[Gunnwesley] Fic: Kungai Part Five 12/20 (Wesley/Gunn, NC17)

[helenraven]

Title: Kungai Part Five 12/20

Author: Helen Raven

Email: helenraven at talk21.com

Pairing: Wesley/Gunn

Summary: The full history of the relationship between
Gunn and Wesley in the Birthdayverse. A novel in six
parts.

Rating: NC-17

Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, not even a blip
on the litigation radar.

The Story's Home Page: http://www.kelper.co.uk/kungai

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It was past five and Gunn wasn't nearly ready to go
home. There was a movie theatre in Manhattan Beach,
there had to be something he could watch. "Memento"
was the next film starting, and he didn't hate the
idea. He got a soda and a hotdog, and just before he
went in he called Wesley and told him that he'd
cancelled training. He hung up before Wesley could ask
where he was, when he'd be back, if Wesley would even
have tried.

Strange film. Kept him thinking, didn't try to make
him laugh - which was good. And maybe anything he'd
seen right then would've reminded him somehow of
Wesley and Angel, but the guy did look like Wesley.
Such a thin face, and so uptight. And the stubble.
Afterwards Gunn couldn't remember if the guy had been
wearing glasses or not, which said to Gunn that he
should have been. A haunted man, too. Something in his
past that wouldn't let him go, that shut him off from
everything else in the world. Gunn had wanted to hold
him, to bring him back into the world for just five
minutes, show him that there was more. It would mean
something, even if he knew throughout those five
minutes that the damage to the man's brain would make
him forget what Gunn had showed him, and almost
immediately. And that was Angel, that was what Wesley
went through with Angel.

Gunn thought about the Mexican restaurant, Wesley
explaining why Angel couldn't go on patrol with the
crew ("Sometimes he doesn't know who I am."), and Gunn
thinking they must be lovers, and Wesley laughing so
hard ("He'd never think of me like that."). It should
probably make him feel bitter, like he'd been tricked,
but instead it reminded him again why he wasn't going
to leave. Wesley was worth it; and whatever he and
Angel had together, it wasn't nearly enough to make
Wesley happy.

After the film Gunn thought he might go home, maybe
read or something for the rest of the evening,
depending what mood Wesley was in. He was near the
beach-house, though, and he hadn't seen Matt for
weeks, so he called to invite himself around for just
half an hour. He caught Matt on his way out, but he
was on his way out to Caritas, and to meet Grouw, so
Gunn should definitely come along.

Matt and Grouw were friends again. Not in the same
way, because it wasn't the same without Piriti. They
didn't sing, or not while Gunn was there, but they did
talk a lot about what they might sing, when they felt
right about it. Grouw had seen Piriti at the weekend -
that is, he'd seen him turn and dive into the nest at
the first sight of Grouw's car. Solito had told Grouw
that Piriti had gotten rid of his pager, that he
didn't want to talk to anybody. More than that: he
started shaking at the idea of meeting anyone new,
having any stranger even see him, because anyone out
there could be another Barney.

"I said I just wanted to help, we all did. But he's
not ready. Solito thinks he'll be like this for
months."

Gunn said, "How's Solito doing? 's tough on him?"

Grouw shrugged. "I guess. Seems older. Acts older than
Piriti now, when he was always..." Another shrug. "Wes
still bad?" Gunn just nodded, and neither Grouw not
Matt asked anything more.

Gunn got home just before eleven. Wesley had turned
the armchair to face the door, and looked like he'd
done nothing for hours except sit and wait. He was
getting to his feet when Gunn opened the door, and his
expression said that he'd do anything, as soon as he
had the first clue about what Gunn wanted.

Angel was in his corner, starting to stand up, moving
very slowly like he was preparing himself for
something bad.

"You tell him what happened? Tell him it's over?"
Wesley nodded. "So what'd he say?"

A pause. "He wanted to know what you were going to do
to him. If you would do it yourself or have the
others... I said it wouldn't be the others but he's...
He's been having the hallucinations."

Good. He should. "What about the door? He try to make
you open it? He got burns under that shirt?"

"He - I managed to make him believe me in time. That I
couldn't open it."

About what Gunn had expected. He gave a grunt and went
straight to get the chains. He wasn't going to let
Angel disturb his sleep again.

