wes to the floor and peeling his clothes off before Wes could get out another word. He'd laughed though and reached for James' clothes as well. He couldn't remember laughing during sex before, he couldn't remember feeling like this either. Like James drew out all the darkness in him with each brush of his fingers. It was as though James soaked it up and it melted away making Wes feel purer, calmer, more real than he had in years.
He'd imagined-No, he'd never imagined that it would be anything like this with Angel. He'd imagined it would be dark, the darkness wrapping around him like a comforting blanket combined with the safety of Angel's powerful body.
But with James... It was nothing like that and Wes felt more safe, more sure and more loved than he knew it ever could have been with Angel.
He felt James' fingertips tracing over his face, and when Wes' eyes met James', he felt a warmth that told him James was memorizing all the shapes and lines, cataloguing them in his doctor's anatomy-oriented brain and then turning them over inside his heart to see what each piece was really made of. Wes let his eyes close, deciding he would let the pieces fall where they may and James could make his assessments whatever they might be. He'd never felt so vulnerable as he had then, James' fingers drifting lower and higher, tracing his bullet wounds, tracing the lurching scar on his throat...
And coming back for more.
It scared Wes. He didn't move away though. Didn't try to stop any of it from happening.
Lord, he had fallen fast and hard.
- - -
"You know Cordy's in a coma. Still." With Angel it was always full stops. He would have made a great telegraph operator.
"I do still have contacts in L.A., yes, Angel. Who do you think has been sending you those specialists all these years? But we don't have time for this. He has days. If he's not- dispatched already. We don't have time, Angel." No time for the past now. Those days were gone.
- - -
Wes knew it was time for him to go all those years ago. They had been his family and they had betrayed him. Left him for dead. Angel and the pillow in the hospital... Wes still woke up gasping from those nightmares even with James' solid warmth at his side. Wes had done his last good dead of pulling Angel out of the ocean and he'd left. It didn't mean he hadn't had misgivings, that there weren't days when he wanted to come crawling back to Los Angeles. Even after he met James, there were still days when he missed them, his family. Or the people he'd thought were his family.
He'd tried. Tried to cut out the past, cut it off so it wouldn't be an anchor dragging him down...
"You should talk to them. See if they're okay. Not just through your rats or whatever," James had waved his hand.
"They're criminal informants, James, and no I shouldn't. I left that place behind me. They left me." They hurt me, they made me this dark creature who doesn't know what's white or black, was what Wes was really thinking.
"Mm." James could make the most infuriating non-commital noises, the manipulative bastard. "Talk to them. Cordelia at least. Gunn? Then cast them aside. A clean break rather than just disappearing without a word. Without knowing." James gave him a look over the top of his medical journal, glasses slipping down his nose a notch. "It's called closure, sweetheart."
Wesley had muttered under his breath and ignored that the conversation had happened. But eventually he came around. Like he always did when it came to James and his unsubtly subtle plots.
- - -
"You've got plenty of contacts and from what you say, he might not even be here in-"
"Angel, you of all people, do I really have to spell it out for you?
"I am a big, dumb vampire after all. Not people."
"There's no one else. Every resource- everything I have has been exhausted. There, are you happy or did you need me to beg in writing?"
"Wes..."
"What? Too scathing, Angel? I had thought perhaps that my calling you out of the blue might be enough of an indicator to get it through your thick skull that this was important and something I might actually need your particular help with. You may remember how you were the only one who had the crucial key to the Beast?"
"That wasn't me." Angel's voice had gone clipped and steely cold.
"You know what I meant. Angelus is you, you're Angelus. It's a bit hard to call on him without calling you. Can we please be done with this discussion and move onto the part where I either hang up and get you here or get to L.A. or I hang up and-" fling myself at this like a kamikaze pilot was what he was thinking but didn't voice. He had never felt so helpless in all his adult life. Wes' heart had never been so squarely in the path of a guillotine.
