a.connor  a.doyle  a.lindsey  a.oz  a.spike  a.wesley  a.xander  a.other  three.somes  het.fic  character.study           
Title: Full Circle
Author: Lyrstzha
 Pairing: Angel/Wesley
Rating: NC-17
Setting: Post AtS- S5
A/N: Sequel to Turning in a Tightening Gyre



“So, you know...being dead. It’s not really, um. As bad as you’d think.” Angel shifts nervously in the doorway, all awkward earnestness and good intentions. Light from the hallway spills past his body to overwhelm the glow of the single candle in the dim room before Angel closes the door behind himself, though Wesley could have sworn he heard Spike complaining earlier that it would take another week to restore electricity to the parts of the Hyperion that still stand.

Wesley slowly raises his head from where it’s been resting on his drawn-up knees for hours as he sits on the foot of the bed. “Not as bad as I’d think,” he says slowly, in the same way that he used to carefully pronounce phrases from half-familiar languages aloud while translating ancient texts. He stares at Angel in disbelief. “How exactly is having my corpse reanimated for unknown yet undoubtedly nefarious purposes by our former employers, who happen to be the epitome of evil, not as bad as I’d think?”

Angel winces slightly at the sharpness of Wesley’s tone, but gamely forges ahead anyway. “Well. Um. It’s...it’s a standard perpetuity clause, you know,” Angel seizes on this with visible eagerness. “They may not have had any specific plan for you at all. Maybe they haven’t even noticed that it kicked in.”

Wesley arches one eyebrow in an economic display of scorn for this notion. “Ah, so you think my resurrection is merely some sort of bureaucratic oversight? How comforting. I wish I’d thought to draw reassurance from my own insignificance before. I feel so much better now that you’ve reminded me how very little my existence actually matters.”

Angel surges forward with a hand stretched out as if to seize Wesley’s shoulder, but he jerks to a stop just outside of touching distance. “No! You know that isn’t what I meant.” His hand is still half-reaching out, as if he’s forgotten where he left it. His eyes fix on Wesley’s with more than a hint of desperation. “Maybe I’m not so good with this whole talking thing, but I’d never say that. I’d never think that. I just...you’ve been brooding like this ever since—”

“Pardon me, did you say brooding?” Wesley cuts Angel off sharply, raising both eyebrows this time, telegraphing sheer incredulity. “Did you accuse me of brooding?” Angel opens his mouth to speak, but Wesley simply raises his voice quellingly. “Remind me. How long was it that you lived in the sewers when you first regained your soul?”

“That was different! That was...” Angel, looking sheepish and trapped, trails off and flails about with one hand vaguely. It resembles nothing so much as a landed fish.

“That was vampire brooding as opposed to zombie brooding, which makes all the difference in the world, I suppose?” Wesley wearily drops his head back to his knees.

“No,” Angel says softly, but with a core of steel in his tone this time. “I was alone, and I’d been a monster. You’re neither.” His hand does touch now, alighting hesitantly on Wesley’s shoulder as if uncertain of its welcome. “Wes...Wes, please. I’m sorry.”

Wesley rolls his head to the side to look up at Angel without taking his forehead off of his knees. “Sorry? You have nothing to be sorry for, Angel.”

The intensity of Angel’s gaze presses at Wesley with an almost palpable, demanding force. “I do. It was my plan, my fight. I sent you to your death.” The hand on Wesley’s shoulder tightens almost painfully. “It was always me, Wes. Ever since you came to L.A. Every time you’ve been hurt, every ugly decision you’ve had to make...it was always because of me. I didn’t get that until the night you thought you shot your father.”

A short bark of something that might have been laughter in a previous incarnation tears itself painfully from Wesley’s throat, and he lifts his head again to glare at Angel properly. “Your plan. Your fight. Don’t you dare take the blame for my life or my death, Angel! Don’t you bloody well dare weave me into your hairshirt! I may not have been the champion, but I chose to fight the good fight of my own free will. Not for redemption, or destiny, or fame, but because I wanted to make whatever difference a mortal man might. Don’t even think about trying to take that away from me.”

Angel’s hand recoils guiltily to hide against his thigh. “I didn’t mean it like that, Wes. You are a champion—I couldn’t have fought the good fight this long without you. I just...” Angel shifts restlessly, but doesn’t quite look away. “I guess I just feel like you’ve always been watching out for me, making sacrifices for me—even when I didn’t realize it. And okay, sometimes you got it wrong, and we both know that I used to think I couldn’t get past that. But? I did. Because I know that everything you’ve done has always been meant to protect me. And maybe I wasn’t looking out for you nearly so well.”