"Go in the bedroom. Shut the door. You don't get any
chance to see each other." Wesley went, looking almost
relieved, and then Gunn took the key from his pocket
and unlocked Angel's door.

Angel was afraid of him. Gunn liked that. Though Angel
had to know he was stronger than Gunn, faster. If he
decided to put up a fight, there would be no contest.

"Move your mattress over by the wall." The wall with
the bolt-plates. "Not right against it. Leave about a
foot."

But Angel never did fight. When they had
confrontations - and there hadn't been many, not
really - the most he'd do was flare up for a few
seconds, and then he'd retreat. Angry, but never with
a plan.

Well, he knew it was hopeless. He'd never get out, and
anything he tried, he'd pay for hard. The guards from
his time in a real hell had made him give up hope, and
Gunn just got the benefit of what they'd done to him.

"Lie face-down with your hands by your sides. No, not
behind your back, you're not getting a shower. Down by
your sides."

He was only chaining Angel's hands, not his feet or
his neck, and he gave him room enough to lie however
he wanted, to draw if he got a vision, or even to sit
up. Gunn had no idea when or how he might decide to
let Angel out of the chains. Maybe once Angel had
shown that he'd learned (or forgotten?); and there was
nothing he could do to force Wesley to open the door.
Or maybe there'd be a point where Gunn would start to
feel pity, when he'd be willing to take on the work of
chaining him again every evening, gambling on his
state of mind.

Gunn got off the mattress and picked up the gag from
the floor. He wasn't going to use it after all; if
Angel got a vision, Gunn wanted the option of being
able to deal with it without having to open the door.
"You can move now if you want."

Angel lifted his head slightly towards Gunn, then
shifted onto his back, almost in one movement. They
looked at one another. Angel wasn't scared any more.

"Y'think I'm gonna go easy on you? 'cos I've only done
y'r hands? You don't know me."

Slowly: "You'll do what you need to do. What you
should do."

A long silence, then Gunn said suddenly, "What's the
worst thing about what you did with him?"

Angel frowned and sighed, dragged his head from side
to side, and got an erection. Finally: "I never tried
to make him stop. I acted as if... It was."

"You said you'd kill him. You think about it."

Angel closed his eyes for several seconds, then: "I'd
break his neck."

"And then you'd fuck his corpse!"

Supposed to be too much, supposed to provoke, but
Angel had got here long before Gunn, and forgotten the
view from the other side. He just shook his head.
"Afterwards... There wouldn't be... I don't know."

Gunn fought hard not to imagine. His breath and his
hands shuddered, and the gag creaked in his grasp. "Is
this... Do you love him?" Meaning: is this the only
way you love? Is this all you know how to do?

"I can't."

Angel couldn't love Wesley. So the things Gunn had
thought he'd seen, they hadn't meant anything. Another
shaking breath, then: "Have you ever thought you
could?" Not just asking about loving Wesley now, but
about loving anyone.

"He knows I'm a monster."

"Yeah. I guess he does." A long sigh. "OK. You want to
know what I'm going to do?" A flicker of fear, and
Angel nodded. "I'm not going to gag you, I'm going to
leave you. I don't know when I'll be back. You can
imagine anything you want." Dream, that is, or
hallucinate, but Angel wouldn't know that.

Wesley was sitting slumped on the edge of the bed,
just opposite the door. He didn't stand up when Gunn
came in, maybe he slumped even lower. Gunn sat next to
him, put a hand on his shoulder then slid it slowly
down to his waist, then took Wesley's hand, put it on
his own thigh, and held it there.

Wesley sighed and leaned against him, gripping hard on
his thigh. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, I know. So what's gonna change, Wes, now it's
over? What you got for me?"

On another sigh: "I don't know. I don't think I've
ever known."

"I want you in our bed. I want to get to hold you. 'n'
I know why that bothers you, but this isn't about what
you want and think you shouldn't have, it's about what
I want and fucking deserve. You gonna do that?"

A pause. "I don't know about sex. About our kind of
sex. It makes me feel too much. I couldn't convince
anyone that it was just about you."

