Spoilers: Major for the Angel episode "Five by Five." Minor for events at the end of season three of BtVS concerning Wesley, Faith, and Xander.

Rating: PG-13. If you watch the show, you can read this.

Pairing: Angel/Wesley

Content Warning: h/c, m/m relationship implied, m/m/f friendship implied, hope that doesn't wig you <g>.

Summary: Angel saves Faith, but forgets about his lover.

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and his rotten cronies own the characters and the concept. I'm just playing with them. No infringement intended.

Notes: Partly inspired by a bitterness over the lack of Wesley imagery at supposed all encompassing BtVS and Angel image sites and mostly by the wonderful episode, "Five by Five." The title comes from "I Told Him That My Dog Wouldn't Run," by the wonderfully talented Patty Larkin.

He comforted her.

Wesley stood there, kitchen knife in hand, ready to defend his lover, to reap his own vengeance, and Angel comforted her. As his wounds bled, mixing with toxic rain, throbbing with the heat of blood, Wesley's lover held the instrument of Wesley's pain in his arms as if she were a precious doll.

The knife dropped in slow motion out of his hand and he stood watching as Faith fought against Angel's protective embrace. The rain joined the tears down Wesley's face as he walked past the battling pair. Neither noticed as he walked down the street, met up with a cab, and headed for Cordelia's

~~~~~

Thwap. Thwap.

The loud thudding and thwaping on the door woke Cordelia from her dream. Bloody scratches and gouged wounds had swirled on Wesley's body 'till she couldn't see anything but red. Just when she'd been about to scream because she couldn't find Wesley anymore, Cordelia woke up. Stumbling out of the bed, she made her way to the front door, muttering her thanks to Phantom Dennis who handed her a robe. Cordelia cautiously peered through the peep hole only to walk away from the door without even acknowledging the knock.

"Cordelia? I know you're in there. Ok, so I don't really know that, but I need your help. You haven't been in for days, and I can't find Wesley. Faith hurt him pretty badly but he's not in any of the local hospitals. Cordelia, stop playing around and let me in."

Suddenly, the door flew open to reveal a very angry, red-faced Cordelia standing there in white socks, boxer shorts, and a Sunnydale High tee-shirt with a white robe over the whole ensemble.

"Buddy, if you think I'm playing games, you must not be paying attention."

"Cordelia, are you going to let me in?" Angel made to walk over the threshold but felt two hands, one human and one phantom, push him back. He sighed. "What? Faith's not here. She's at the apartment."

"She should be dead."

"I can't kill her Cordelia. That would be too easy. And it would give her what she wants."

"You know what I want? Do you?!" The voice of the infamous Cordelia Chase rose higher with each word till she was nearly screeching, her finger stabbing into Angel's chest with her words. "I want her to pay. I want her dead. Do you know why? I bet you don't. You've been calling for almost two days, leaving messages, telling me everything's okay, that Faith is under control. How many times did you mention Wesley? How many? None, that's how many. Did you know that he broke 8 ribs? And that she broke his nose in two places? That he's slept maybe 3 hours since he's been here because every time he falls asleep he soon wakes screaming to an imaginary piece of glass in his face?"

Cordelia watched as bits of realizations flitted across Angel's face until he forcibly shoved past her. He strode into the apartment, sniffing the air before he headed for the bedroom, stopping in front of the door which lay open. He saw Wesley laying spread out on the bed, wearing nothing but a scanty pair of boxers with huge red lips on them. If it weren't for the fact that scratches, burns, and other wounds covered over half of Wesley's body, the sight would have been appealing. Angel felt a hand push him back from the room until he was standing in the kitchen. Dennis slid a chair out and Angel gratefully sank into it.

"I...I assumed he was okay. Or at least fairly okay. He managed to walk away from that apartment."

"He managed to stumble to a cab, which he took to my apartment, which I had to pay for. You owe me $32.89. He hasn't said much. Just some mumbling about comfort and rain." Cordelia paused from her studious inspection of her nails to stare at Angel. She waited until Angel raised his head to continue. "I've seen you do some stupid things, but this really takes the cake. Faith tortured him for hours, hurt him worse than his father ever did, then he walks away. I don't know what happened, and I'm pretty sure I don't need the details. This is your mess, fix it."

A weak, raspy voice came from the doorway of the bedroom. "Nothing to fix Cordelia. Though I do believe a cup of tea would not be amiss."

Two dark heads swung to gaze at Wesley leaning up against the doorframe, still shirt-less but now wearing a loose pair of black sweats. Livid purple bruises, shiny red welts, and what looked like road rash covered the slim, muscled chest. What scared Angel most was the look in his lover's eyes. There was nothing there. No, that wasn't quite right. It wasn't like Wesley looked like he was dead inside, but that he was fine. He was okay. Nothing had happened.

"Wesley…" Cordelia's voice trailed off as she choked on unshed tears.

"Please, Cordelia, do fetch me that cup of tea."

"Wesley, he doesn't deserve..."

"I believe that in this instance it is my decision what he deserves."

Cordelia looked at Angel once more before quietly moving off to the kitchen in a very un-Cordelia-like manner. Angel nearly ran from the couch to Wesley's side, only to have the slimmer man shrink from him. Cool hands buried themselves in the black leather jacket to resist the powerful urge to touch the wounded skin covering Wesley's bruised flesh.