There’s a long moment of pregnant silence before some of the tension goes out of Wesley’s shoulders and the corner of his mouth pulls up slightly. “Only you could make guilty, self-centered condescension so endearing.”

Angel, with a tiny sigh of relief, offers him a small smile in return. “You think that’s something, wait til I break out the arrogant patronizing. I’ll be absolutely irresistible.”

Wesley’s lips twitch, and his gaze softens on Angel’s. Before he thinks about it, he replies, “I have always said that about you.” He blinks a little at his own words, but Angel just quirks a grin at him, and suddenly it’s all right.

The silence between them this time feels different—more like the moment before breaking the surface of the water after a deep dive, and less like the seconds of quiet between peals of thunder that one might count to gauge the nearness of a storm. Wesley finds himself half-closing his eyes to savor the simple peace of it. He thinks wistfully that things between them haven’t felt like this since the night he woke up in the hospital with a slit throat and nothing left but enemies wearing the faces of friends. The gentle brush of Angel’s returning fingers on his shoulder isn’t entirely unexpected, but the way they linger and delicately trace the curve of his collarbone through the cloth of his shirt definitely is. Wesley opens his eyes to peer questioningly at Angel’s face, but he finds that it’s suddenly like trying to travel a well-known route after all the landmarks have been jumbled.

“Wes. Wesley.” Angel’s hand kneads gently at the tendon on the side of Wesley’s neck. The callouses on his fingers scour at Wesley’s skin rhythmically, and it’s just as well that Wesley doesn’t need to breathe anymore. Wesley has to remind himself that this surely can’t mean what it feels like it means to him. “Aren’t you glad to be here? Do you want to be dead?” At the slight tilt of Wesley’s head, Angel concedes, “Deader, then. Is that what you want?” Angel drops easily to one knee, leaving them eye to eye. His hand curls more firmly around the back of Wesley’s neck. It feels more than a little proprietary, and Wesley isn’t sure what to think about that. “Because that isn’t what I want at all.”

For a dizzy moment, Wesley feels like a butterfly pinned to a display board. “Er. I...that is, you...” And how long has it been since Angel could render him this inarticulate? He could have sworn he was past this ages ago; hadn’t he let go of his blind, puppyish adoration of Angel in favor of a much more sensible comradeliness after Angel had fired them all? Surely he left this behind with the tweed and his innocence. Wesley gropes for his sense of self-possession, but Angel’s thumb slides along the line of his jaw and shatters coherent thought. Staring wide-eyed back at Angel, Wesley finds himself forgetting whatever he might have meant to say, and instead whispering, “What is it that you do want?”

The only warning Wesley has is the slight tightening of the hand cupping the back of his neck and a flash in Angel’s eyes. Then Angel is pressed against and over Wesley’s knees, and Angel’s lips are moving on his with a maddeningly gentle persistence. Wesley finds himself thinking a little wildly that he used to imagine that Angel’s lips would feel cold, but of course now he has no body heat himself to contrast against. A fluid flicker of Angel’s tongue against his lower lip has Wesley making a stifled noise deep in his throat and opening for Angel without conscious decision. Angel’s tongue strokes into his mouth firmly, and Wesley feels need and hunger go through him in a heady, gutting rush. Angel’s weight is inexorably pressing his knees apart, and Wesley realizes with a start that they’re spreading without much question.

With a wrench that feels a little like dislocating his own shoulder, Wesley pulls back. The slick, wet sound of their mouths parting nearly undoes him. He lays his fingers across Angel’s lips as much to remove temptation as to stop the protest he can see forming there. “Why? Why now?” And all right, he knows he sounds a little bitter there, but he doesn’t think it’s unwarranted. “If you’d wanted me in the beginning, it would have been easy. I would have been grateful. I worshiped you.” Angel is still so close that he can see the faintly accusing look in his own eyes reflected back at him in the mirror of Angel’s.

Angel’s other hand—and when on Earth did it end up splayed on the outside of his thigh?—curls around Wesley’s hushing fingers and pulls them gently aside. “I don’t want worship or gratitude, Wes. I don’t want a faithful servant.” His voice husks with a low, desperate intensity, and every part of him that still presses against Wesley feels fiercely taut. “I want the guy who questions me, who fights with me when he thinks I’m wrong. I want the guy who has my back, even when he knows I won’t thank him for it. I want the guy who’s seen me at my worst, but would still give up his life to keep me honest.”