"Yeah, well, I didn't say sex, because right now I'm
too angry with you. Don't trust myself to - Don't
wanna be like him. 'n' don't tell me I couldn't or he
wasn't angry or... I don't wanna know, don't wanna
think about what he was, what he wasn't. It's too
close, he's too close. Hafta at least wait until he's
forgotten it ever happened. Know you'll still be - But
that's what it's about when it's about me. So you
saying yes to the rest?"

"Yes."

Gunn turned both of the bedside lights on as soon as
he came in from the bathroom, before he started
getting undressed. He wanted to see as much as he
could of Wesley from the moment that Wesley came in.
Maybe they hadn't agreed on that exactly, but that was
what Gunn meant by having Wesley back in their bed:
having everything like the way it used to be.

Gunn had never seen Wesley getting out of his
thrift-shop clothes before. Jackets and shirts used to
slide easily off his arm under gravity, but the cotton
sweater was a long sequence of wriggling and tugging,
and he had to take his glasses off, and at the end he
had to use his teeth. Gunn offered to help, but Wesley
grunted a no.

Gunn had been concentrating on Wesley's face and on
Wesley's hand clutching the sweater, and he didn't see
the bruises and scratches until Wesley was sitting on
the bed and bending to take off his shoes. And then
the chinos were off and Gunn was kneeling up and
swearing, and fighting the urge to reach over and fit
his hands to the clear prints on Wesley's hips.
Another clear print on his thigh, and that was
probably another, nearly faded, half-hidden by a long
scratch. Yes, it had been every day. Angel didn't just
hold him down, he slammed him against the wall,
against the door. Didn't hit him though. Probably.
Didn't bite him.

" 'n' I thought you were livin' like a monk. Actin'
like you were always on duty. You were just coverin'
up."

"It was all..." Wesley sighed. "It was all part of the
same thing."

Wesley covering up. Wesley making him put the light
out, drawing the curtains. Wesley planning, to keep
what he wanted, when he talked like there was nothing
left for him except waiting for the worst to happen.

"Would you have stopped? If he'd made you?"

Wesley looked surprised, then puzzled. "I wouldn't
have had much choice."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"I thought you didn't want to know."

Which made that a yes, but fair point. He didn't want
to know, he shouldn't be asking. He lay down again and
pulled back the covers on Wesley's side. "Come on. Get
in."

Wesley settled against him, head on his chest. Gunn
hardly ever thought: "If Wesley had a left arm..." but
now he found himself thinking that and: "... how would
he be holding me now?" It would be a way of telling if
this was any kind of relief for Wesley, if he could
admit that he needed this. Wesley was tense at first,
but then so was Gunn. Wesley was the first to speak,
after about ten minutes. "Did it help to go out today?
To get away. Did it help you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it helped." He told Wesley where he'd
been, about the film, seeing Matt and Grouw; but he
didn't give any hint of the things he'd been thinking
during those hours. Wesley asked about Piriti and
about how they'd treated Gunn at Caritas. "Didn't do
more than watch me, see how I handle myself. Then they
forget me." Gunn thought he knew how Wesley had spent
the day: talking to Angel, listening to Angel, and
wondering if Gunn was going to come back at all.

Angel was moving in his chains. Just trying to get
comfortable, Gunn thought, not struggling. At each
sound he imagined what Angel might be doing - and he
was imagining him naked. And then he was imagining
Angel's hands on Wesley, and knowing exactly where,
because of those bruises.

Too angry. Far too angry to do more than hold Wesley
like this. Not gripping, not stroking; because that
was sex, that was Angel.

Wesley's bruises. They were as bad as the bruises he'd
got from hand-to-hand with the duals. As bad as being
beaten up by four demons. Did Angel made Wesley
scream? Make him beg? Of course he did, it was in
Wesley's dreams. It was what Wesley wanted. When
Wesley had said, "That's not hurting me," he hadn't
been reassuring, he'd been complaining.

There had been hand-prints in the bruises from the
duals. On his hips and his legs and his arm. Along
with twenty, thirty other kinds of marks, and they
hadn't stood out at the time. But now Gunn knew what
it looked like: the evidence that Wesley had been held
down for sex by a very strong man.

He'd had those bruises before the training session.
He'd asked for the hand-to-hand to cover up, to get
some more bruises, normal bruises, so Gunn wouldn't
suspect the next time he saw Wesley naked.

