Sitting in the holding cell, trying not to notice the way the large man in the dirty vest was picking his teeth, and the way that brutish-looking fellow seemed to be one intermeshing pattern of tattoos, Wesley wished that he were almost anywhere but here. Not back in that abandoned warehouse being mauled by a demon, admittedly, but almost anywhere else. The throbbing in his shoulder was getting worse – so it was just as well that his hangover was giving him so much pain and that the bite wound had some competition. The brain was only capable of processing so much at a time, that was what his lovely, leggy, yet decidedly eccentric cousin Viola had once told him, before breaking into another rousing rendition of Libiamo, libiamo, ne’ lieti calici to dim the pain of her high heels.

“You see, Wesley, a moment ago the pain was so bad I was ready to bite you, just because you’re the only thing around, and now it’s almost manageable. Libiamo ne'dolci fremiti...."

At the time they had been making their way through narrow lanes full of disconcerting rustlings from overgrown hedgerows, on a damp, foggy, and worryingly moonless night. His recollection – somewhat dimmed by time – was that they had been on their way back from a house party on Dartmoor at which arrangements had been made for them both to stay. There had been some altercation between Viola and one of the chinless young men with whom she tended to become involved, and she had stormed out of the house, then stormed back, grabbed the fourteen year old Wesley by the hand, and dragged him with her, because she was, as she had told him – through a slur of what smelt like pure vodka – reshpons…responsh…meant to be taking care of him.

She had insisted that they would stay the night at the house of another distant relative – Cousin Godfrey, who was a Pryce-Channing on his mother’s side, and, although not actually a Watcher, was a researcher of the supernatural, who occasionally did work for the Watchers’ Council. He had felt the best place to do so was in an isolated farmhouse in the middle of a moor that crawled with things that went crunch in the night. It was a plan that had already seemed flawed to Wesley – what with their hazy recollection of where Cousin Godfrey lived – ‘Down a lane somewhere – I’ll know it when I see it’ seeming to him to be a less than specific as directions went – and the quantity of alcohol that Viola had consumed – even before the fuel gauge had dropped to empty and it turned out that they had made their way to the house party on fumes. Of course, Viola had not been carrying a can of petrol; Viola did not believe in planning for emergencies; she believed in assuming that everything would be all right and then browbeating whichever situation then arose until it gave in and agreed with her.

Viola really had been very lovely to look at with great quantities of dark curling hair, brown eyes of the large, lustrous and imperious kind, and a habit of ordering him around that Wesley had actually rather liked. She had been a fearless rider who everyone expected to break her neck, but who never had – which was a good thing as her neck had been long and slender and Wesley had always harboured a secret desire to nibble it. Even before his teenage hormones had more or less rendered him her slave, he had always been very malleable – there were a number of embarrassing photographs in the family album from when Viola and Cousin Mary had dressed him up as Little Bo Peep, not to mention that time when they had made him play a flower maiden in one of their impromptu plays. Even as a six year old he had suspected that there was a good reason why his male cousins tended to run away very quickly when they heard Viola advancing on them with a purposeful tread, but he had been so glad to get any attention that even if it involved being dressed up by twelve year old girls with too much time on their hands, he had generally tended to acquiesce.

As an unstoppable twenty-something Viola tended to carry Wesley along in the whirlwind of her impetuous nature, which was why they had found themselves walking along a lane in the middle of the night, several miles from the nearest habitation, on exactly the kind of dark and moonless night when vampires liked to lurk and demons walk the earth. He had been, as he recalled, terrified to the point of babbling incoherence, and his terror had spiked like an EKG when she had begun to sing in a loud and not entirely tuneless soprano in a way that sounded to him like the remorseless banging of the dinner gong.

“But, there are things...Viola...there are things in the dark and...”

“Oh, Wesley, don’t be such a fusspot. I have thingumajig in my bag.”

“A thingumajig?”

“Hush. A pointy wooden thing. You know. In my bag. Just in case.”

“The bag you left in the car we had to leave behind when it ran out of petrol?”

Viola had considered the point for a moment before launching into Godiamo, la tazza e il cantico at a pitch and volume that had made him squeal like a girl.

Two minutes later, of course, Cousin Godfrey had driven past and, after their frantic yelling and waving had noticed them in the rearview mirror and reversed – very badly – to collect them. He had seemed not at all surprised to see them, and Viola seemed to have no awareness of how fortunate she had been not to be eaten and – no small consideration from Wesley’s perspective – to get him eaten as well. Godfrey had confirmed that the moor was indeed crawling with all kinds of supernatural evildoers on a night like tonight and he was on a plakticine hunt. He was hoping, he had told them with a beaming smile, for all kinds of phosphorescent secretions.