The pause was pregnant, but the words were not lost in the length of the connection. "What can I do, Wes?"
"Thank you, Angel."
- - -
"Wes! Dinner's ready!" Blankly, Wes heard the call, gleaning from the voice that this wasn't the first time James had uttered the information. The tone was hardly irritated though, it was merely an inquisitive one that said, have I broken the brain-book barrier, yet, sweetheart?
Saving his place and padding out to the kitchen, he leaned in to kiss James' cheek and murmured his standard apology.
"Save it, you charmer. You know I've got it all timed out. On a good day, it takes four calls, today you made it a miraculous three, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce." James grinned and tapped a dab of sauce to Wesley's nose.
"So very forgiving of my missteps, my over-worked Dr. Wilson," Wes said, smearing the sauce from his nose onto James' cheek.
"I could say the same for you," James murmured, turning off the stove and looking at him with one of those gazes Wesley felt he was never likely to understand. "All part of the package, sweetheart," James whispered. This man loved him beyond all sanity and reason, foibles and disasters of his past alike. It made no sense, but he held onto it tightly while it was still offered.
- - -
Wes shouldered his bag at the buzzing, sparkling airport, scanning for the dark eyes and hair he would know in his sleep.
"Wes."
Of course, the bastard would sneak up like a cat.
"Angel."
Wes was probably imagining it but those two words seemed so fully of meaning - a lot of meaning that he didn't want to examine, but a significant amount of speeches, words and feelings, nonetheless.
He dismissed them.
"Any leads yet?" Wes was in full leader-mode, easing his way to the exits with a serpentine grace that would have rivaled Angel's if either of them had noticed. In fact, Wes was trying not to notice anything but his goal-which was interrupted by Angel hand tight on Wes' upper arm before he could stride into the blinding light and heat of a Los Angeles sunset.
"Basement exit's this way." Angel's grip didn't fade until Wes met his gaze.
"Right." He followed Angel thinking that he really had been living a world away if he'd forgotten about Angel's most significant allergy. It was unsettling.
It was unsettling to see that Angel still had the exact same car - the car that Wesley had imagined many times as the site of one of his many trysts with Angel, pants shoved down, cocks rubbing, skin sticking to the worn leather seats, Angel's cool nose at Wes' throat smelling the blood beneath the surface-
Yes, most unsettling. He shook the thoughts aside and swung his bag into the trunk, Angel already inside the tinted darkness of the driver's seat.
"Any leads?" Wesley folded his long frame into the car, shuffling his sunglasses into one of many pockets, picking up the conversation where he'd left off.
"How can you be sure they've taken him here?" Angel pulled into traffic smoothly, Wes' eyes drawn to the eternally strong hands on the wheel. "It's a long way to take a kidnapping."
"I don't know that it's really a kidnapping, per se," Wes rubbed his fingers over the leather of the door. "There's been no demands on me, no request for ransom. James was just gone." Miraculously his voice didn't crack. "Either way, this particular...kidnapping is outside of the police's purview and these bastards know it. They need him here because this must have something to do with you." It always came down to Angel, it always had. "Who else could they use to get to you? Who else close," he nearly spat the word, but restrained himself, "to you has anything that could be enough leverage to get them to lead them to you. As roundabout as that is." Wes pursed his lips and looked out the window rather than out the window. "Everyone knows Connor is guarded to the teeth. Cordy's- I suppose they could have done something with Fred or Gunn-"
"They split. Amicably, but there's no leverage there."
"I am the weakest link." Bitter wasn't the word Wesley would use.
"Everyone knows you've been gone for years. Why now? Maybe they need you."
Wes snorted derisively. The only person that needed him was James. And it had taken him a good many years to even believe that. Sometimes he still didn't believe it.
"You've got skills, Wes. I don't know why you forget that."
"Plenty of people-"
"They don't. Plenty of people don't have your skills. Still the same Wes, still that same bullshit, huh?" Angel's face was impassive.