That must have been two months ago. Well before
Barney. So he'd been right when he'd suspected before.
And did that mean that he knew his Wesley, or that he
didn't know him at all?

"It wasn't the first time, was it? The Saturday after.
What's your story for what happened the day you got
the duals to beat you up?"

No sign of surprise. Maybe Wesley had been lying there
thinking about the same thing. A long silence, and
then Wesley raised himself on his elbow and looked
down at Gunn. "You have a very good memory."

"So that happened?"

Wesley sighed and sank back down again, but onto his
back, leaving a long line of space between his body
and Gunn's. "You were right. The problem with giving
him something is when you have to take it away."

"What's that mean?"

"It was... It was after you asked me if we were having
sex. And you said I couldn't go in every day. But
you'd leave us alone once a week. He was very angry
about the change, and that was when you said -"

"Yeah. I remember."

"It was kind of you to be willing to leave us alone.
It was very generous. But I shouldn't have gone in
that first Thursday when you left us and went to
Caritas. It was too soon."

"He really did rape you." Gunn had turned his head and
he saw Wesley nod.

"It didn't matter what I said. He wouldn't stop."

Something else now from Gunn's memory, that he would
have sworn was weeks apart from that Thursday (which,
again, he wouldn't have said was the day before that
training session with the hand-to-hand). "That day he
was being stupid when you read to him. When you yelled
at him and threw the book. You said you'd warned him
to stop. That wasn't about any stupid jokes about your
arm. Was it?"

Wesley shook his head slowly, over and over. "He was
joking about what he'd done to me, he thought it
was..." Wesley swallowed. "Not a joke, he didn't think
it was a joke. But he thought it was something good
that we'd shared. Because he'd got what he wanted. I
couldn't let him treat it like that even if - I
thought you might guess. I knew it must look strange."

"How did you stop me from guessing on Thursday night?
I don't remember any night round then that could've
been different enough."

"It was the night Matt told you about his girlfriend.
You were preoccupied. I'd gone to bed early so I
wouldn't have to undress in front of you but I didn't
think that would be enough. I'd hidden the key but I
couldn't think beyond... But you were preoccupied and
by the morning I'd thought of what I could do in
training."

What could you do with them? What could you say to
them? Or about them? Gunn thought, "You deserve each
other," and he thought he could say that a hundred
times and each time it would come out different.
Always said to wound, to expose. And always a waste of
breath because there were too many ways in which it
was true.

"Does he remember?"

"I don't think so. Not really. He remembers making me
angry. Or he remembers when he's worried about doing
something wrong. He assumes..." Wesley shrugged.

"Did you forgive him? Before he forgot, did you
forgive him?" Angel had done those drawings of Wesley.
Gunn remembered just before he could stop himself from
asking the question. Wesley's face kept so blank as he
looked at the drawings. And Gunn had made him put them
somewhere safe, and made him go in and thank Angel
with a hug.

"Yes and no. He needed me to, so -" A shaking sigh.
Gunn reached over and put his hand on Wesley's chest,
Wesley took a fierce, awkward grip on Gunn's wrist,
and they pulled themselves towards each other, closing
the gap. "Still... I could hardly pretend that I
didn't know what he was. So I put the rest away to
deal with later. I've forgiven him now because I
brought it back out and used it."

Gunn sighed and rolled towards Wesley. He put his leg
over Wesley's, and felt a jolt of warmth all through
his body when Wesley immediately brought his left leg
over to anchor Gunn. "You got a strange way of dealing
with things, Wes."

"Fucked up. I know."

"Guess we'll work on that. You got anything else you
been hidin' from me? Somethin' even worse you been
dealin' with your way?"

No, and Gunn was suddenly exhausted, like he'd had the
longest, hardest fight of his life. He surfaced enough
during the night to know that Wesley was having his
usual difficult dreams (disturbed tonight, rather than
violent), and to hear about himself (as "the black
one") at the peak of Angel's nightmares. But each time
he shrugged it off like it was some harmless
street-noise, the wind rattling a sign; he'd made
things happen, he'd made things change, and he knew
now that he could do better for himself than just
listen and wait and worry.


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