“Well, we were hoping for some hot chocolate and some warm beds, Cousin Godfrey,” Viola had told him in her best ‘quelling all opposition’ voice. Although he well understood the gypsy violin lure of plakticine himself, for once Wesley had been grateful that Viola was so utterly selfish that nothing ever existed for her except her immediate wants. The chattering of Wesley’s teeth and the flimsy nature of Viola’s dancing attire had forced Godfrey to – reluctantly – change his plans and take them to his home, which had been every bit as draughty, creepy, and squeaky as Wesley remembered it. Wesley had hoped that he would lecture Viola about her irresponsible behaviour, but to his annoyance, the man hadn’t said a word; it evidently not even occurring to him that there was anything foolish in wandering around a moor in the middle of the night armed only with a pair of high heeled shoes.

Now he thought about it, his fascination with Cordelia in Sunnydale represented either the triumph of hope over experience or the proof that he truly was incapable of learning from his mistakes.

Wesley became aware that the large man had stopped picking his teeth and was looking at him belligerently. He smelt strongly of alcohol – Wesley wasn’t being judgemental, he was quite willing to concede that he probably reeked of Bloody Marys and tequila slammers himself at the present juncture, not to mention blood, sweat, and demon gore. But he was also being careful not to make eye contact with anyone in a way that could possibly be construed as a challenge, whereas this fellow appeared to be spoiling for a fight.

He should have gone with Gunn and Cordelia to the hospital, but he had known that if he did so that someone would insist on treating his shoulder, and, not only did he have exactly the right ointment at home, he had no medical insurance, and couldn’t afford to pay for any treatment, including an aspirin or a piece of elastoplast.

It had been stupid to go towards the Hyperion – stupider still to use the sewer route – the place could easily have been crawling with vampires unburdened by any soul, however tenuously connected. Instead he had found dust and blood, and Angel’s sword lying amidst the gore. His heart had given such a painful lurch that he had staggered into the wall. It had taken a moment for his heartbeat to slow enough that he could stand upright again. Picking up the sword he had hurried towards the Hyperion, hoping to find Angel there but now wondering if he had not answered their call earlier because he was already…

The snarl of something sounding both huge and angry reminded him that he had been thrown all round a warehouse by a demon earlier in the day, was still bleeding – sending out a beacon to every carnivorous creature in the area – and was almost certainly not fit to take on another opponent, especially in a confined space. He had run, his turn of speed evidently catching the creature on the hop, as it had taken it a full two seconds to realize that its meal was no longer within pouncing range. Throwing himself around corners like a brakeless racing car, he had bounced from wall to wall and then hauled himself up an iron ladder towards the manhole cover above – his shoulder shrieking a protest as it was forced to take his weight. As something clawed and furry closed upon his foot, he kicked out hard, and yanked himself upwards, shouldering the manhole cover off with a deafening clatter. He had rolled awkwardly – hurting his shoulder more – but come up standing with Angel’s sword still clasped in his hand. The creature shot up out of the sewer, roaring with fury and he had swung the sword with all his might. His shriek of pain as every muscle in his wounded shoulder seemed to tear was echoed by the death yell of the Borag Demon who, decapitated, dissolved at once into foul-smelling ooze.

He had still been gazing at the puddle of ichor at his feet when a flashlight almost blinded him and he staggered backwards to find himself on the wrong end of a handgun and policemen telling him he was under arrest for having an offensive weapon. He had still been in the adrenaline-fear-relief overload of having twice escaped death in one night, not to mention consumed by the fear that Angel might be dust, and had apparently seemed surly to the police officers – who had relieved him of his borrowed sword none too gently before handcuffing him in a way that made his shoulder sing an entire aria of pain.

His one phone call had been a somewhat garbled one to Cordelia asking her to please come and bail him out as soon as possible…

“You British?”

Wesley looked up at the man in the vest who, now that he was standing, looked most formidable. He was not as tall as Gunn but his shoulders gave the impression that they could eclipse a smallish sun with ease. Wesley thought about denying his country but remembered in time that he could not manage a credible American accent.

“Yes, actually. Are you a visitor to our shores?” He tried his best pleasant and engaging smile – the one that during his stay in Sunnydale had seemed to inspire everyone to new excesses of loathing for him, but perhaps that had just been them being unreasonable.

The man scowled at him horribly. “What do you think you’re smiling at?”