"It's realistic-"
"It's bullshit and you know that. Guess your doctor hasn't really change you at-"
"Do. Not," Wes said in a tone cold enough to freeze even Hell, "Talk about that which you know nothing of, Angel."
Angel was silent for several long beats. "Even if they did need you, why not make demands? Why not get you in their claws right away and get you to the doctor as soon as possible if they want him to be a lure? Why now? Could be a ritual thing. They might need your mojo to complete it..." Angel was spewing a lot of words. Perhaps he'd been working too much on his own these days.
Wes rubbed his face tiredly. "I checked the biggest rituals that would be coming up. Nothing that requires anything you could specifically contribute. You and your attributes are rather rare after all... There wouldn't be that many rituals ever, much less right now to require you...or me. None that I've found yet anyway. I'll need to stop by some of the local bookshops, of course. Los Angeles has always been a bigger mystical centre. The combination of the Hellmouth and central American mystical and demonic influences as well as the clerics of the Missions-"
"It's late, we're here, Wes. You should rest."
Wes nodded reluctantly. "Only an hour. We don't have time..." he repeated if only to assure himself that there was still reason to keep worrying about running out of time.
- - -
The hospital was bright and sterile. He had no idea why he'd come here instead of home except that he knew James would have taken him to the hospital anyway. Just in case.
Personally, Wes preferred James' private ministrations. Even if there was blood.
James preferred not replacing the hall carpet every three months.
The elevator dinged and opened onto James' floor. Wes groaned inwardly, remembering that James' horrible friend was also on this floor. Hopefully, their paths would not cross. Wes wasn't feeling up to their usual barbs this afternoon.
Ambling over to the nurses desk carefully - his ankle was killing him, his knee was on fire - but it turned out that was nothing compared to the sight of James chatting up some buxom doctor-nurse-evil-cleavage-bearing---
Wes snarled and then closed his eyes, pausing at the nearest corner for refuge. He knew about this. He knew about James' past. He knew James' need to be needed, desired, wanted. He had just hoped that it wouldn't stare him in the face-
"Sexy, isn't she? She's new." A familiar voice had come from behind his shoulder where the wall was propping him up. "Bobbi? Or Bambi, Bimbo, who cares. He likes her...bedside manner." Wes could hear House shrug carelessly as he dragged the words out lasciviously. Wes knew this game. House was ever so good at this game of trying to twist the knife and find some chink to break up he and James. House felt it was a fling, even three years in. House didn't believe James could actually be serious about him. In truth, Wes believed the same, but he wasn't about to give House the satisfaction of breaking them up - that would be up to James, not House.
"Bugger off, Gregory," Wes gritted out, his leg really killing him now. Using House's first name made him feel a little better.
Seemed that came out a bit louder than he anticipated, because James immediately looked over at them, sprinting away from the Bambi woman mid-sentence.
"Wes. Wes, fuck." James was pulling one of Wes' arms around his shoulders and towards the nearest gurney. Not a glance to House, not even an apology over his shoulder to the woman for running off in the middle of their conversation. James was too polite not to apologize about that, but-
"James, my knee, stop- Ow," Wes clamped his jaw together tightly and was focusing all his energy on not throwing up from the pain.
"Wes, Jesus, where have you been, how did this happen-It's been three days!" James was in a flutter and Wes knew better than to try and answer any of James' questions when he was like this. He needed to get out all the nervous worry from the last few days and nights. It would bubble up in the following days that much Wes knew, but right now it was best just to let James do what he did best.
Later when they were home, Wes propped on the couch with everything at his fingertips and James smoothing his hand over Wes' forehead for the thousandth time, Wes asked quietly, "She's new?"
"Hmm?"
"The, ahh, woman? You were chatting with?"
"I was chatting...Dr. Maddox?" James' brow knitted. He hadn't even realized he'd done it. Wes' chest expanded in a relief he didn't know he could feel.
"I haven't seen her around your ward; new employee?"