Wesley blinks rapidly at Angel, because it can’t be this simple. After everything they’ve been through, it cannot come to this now. “So you mean to say that this isn’t simply because everyone whom you found more desirable is gone?”

“No.” The hand on Wesley’s neck shakes him a little. “I knew how you felt back then, Wes. I did. I could always smell it on you.” Angel’s nostrils flare, and his face glazes over with obvious desire before he comes back to his train of thought with a visible snap. “But at first there was way too much idolizing going on...and then when we were equal and I thought maybe there could be something, you were angry and hurt and all buddy-buddy with Gunn.” Is that a stirring of old jealousy there? Wesley remembers telling himself that he was imagining it at the time, but now he’s not so sure. “And then there was everything with Fred and Cordy and Connor, and then I was angry and hurt, and I thought that chapter was closed for good.”

“And then?” Wesley’s voice sounds thick and smothered in his own ears, and he can’t quite stop himself from licking his lips. He tries not to be inordinately pleased when Angel’s eyes dart down to his mouth to track the movement avidly for a moment before returning to hold his gaze again.

“And then I had to walk in your shoes for awhile...make a few cold, hard decisions that tested your faith in me.” A quicksilver, wry grin flits across Angel’s face. “It’s harder than you made it look. I told you that night with the cyborg things: I get it now.” Angel’s fingers stir against Wesley’s nape as his expression goes serious again. “Then...god, Wes...then Illyria told us you were dead. And it wasn’t so awful at first, because I thought we were all going to go into that good night together, you know? But then it was over and I was alive, and that meant I had to keep going without you, and that was awful. When you finally staggered through that door...Wes, I didn’t give a good goddamn how you got there, who brought you back, or why. Whatever comes next, I want you to know that.” Angel’s voice chokes a bit at the end, and he pulls Wesley forward to rest their foreheads together. “Whatever happens or doesn’t happen with us, Wes...you’re my family. Whatever you need, whenever you need it, wherever you are, I’m there. You don’t even think that I want you by default, okay?”

And Wesley wants to leave it at that, wants to stop thinking now, but he still knows it can’t be this easy. “That is...very touching and rather romantic, especially since I know how challenging you find it to be this articulate, but—”

“Hey!” Wesley can feel Angel frown in indignation against his own forehead, but he raises his voice firmly over the interruption.

“—but still I hope that if I do turn out to be a pawn in some diabolical machination, you won’t hesitate to hew me into tiny pieces with the nearest sharp object that comes to hand.”

Angel pulls back a few inches immediately, and his face goes abruptly and horribly still for an instant before mock-outrage slides over his features as smoothly as a shade pulling over a window. “Here I am, professing my literally undying love—articulately!—and you can still use words like ‘machination’ correctly in a sentence. I think I should be insulted.”

“Probably,” Wesley murmurs lightly, oddly more convinced of Angel’s sincerity by this evasion than anything else. He’s certain that they’ll have to come back to this sooner or later, because given their luck, how likely is it that their future won’t come to that? Blind optimism is another of the things he gave up years ago. And Wesley still can’t believe, not really, that this isn’t happening at least partly because Angel has so little else left, but he thinks maybe it’s enough, and he swallows down the thought and forces himself to let it be exorcized for now. If he can have this, even only for a little while, best to revel in it while it lasts. “Will you be making this much of an effort at eloquence for my benefit regularly?” He reaches to twine his arms around Angel’s broad shoulders and pull him even closer.

Angel’s soft chuckle vibrates against Wesley’s lips. “Nah. Don’t get used to it. Just rising to the occasion and all.”

“Speaking of which...” Wesley presses his lips fully against Angel’s just in time to swallow the small, surprised laugh he finds there. Angel tastes of copper and smoke and dust, and his mouth moves ardently against Wesley’s. Distantly, Wesley finds it noteworthy that his own blood must still circulate enough to thunder in his ears with a sibilance like ocean waves and make him light-headed. Angel’s tongue curls and slides caressingly against Wesley’s, far more agile than Wesley thinks it should possibly be. When it withdraws, still-blunt teeth nibble at Wesley’s lower lip teasingly. It’s better than Wesley ever imagined it, and then he grinds one bare foot in a long sweep from the bone of Angel’s hip to his cloth-covered hardness, and Angel’s moaning against Wesley’s lips and shuddering convulsively, and then it’s almost unbearably even better.