No, then, not just Buffy and the others being unreasonable; apparently his smile was just inherently annoying. Useful information for future social intercourse, certainly, but not necessarily very helpful at the present juncture.

Telling himself that someone who, on a regular basis, fought things fanged and scaly that would no doubt make this lout wet himself in terror if he ever beheld them, should not back down before a little intimidation didn’t help as much as it might have done on a day when every muscle wasn’t already aching and the throb in his shoulder making him want to curl up in a corner and whimper. Of course, being punched was survivable; he had plenty of empirical evidence of that. Being tied to a chair and beaten in and out of unconsciousness before being sliced up with a piece of broken glass was survivable, but that didn’t make it an experience he was keen to repeat.

“I assure you, I meant no insult,” he said wearily. He was already at the stage of thinking ‘Oh just hit me then and get it over with’. He barely had enough energy to make a fist right now, and although he believed he could still punch reasonably well with his right hand, his follow up was going to be restricted to whimpering and swearing as the reverberations went straight through his wounded left shoulder.

“Wyndam-Pryce?”

He turned around in disbelief. Could Cordelia have possibly got here so soon? Seeing the officer beckoning to him impatiently, he was on his feet in an instant and moving away rapidly from He of the Unsightly Vest.

“You made bail,” the policeman told him with a shrug, as if it were no miracle at all, that the only two people who could possibly have cared enough to get him out of prison had done so, even though, as far as he knew, they barely had enough to pay next month’s rent between them.

He looked for Cordelia as he blundered out into the painful brightness of the station, expecting a scolding but hoping for a sandwich. He realized that the only thing hurting more than his hangover and his shoulder right now was his hunger. He turned around in confusion, not seeing the long brown hair and blue fake fur collar he was expecting.

“Hey, English.”

An awkward spin and there was Gunn, giving him a look of concern and holding out a hot dog. “Figured you might be…”

Wesley had snatched it from his hands and begun to devour it before he remembered to say ‘Thank you’.

Gunn grinned. “You’re welcome.” He put a steadying arm around Wesley’s shoulders and the urge to just lean in against him and let the man take his weight was almost overwhelming. Wesley belated realized that he was also exhausted. Gunn helped him out of the station, the darkness a balm after so much neon and noise. “You okay? Cordy had it fixed in her head they were going to be playing pass the parcel with you in the holding cells.”

“Someone took exception to my accent. I think he might have given me some unscheduled dental work if you hadn’t arrived in the nick of time.”

“It is kind of annoying,” Gunn assured him, nevertheless opening the door of the truck for him and helping him up as gently as if his beaten-up vehicle were a limousine and Wesley his date for the Prom.

“What, no corsage...?” Wesley murmured.

Gunn swung himself up into the driver’s seat with all the athletic agility of a man who didn’t have a bite wound in his shoulder. He reached across to do up Wesley’s seat belt, feeling his forehead anxiously. “I think you’re running a temperature. That scaly whose card we punched wasn’t packing any venom, was he?”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s just a normal reaction to getting very drunk and then getting very frightened and then feeling a great deal of pain and then having a shock and then getting chased by another demon and more fear and adrenaline and then being arrested and locked up in a holding cell with large sweaty, unfriendly men.”

Gunn touched his arm gently and gazed into his eyes. “Better than being locked up in a holding cell with large sweaty, friendly men, Wes.”

It took Wesley a moment to get it and then he did and grimaced. “Fair point, well made.” At Gunn’s insistence he filled him in on the night’s events to which he had not been a witness, trying to make the ‘going into the sewers unarmed’ part sound slightly less stupid, but, judging by Gunn’s expression, not altogether succeeding.

Gunn pulled out into the fleeting traffic, rain spattering the windscreen, oncoming headlights giving Wesley’s heart that brief stab of panic at them being on the wrong side of the road until he remembered that was normal here. He wanted to eat another six hot dogs and sleep for a week. He also wanted someone to make the pain in his shoulder stop. But first…

“I need to find out if Angel’s still alive.”

“Not tonight.” Gunn didn’t even look round. “I’m under orders from Cordelia and I ain’t breaking them for nobody. She’s still riding out the aftermath of a vision migraine or she’d be here herself, and, trust me, I’m nicer.”