"Bailey Maddox? Oh, yes, she's a new resident, very interested in the kids. She's thinking of specializing in cancers that are prone to hit children," James continued, his voice warming Wes and eventually Wes let his eyes fall closed as James went on about the field. Not about Bailey. James had just needed-well, he'd needed Wes and Wes hadn't been there. He would do better. If James could put up with Wes' excruciating nightmares and anxieties, Wes could handle this. He could make sure James never had to look further than their life together. He could do that. He could be enough.
- - -
"Alexei's had nothing, Silas was gone, boarded up," Wes said, striding quickly back into the hotel, same old, same old. It was as though the cobwebs were part of the décor. Wes told himself he didn't miss it. That the memories weren't happy or painful. They were just memories.
"Yeah, a couple years ago now." Angel strode out of the office, phone to his ear. Clearly, he was...on hold? Wes arched a brow and flopped down the few scrolls and tomes he had actually managed to scrounge up. He already had several open as he scanned over them, ignoring Angel's sparse one-sided conversation. There had to be something in here. Some demon to raise, some world disaster to call into play with Angel at the center of it. Why else would they take an innocent and completely irrelevant hostage like James? He and James had money, some, but not enough to inspire a true kidnapping. The few proofs of life Wes had received were too raw to be anything from professionals. At least not professionals of the non-magical kidnapping sort. He felt his mind wander to those few messages and the last video. James had been trying not to look terrified, to reassure Wes, but he hadn't bought it for a second. He'd nearly broken down at the sight. Wes had been shaking the rest of the night. There had been blood.
That had been the last straw. The abductors said James only had another week. It would be a month by then. Perhaps that was some sign of a purification being complete? Why were they even bothering to contact him if they wouldn't say what they wanted? Anyway, that had been when he'd given in and contacted Angel.
The snap of Angel's phone thankfully pulled him out of his thoughts. He needed to be sharp, not thinking of James. That was the last place his mind needed to be and he knew it even if it felt horrible and cold. He wanted James here...
"Merl thinks he might've heard something about a doctor. Care for a reunion?" Angel interrupted.
"I can't believe he's survived as a snitch this long." Wes was already grabbing his jacket.
"He hasn't. Runs a ridiculous topless bar now. Well, with a lot of muscle surrounding him, considering all the people's he's snitched on." Angel and his coat swirled out the door. Wes actually smiled at the sight. "Oh, and there's bumper cars."
- - -
"Monster trucks. Really." Wes had arched a brow.
"Really. You don't like them? I can ask House-"
"No, no. I'm sure- Gunn used to watch them on television. I'm sure it'll be interesting."
James snorted. "Honestly, if you don't want to come, I can give the tickets to House. We can do something else this weekend. Something that we'd both enjoy."
"No. James, we'll go to the monster truck rally. I like when you're enjoying yourself. That'll be entertainment enough for me," Wes had said, arms circling James' waist. "And I know you'll pay me back later if I'm thoroughly bored," Wes smirked.
"Cocky bastard," James had murmured, already pulling him in by his tie for a deep, melting kiss.
- - -
"That was an utter waste of time," Wes growled, shoving the hotel door open, but trying to reign himself in. Research. He could get back to the research.
"It was pretty funny seeing Merl trying to run away from you in a bumper car though," Angel chuckled, shrugging out of his duster.
Wes threw Angel a murderous glare. "Is this all a lark to you?"
"Wes-"
"No, I will not calm down, you prat, this is my partner," he whirled to say something more, to shove Angel possibly, but Angel was already there, solid wall of muscle and Wes was overwhelmed by the flood of everything he'd been holding in. More than anything just then, he wanted to be folded up in those arms and he wanted to sob in frustration, in worry, he just wanted to sob like a child while Angel held him safely.
Instead he stiffened and looked from Angel's chest to his face. "Angel..."
"Yeah, I know," and Angel was in his office, the moment gone.
Continued here.