Just like that, Wesley is lost. He groans brokenly into Angel’s mouth. His hands pull at Angel with unselfconscious urgency, fumbling blindly with shirt buttons. Angel, not bothering with buttons, simply slides his hands under Wesley’s shirt in search of skin. His fingers stroke the sensitive flesh over Wesley’s ribs and linger over the old bullet scar with a fierce tenderness that feels shockingly novel and entirely unfathomable. When Angel’s exploring tongue finds the ridged scar across Wesley’s throat, there is only a moment of uncertain stillness before his tongue slides deliberately over and over that raised slash of flesh with a steady stroke that feels like some sort of Morse code that Wesley can’t quite decipher.

Wesley pulls back to wrestle Angel’s shirt off and bury his face hard in the hollow at the center of Angel’s chest. He gasps for unnecessary, ragged breaths, smelling leather, and fire, and something heavy like old earth and rain. His fingers clutch at Angel’s shoulders vehemently, because there isn’t any such thing as close enough. Fleetingly, Wesley thinks of the bruises that his fingers won’t leave with a hint of wistfulness. He mouths and sucks at the skin beneath his lips, following the curve of muscle until he finds a nipple. Angel growls low in his throat and arches into Wesley, but his hands carefully stroke over Wesley’s back, still devastating him with their painstaking gentleness.

“I’m dead, not made of china,” Wesley snarls into Angel’s chest. “For god’s sake, Angel...” He nips sharply at the hardened nipple before him to make his point. Angel shudders against him again with a strangled cry, and the hands on his back stutter and loose their measured rhythm. Before Wesley can follow the sudden shift in gravity, he’s flat on his back across the bed with Angel’s weight pressing him down, and his shirt lies in two tattered halves around his shoulders. He grinds encouragingly upwards, arching and rubbing wantonly against Angel, and scrabbles blindly between their bodies with one hand at the frustrating obstinacy of zippers.

As his knuckles glance over Angel’s erection, Wesley can feel the teeth at his throat sharpen ever so slightly before they pull away abruptly. Even now, Wesley can still think of obscenities in a dozen languages. “Soul,” is all he manages to say aloud, and he knows he really, really should have thought about that before.

Angel snorts into Wesley’s ear with amusement and starts working his way down Wesley’s neck again. “Most of my friends are gone, and half of the city I’m supposed to be protecting is in ruins. Really not thinking perfect happiness is a problem right now.” He rubs his face against the rasping friction of hair on Wesley’s chest. “No offense,” he mumbles into Wesley’s skin.

Wesley knows he should have thought of that, too. He tells himself he shouldn’t get this muddled, this off-guard, but it feels gloriously unfettered to let himself be senseless. How did he not know how wonderful it could be to feel stupid? It’s only intolerable that Angel’s still lucid. Wesley growls and writhes feverishly until he finds leverage against the mattress to flip them over. Straddling Angel, he claws with renewed energy at their pants until he has them both peeled open to the hips. At the first touch of Wesley’s hand on his bared cock, Angel bucks hard and gasps out Wesley’s name in a voice which sounds satisfyingly raw.

It still isn’t enough. Wesley wants everything he can get, and he wants it now. He rolls aside just long enough to squirm out of his pants, briefly tangling with Angel’s legs as he does the same, before climbing back on. Angel’s large hands settle immediately over Wesley’s slim hips, trying to gentle Wesley’s frenetic thrusting into a delicious rolling motion that grinds their erections together. Wesley can feel the pleasure of it curling his toes and winding something deep in his balls impossibly tight. Angel watches him intently as if he’s looking at something precious, and it only makes Wesley ache for more.

Wesley pulls Angel’s hands from him and half-leaps, half-rolls to his feet, ignoring Angel’s groan of protest. “Wait,” is all he says as he stumbles into the bathroom beyond and grabs at one of the tiny complimentary bottles of hand lotion that still reside on the counter by the dusty sink. He hurries back to the bed to throw himself back across Angel, who greets him with an enthusiastic kiss and a hand that skates down his belly to circle firmly around his cock.

“Dear god,” Wesley moans, momentarily losing sight of anything but thrusting into Angel’s tight grasp. Nothing else registers until the flimsy bottle ruptures in his clutching fist with the sudden scent of almonds. Wesley tosses the mangled plastic aside and slathers the slippery mess on his hand over Angel’s erection.

“Wes...fuck, Wes...,” Angel grits out as his hips jerk upwards beneath Wesley.

Wesley knows it’s been too long since he’s done this to go so fast, but he presses Angel’s slicked shaft against his entrance anyway. The blunt head pushes against reluctant muscle, and Angel makes a strangled noise. Faint golden shimmers bloom briefly in his eyes.