Wesley darted him a glance. “You are?” He was unconvinced. What he’d seen of Gunn so far seemed likeable enough. He had helped them out when Angel was at his most...difficult, he clearly had a calling of his own and had managed to rid the world of a fair number of vampires and demons through a technique as self-taught as it was effective. Wesley would undoubtedly have been killed tonight without Gunn’s assistance and very timely intervention, but he did tease a little, and make Wesley feel inadequate some of the time – well, most of the time really. He always seemed so confident and focused; as if he’d never even known what doubt was, and yet the man clearly had his own demons... It had felt particularly good this evening when Wesley had known what they needed to do, as clearly as he had ever known anything, that this was what they were here to do, to fight the good fight, however difficult or dangerous it might appear to be, however overpowering the odds, somehow a resistance must be made, the innocent must somehow be protected. And they had agreed with him, even Gunn, with no backbiting, no mockery, no sarcasm; he had led and they had followed, and, thanks to the three of them, a woman was alive who would otherwise have been dead, and a demon was dead who would otherwise have been feasting on human entrails.

Gunn reached into the back of the truck and produced another hot dog, which, to someone as hungry as Wesley was right now was not even slightly less miraculous than any turning of water into wine.

"See?" Gunn said. "Told you I was nicer."

“Thank you…” Wesley said breathlessly, and at that moment in time would have had to agree that no one in the world seemed nicer to him than Gunn.

“I know how hungry I was – I’ve already eaten three.”

“But – money – you and Cordelia had to find the bail money…?”

“Cordy had some put away for a rainy day.”

He knew where it would have come from. Her money from those adverts she’d done. She had been so proud of that money, the first she’d earned doing something she enjoyed. To someone who had been raised in as privileged a manner as Cordelia, he suspected that there had been even more of a sense of achievement for her at earning that money and he knew very well how much it meant to her.

“But she was saving it for something special.”

Gunn looked at his face and nodded. “Yeah, Cordy said you might take it like that. She said to tell you ‘You are special, dumbass’.”

Wesley found he had not just tears in his eyes but trickling down his face. He saw that sword lying in the bloody dust again, tried to gulp in some air and then the shuddering reaction wouldn’t be held off any longer. A wave of shame burned through him as he realized in horror that he was going to have a meltdown after all. “I’m terribly sorry....” he gasped.

At once, the truck swerved into the kerb and he was enveloped by sweat and the soft warmth of a sweater against his skin. Gunn’s fingers were unexpectedly gentle in his hair as they guided his teary unshaven face against the comfort of Gunn’s chest. “He ain’t dead, man. He’s on a revenge kick and he’s killing everything in his path for practice. I’ve been where he is and there ain’t no body count high enough, but you don’t die, everything in your path dies, but you’re still standing at the end of the day.”

He had what was possibly a bad case of reaction against Gunn’s chest for a few minutes while the man rubbed his back and let him get through it; not judging him, even though he wouldn’t have wept for Angel now or maybe ever. Wesley had been judged too many times in life – weighed and found wanting – not to feel the absence of judgement now; and that was perhaps the greatest comfort of all. “I do apologize.” He straightened up awkwardly. “I’ve cost Cordelia her savings and caused you a great deal of inconvenience – not to mention making a total bloody idiot of myself…”

“Hey.” Gunn reached across and clasped his good shoulder, lowering his head so Wesley had to meet his gaze, couldn’t evade it. “You and me – we’re good. You called it right tonight, and you fought as well as any guy on my crew. I thought we made a pretty good team.”

Wesley couldn’t help brightening at the praise, even though – please God – there must surely come a day when he was beyond this point. “Yes, our tactic of allowing a demon to smack us around while the other hit it until it smacked him around instead was quite masterly I thought. Anatoli Karpov could no doubt learn from us.”

Gunn smiled but his eyes were serious – and kind; Wesley realized as he looked into them that if there was anything he craved even more than praise and – right now – painkillers and another hot dog – it was kindness; the small acts of kindness that happened every day for no other reason than that there were people in his life who liked him.

“Damn, we fucked up.”

Wesley had to concede the truth of that. “I suppose that shinning up a drainpipe to attack a demon while armed only with good intentions could seem a little unwise after the event.”

“No, man, we all fucked up when we let you go home by yourself. Next time, if you don’t want to go into the hospital, you wait in the truck, okay? You don’t go home when you’re drunk and bleeding and so tired you shouldn’t even be walking, let along fighting demons. You were dumb to do that, but I was dumb to let you, so, let’s not do that again.”

Wesley felt warmed – not just by that expression of affection in Gunn’s eyes but by the realization that the man seemed to think there would be other times. “So, you’re going to...stick around?”

“Well, thinking about you and Miss Cheerleader taking on the big scalies by yourself ain’t gonna be conducive to me getting eight hours of the sweet and dreamless if you know what I’m saying.”

Wesley bristled. “I assure you, we...”

