Title: Keep Him Safe

Authoress: Robin the Crossover Junkie

Website: https://www.angelfire.com/home/thecrossoverjunkie

Spoilers: "Apocalypse Nowish", AKA "Rain Of Fire"

Disclaimer: I don’t own Angel the Series, Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Fox, Warner Brothers, or anything affiliated with any of those. Well, okay, I DO own Joss. No, really. Um…if you believe me, I’ll give you a cookie?

Rating: G

Pairing: Wes/Gunn

Summary: After watching Apocalypse Nowish, I wanted to write a fic. I noticed that in the scene where Wes drags Gunn out of harm’s way, he kinda hugs him, and the endlessly hopeless Wes/Gunn shipper in me just couldn’t let it slide. So I wrote an incredibly short Wes monologue type thing.

Feedback: yes, yes, yes please!!

Distribution: Well, it’s mine, but you can post it wherever you like as long as you say “this is a fic by Robin the Crossover Junkie”, and if you’re really nice, you’ll also link to my site. In other words, put it wherever you like, as long as you don’t take credit for me. Cuz it’s kinda mine. *grin*




We aren’t friends. We’ll never be friends. We were, once, before Connor, before Fred, before Pylea. We had a connection, a bond, that I miss a great deal. I even loved him fleetingly, a love tainted with desperation, secrecy, impropriety, and a knowledge that the love would never be returned. A million things between then and now, and we’re not even friends.

But now, I cannot allow something as petty as lost love, lost friendship, lost respect, to keep me from helping him. He needs me now, to get him out, to keep him safe, though if he were conscious I am fully aware that not only would he not ask of my help, but he would not accept it if I offered. I am aware of this, and yet I help him anyway, because he needs it. Because I need it. I need to help him, as much as he needs me to help him, as much as I need to help myself.

When I loved him, I dared not show it. Small things gave me hope, and sometimes a small amount of my admiration and adoration slipped out, but most of the time, I was able to keep my longing a dire secret, and be his friend, because he wanted to be mine. And we were friends. We were the best of friends, really.

I tried to stop loving him. I made mistakes, I had my throat sliced open, and I was shunned. I loved him, and he turned his back on me, so I turned my back on any lingering feelings I may have had. Eventually, I turned to Lilah, just to feel a connection, a break from the cold of knowing I was unloved. That I had lost my friend. But tonight, despite horrible circumstances, I felt a tiny sliver of hope burst its way through the cage of my heart, that we could be friends again. Not because he let me in, but because Angel let me in. That was enough, for the moment, to spark some possibility in my mind that perhaps Gunn would let me in again, one day. Even to be his friend again would be enough.

So, while he is unconscious, I go to him. I take him around my shoulders, and I forcibly drag him from the building, keeping him alive, out of the flame, away from the beast that none of us could effectively fight. I take him out onto the pavement, under shelter so the flames don’t hit either of us, and I wrap my arms around his limp body. It isn’t necessary for him. His condition will not change if I wrap my arms around him. But mine might.

So I hold him tightly against my chest, staring at what could easily be the end of the world, and I think of what I’ve missed in my life, and what I have. I think about him. And I hope my condition will change.



END