Angel’s hands fly back to Wesley’s hips, where they latch on firmly and hold Wesley from sliding down further. “Wes, wait, slower. Don’t want to hurt you. There’s time...don’t have to rush.” He breaks off with a gasp as Wesley’s hand squeezes at the base of his cock.

“That’s what you think,” Wesley grates out hoarsely from between clenched teeth. For all he knows, this may be all the time they ever get, and Wesley is damned if he’s going to waste any of it. “I need this, Angel. Let me.”

Angel doesn’t say anything, but he looks stunned and his grip loosens just enough to allow Wesley to go back to working himself relentlessly against Angel’s cock. It hurts with a dull, aching burn that paints bright sparks across Wesley’s vision, and it feels so overwhelmingly real that Wesley can actually believe in it. His skin feels too tight, and there’s something like an itch deep inside him. When he finally runs aground against Angel’s groin, he corkscrews his hips back and forth to make sure he’s sunk as far down as he possibly can. Angel twitches beneath him with a keening cry, and rolls his hips at a wicked angle that makes the pain blend with blinding pleasure.

Wesley growls and sways forward to brace himself with a hand on either side of Angel’s head. His hips plunge in a fast, staccato rhythm, driving hard downwards and snapping forward to grind Wesley’s own cock against Angel’s belly. Angel’s hands roam hungrily over Wesley, pulling at nipples, feathering across thighs, and kneading at the clenching muscles of Wesley’s ass.

It’s perfect and profound, and even the lingering ache feels fitting. Wesley looks down at Angel arching beneath him. Angel’s head is thrown back, and his bared throat works soundlessly. Wesley can feel the pressure coiling in his spine like an over-wound spring, and he flails for anything to hold himself back from the brink. He catches at the familiar pattern of Latin like a security blanket.

“Us, i, o, um, o,” he rasps out in a desperate chant. His hips hitch and Angel twists under him in a way that makes the muscles in his supporting arms flutter. “I, orum,” he husks when he can get his voice working again. “Is, os, is.” Angel’s hand snakes between their bodies to wrap around Wesley’s cock just as Wesley’s mind fumbles for the second declension. “A, ae, ae, am... ahh, god, Angel...” Wesley doesn’t even exist in the same universe as the plural nominative as his brain shorts out completely and the reeling world goes white. He shudders through a few last thrusts, and spills across Angel with a ragged cry.

As the lingering spasms of his inner muscles still clutch greedily at Angel’s cock, Wesley retains just enough instinct to slump forward and bite sharply at Angel’s throat. He can feel the shaft inside him jerk, and Angel bucks up so hard that he nearly throws Wesley off the bed. Wesley shivers at the tickling twitch inside him, which feels stunningly vivid to his sensitized nerves. It feels giddy and glorious and real, and for a moment, Wesley believes.

Angel subsides under him with a few last pumps upwards and a garbled hiss that Wesley thinks might be his name. Feeling wholly unmotivated to move, Wesley simply sprawls across Angel bonelessly, and waits for the world to end.

“You okay?” Angel’s voice sounds stripped and rough when he finally manages to speak, and his hand strokes over Wesley’s back lazily, sliding in the groove of his spine.

“I might say that I couldn’t begin to see okay from this dizzy height with a Chondrian scrying orb, but I don’t think that would be healthy for your ego,” Wesley rumbles into Angel’s collarbone.

Angel’s sleepy laugh is more a thrumming vibration than a sound. “If we’re trying to keep each other humble, I’d better not tell you how I feel either.”

“Very wise,” Wesley answers, nuzzling against Angel’s shoulder.

“Don’t have the worst timing in the whole history of ever anymore,” Angel whispers, voice thick with drowsiness, but still obviously pleased.

It echoes familiarly in Wesley’s head, resonating like something he thought or dreamed long ago. "Not anymore," he agrees quietly, and presses his face harder against Angel's flesh. Angel’s arm tightens around him before relaxing back into sleepy stroking.

He stays lolled across Angel like a full-fed lion even as Angel slowly drops into the eerie stillness of sleep. The candle gutters with a whispering huff, and the room blinks into darkness, which really seems like foreshadowing to Wesley. And yet, Angel still lies heavy and solid in Wesley’s arms, and disaster doesn’t come.

With a mental shrug, Wesley lets himself drift off to sleep. The world can just go ahead and end while he isn’t looking.


-End


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