“Yeah, don’t even think about finishing that sentence. You used to have a vampire on the team, and now you don’t. You can’t take these things on by yourself, Wes. I don’t take them on by myself, and you know why...?”

“I have no doubt at all that you’re going to enlighten me.”

“Because, however hard I train and however much I want them dead, they’re always going to be stronger and faster than I am. The reason why I ain’t dead and they are is because we both know they’re stronger and faster than I am and it makes me careful and it makes them careless.”

“Anyone who less deserves the adjective ‘careful’ than you, Gunn…”

“So, remind me again, which one us was it tonight who got bitten, got chased through a sewer he had no business being in and then got picked up by the cops for waving a stolen sword around?”

Wesley might have liked Gunn somewhat less in that moment if the man hadn’t pushed a now only lukewarm but still very welcome third hot dog into his hands. “That’s the last one. You need more food we’re going to have to stop off and buy some.” Gunn reached out and examined the bite mark in Wesley’s shoulder, wincing as he eased the ripped shirt away from it. “Let’s get you home and get you patched up first. But in the morning we’re going to talk about this some more and you’re going to give me your pansy-assed British word you don’t go chasing off after demons without calling me first. I don’t care if Cordy’s vision says a busload of vampires on a coach tour from Vegas are going to be chowing down on the crowd during a Lakers game – you call me first.”

“I’m not sure I…” Wesley began to protest and then foundered on the look in Gunn’s eyes. It wasn’t the certainty that stopped him in his tracks, but the anxiety. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the rearview mirror and realized that he looked like a wreck. “I really am very grateful to you, Gunn.”

Gunn pulled up outside the door of his building and Wesley thought how little he wanted to struggle out of these clothes unaided and twist his body into all manner of painful contortions as he tried to apply ointment and bandaging. He could still feel shock and the fear of the moment when he had believed Angel was dust reverberating through him, a new tremor to add to the still reeling shock of having been fired. Again. Last time he had probably deserved it, but this time he genuinely thought he had done nothing wrong and yet clearly there had been some dereliction of…

“It’s not you. It’s him.” Gunn switched off the ignition. “When a guy’s got a short-circuit between his brain and his dick, reason doesn’t come into it. He locked a bunch of lawyers in a wine cellar which two crazy she-vamps, he ain’t at home to Mr Reason right now, and he didn’t fire you cause of anything you did.”

“How did you know I was…?”

“You don’t have a poker face, English.” Gunn jumped down from the cab and was around to help Wesley down while he was still fumbling at the door handle. “And it stands to reason that if more than five minutes has passed you’re probably thinking about vamp boy.”

“We were supposed to be his anchors to humanity. Without us, I’m afraid he could go seriously...adrift.”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t waiting around playing lighthouse keeper for a vampire that’s gone Marie Celeste.” Gunn looped Wesley’s good arm around his shoulders as if there had never been any question that he was coming up with him, digging in Wesley’s pocket for his keys as if they had done this a hundred times before.

Then they were going up the stairs that had seemed so endless when he had contemplated having to climb them alone, and were inside his apartment. And while he was still wondering if Gunn would mind just helping him with his clothing, Gunn had already snipped it off him. “Hate this damned shirt anyway. And, Wes, you and me need to talk about what are and what aren’t manly colours. Pink and yellow ain’t what I’d suggest if you’re planning on any more late night trips to a holding cell.” And then there was the blissful coolness of ointment on a stinging bite and his wound dressed so carefully that it put itself to sleep like a well-fed baby.

He found himself slumped against Gunn on his couch, the man holding a cup of tea to his lips and letting him sip despite being too tired to open his eyes and certainly too tired to hold a cup himself; Gunn’s arm around him, Gunn’s warmth a comfort on his bruised ribs, the man’s scent becoming as familiar as his own. He thought of Cordelia – who Gunn had called to let know that he was out of jail and who had spent all her savings to rescue him from an uncomfortable night in a holding cell, and how whatever they may say to one another when they were drinking, it meant nothing at all the moment one of them was in any danger. That was when the truth always asserted itself, and the truth was that they loved one another; earned love this time around, not the kind based on hormones, but on experience and trust. There was nothing about that thought that didn’t warm him like a sip of old brandy.

As he drifted off to sleep it was with his head on Gunn’s shoulder and Gunn’s fingers lightly carding through his hair, reminding him that there was life after Angel, after all, and that, even without him, there could perhaps be a cause, and a fight worth fighting, and people to fight it alongside him, and friendship, and loyalty. And, most of all, there could be kindness.

The End

Multi Fandom fic