"Angel, I want you to understand that what has happened tonight is not your fault."

Angel rushed in only to find his intended words sidetracked by Wes' raspy words. "Wes, I want you to understand...not my fault? Bright boy that I am, I ordered you to go off, leave my protection. I called you my employee." Angel snorted derisively. "If you'd been with me, I could have protected you. Then, after I'd already lost you to Faith, I got so caught up in trying to save her that I let you crawl off into the night, wounded and alone. I think that all pretty much adds up to moron."

A loud, female voice carried out from the kitchen. "You're not wrong there buddy."

Wesley spared Cordelia a tired, exasperated glance before looking back at Angel. One elegant, warm hand extended out towards a cool hand still plumbing the depths of the leather jacket. Angel dumbly let Wes fish his hand from the pocket and grasp it in his own scraped and still bleeding fingers.

"Help me back to the bed, Angel." In silence, the vampire braced Wesley's body with his own and eased him back to Cordelia's large wire frame bed. Angel eased his lover onto the bed and then stiffly stood back up, his arms locking next to his body. He didn't know what to say. Not that silence was exactly a new concept for him, but he had to say something? Didn't he? Oh, God, he could lose Wesley. Why would Wesley want to stay with someone who treated him like this? God, he was sounding like Wesley.

A warm hand on his upper leg nearly burned through the denim and made Angel start. The vampire met the mortal's gaze.

"Join me here, Angel, please."

"Wesley, I don't want to hurt you."

"You haven't and you won't. Lay down." The steel in the former Watcher's voice convinced Angel to gingerly arrange his body next to the warm figure on the bed, laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling to avoid actually looking at the disturbingly calm gray eyes.

"Angel...for the last year I've gone from being a completely incompetent Watcher to being your lover, your friend, and a necessary part of your team...if only to keep Cordelia in her place. Facing Faith...facing Faith was necessary. I failed her. I was caught up in static notions of duty and what being a Watcher meant. If I had taken a mere five seconds to look at Rupert and his Slayer, really look at them, I would have seen that Faith needed more than orders. She needed something that no one gave her in time. She needed someone to hold on so tight she couldn’t get loose." Wesley paused to drag in a long, painful breath, rubbing his fingers up and down Angel's fingers.

"You had to do what you did tonight. You dealt admirably and bravely with a horrible situation. You have done for Faith what I couldn't. Perhaps you'll be able to help her."

Angel couldn't have spoken if The Powers That Be themselves had dropped and demanded words for him. If there was one thing Angel had become accustomed to, it was guilt, blame. When someone died, it was his fault. When someone was hurt, it was his fault. When someone wasn't saved, he got blamed. Faith had very nearly ripped this seemingly fragile Englishman to bits, and the only thing Wesley had to give to the reason for his torture was praise. He barely felt the gently warm fingertips rub away his tears, tracing his lips and jaw. But he did notice the wince of pain from his bed companion as Wesley tried to shift to his side. Angel eased the other man back down and raised up on his own side.

"This is not to say that I wasn't...displeased with you at first. I rather fancied gutting you with the kitchen knife I was going to either save you with or kill Faith with. But I find myself oddly unable to hate her." Wesley paused, looking away from Angel for a moment. "When my father beat me, he did it because he liked it. He didn't do it because he'd been beaten as a child, or because he felt I needed the discipline, or because he was mentally disturbed. He just liked to see me hurt. Faith...Faith hurt me because she had been hurt. She wanted to stop hurting, and she saw only one way for that too happen. I do not hate her."

"You're a better man than I am...course that would make sense, because I'm not a man or anything." Cordelia's crisp voice broke the maudlin fog in the bedroom, at least for a moment. She carefully set the china tea cup, a cup Wesley had given to her, down on the bedside table before glaring at Angel again and stalking out.

"Doesn't look like Cordelia's as willing to forgive as you are." Angel dared to trace Wesley's chest injuries, carefully taking stock of the damage Faith had done. Wesley looked back at his vampire lover's tortured gaze, watching as the undead creature became more and more agitated, though he hid it well. Wesley put the back of his hand against the unnaturally smooth face, gliding over bones and flesh.

"I am a much more forgiving soul than Cordelia, that much is true. Cordelia, however, has her own reasons for disliking Faith." The vampire finally realized what Wesley's eyes held. Not nothing, but a lack of judgement. He had come to a certain peace with what had happened to him at Faith's hands.

Angel felt very old and very tired and very stupid. Wesley had known them all for barely a year and he still knew them better than Angel did. He remembered things like Xander's betrayal of Cordelia and Faith's secret dalliance with the young man. The vampire wanted to slip inside his lover's skin, in a non-Angelus type way, envelop himself in the warmth and support that Wesley offered. Unfortunately, this wasn't their bed, and Wesley was in no shape to be moved tonight. Angel was saved from making an unpalatable decision by the sudden appearance of Cordelia, robe-less, on the other side of the bed. She silently crawled in on the other side of Wesley, curving her body towards his. Angel hesitated for a split second before reciprocating, also curling against Wesley. They might have looked silly, a bunch of adults all cuddled up together.

They didn't.

They looked like family.