[Gunnwesley] Fic: Kungai Part Six 2/12 (Wesley/Gunn, NC17)

[helenraven]

Title: Kungai Part Six 2/12

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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Angel hadn't changed into the clean clothes: instead,
he had thrown them or dropped them over near the
books, and pushed the mattress across to half-cover
both piles. When they got up he was asleep on the
floor between the mattress and the far wall, and Gunn
was the one who realised when he woke up: about half
an hour into their review of Gunn's case files and
their serious discussion of the future of
Wyndham-Gunn.

"He's no better, is he?"

Gunn shook his head. "But we have to go in to feed
him. Might as well give him the shower, too."

Angel didn't act terrified, no cringing or shaking,
more like he was trying to pretend they weren't there,
refusing to look at them.

"Angel? Could you get undressed? Get ready for a
shower? You've been in the same clothes for weeks. We
need to get you clean."

Angel had heard. He looked like he was holding his
breath. Did he know he was doing it? Did he know he
gasped sometimes, and he panted? Did he know he could
hold his breath forever? Ten seconds now. Then twenty.
"Please, Angel. Will you help us?" Thirty seconds, and
Wesley and Gunn looked at each other in surprise as
Angel slowly got to his feet, slowly pulled off his
sweater, slowly stepped out of his pants, and then
stood against the wall with his hands behind his back.

As far as Gunn could tell, Angel kept his eyes closed
through the whole process: the walking, the chaining,
the showering. Maybe he opened his eyes when he
reached for the shampoo and the soap, or maybe he
found them by smell. He was slumped, withdrawn,
quietly hopeless.

Wesley had vacuumed the room, removed the long chain
from the plate where Gunn had left it the night
before, moved the mattress to its usual position
against the far wall, straightened the books, and put
the clothes back on the mattress.

"Get dressed now, Angel. When you're dressed I'll
bring you in your food." Now Angel was definitely
shaking his head but he was also pushing himself up to
his knees on the mattress, reaching for the clothes -
feeling them, smelling them - and then getting dressed
even more slowly than he'd got undressed. By the time
he got finished he was sitting on the edge of the
mattress, the angle of his back blocking out Wesley,
the angle of his head blocking out Gunn.

"You must be hungry, Angel. I think when I bring the
blood in, you'll realise how hungry you are."

No, definitely no, and Angel scuttled over to near his
corner and pressed himself sideways on to the wall. He
was tense now, really uncomfortable, when he'd been
too indifferent while he'd been in the shower with
Gunn. Gunn remembered Wesley on the bed after Lilah
had brought him home, the change that had come over
him when he'd looked towards Angel's room.

"Angel. You can talk to Wesley now. He can talk to
you. I won't do anything to either of you. I'm sorry I
made you think I would. But everything's different
now. Wes'll tell you. He'll tell you how it's worked
out."

Gunn was expecting surprise, mild distrust, but
instead Angel jerked his head up, half-turned towards
Gunn, and he was frightened, and he was angry. He
stared at Gunn, teeth bared, spat out, "You say
'Wesley'!" - an order - and then he was purely
frightened, and backed away from Gunn so fast that the
whole room seemed to shudder when his back thudded up
against the wall. He gasped, over and over, still
staring at Gunn, then he turned his head with a jerk
to look at Wesley; just a second's glance and he gave
a sound like a pleading moan and he was curled again
with his arms up protecting his face.

Gunn backed off to the foot of the mattress. Wesley
joined him and they stood and looked at Angel, both
breathing heavily. After about a minute Wesley turned
and handed the holy-water to Gunn, whispered, "Cover
me," approached Angel to within four feet, and
crouched down at his level.

"Angel. You shouldn't be frightened of Charles. You
should believe him. He's a good man. He's a kind,
brave man." A small, gentle smile. "Much better than
we deserve. You can believe him when he says that
everything's different."

Angel slowly let his arms drop, slowly raised his eyes
to Wesley's, and this time his expression was pain,
whereas Gunn had been expecting the fear. Did Angel
think Wesley was lying, too, that Gunn had brainwashed
him or something? But in that case there'd be anger,
wouldn't there, not just this frozen anguish?

Very quietly: "Are you frightened of Charles?" A
pause, then Angel shook his head, even mouthed a no.
"Are you angry with him?" No. "What about me?" No.
"Then what's wrong? Can you tell me what's wrong?"

Angel's body jerked, he opened his mouth, closed it,
closed his eyes hard, then suddenly opened them and
said in a thin voice, "I don't want to lose my mind."

Gunn gasped and saw Wesley flinch, but it couldn't be
more than a couple of seconds before Wesley swallowed
and said, "No. No, of course. But why are you thinking
that? What have we done?"

An abrupt shake of the head. "You don't do anything.
You're not here. You're from me. And... And... I'm
making you say... I can't understand what I'm making
you say."

"Ah." Wesley glanced up at Gunn. "You think we're a
hallucination."

Angel nodded. "I know the dreams. I've heard it with
the others. This must be how it starts."

Wesley started to reach out but Angel shrank back, and
Wesley immediately apologised and folded his hand out
of the way down by his knee. "Why can't we be real?
Why don't you take us as real?"

"You're gone."

"Yes, we had to go away, Angel. I'm sorry we had to
leave you, I know it must have been difficult. But
we're back now. That's why we're saying things you
don't understand: because we've only just got back, we
haven't caught up with everything that's happened
while we've been away."

Angel was shaking his head. "You're gone." A glance up
at Gunn then back to Wesley. "You had to go."

"And then we had to come back. I couldn't leave you,
could I? I want you to stop thinking about why I might
be a hallucination and start thinking about how I
could prove to you that I'm real. That I have come
back."

Gunn wanted to say, "Apart from getting to fuck him
through the mattress." But he couldn't say that, so
he'd just have to trust in that recoil from Wesley's
touch.

A long, long silence. Angel was thinking, and looking
much calmer. Even if Wesley didn't convince him today,
he should be easier the next time.

Eventually: "You could read with me. Something new.
Something I don't know, that I couldn't make up."

Wesley nodded. "Do you know anything about the history
of salt?" And his tone was: "And I'm hoping you don't,
because I'm looking forward to reading about it with
you" - which would have been proof enough for Gunn, if
he'd been Angel.

They sat in their usual place by the wall, and Gunn
brought his chair in and stood guard, in case Angel
decided that Wesley wasn't real and turned to violence
to banish his hallucination. They seemed to forget
about him almost immediately. On about the fifth page
Angel made his first comment, and soon he made his
first joke and looked pleased when Wesley laughed. On
the second page of the second chapter, he gave a long
sigh and then slid his hand on top of Wesley's. Wesley
turned his head and they looked at one another, just
for a second, and then they went back to reading, with
Angel's other hand coming over ready to turn the page.
Gunn stood up, picked up his chair, and left as
quietly as he could.

He booted up the computer then put the kettle on and
stood waiting for it to boil. Though why boil it now
when Wesley's tea would just go cold? So he didn't
make tea but instead he heated a pint of blood, and he
went in and set it down at Angel's side.

"Thank you, Charles."

"You're welcome." So he was "Charles" now, not "the
black one".

Angel suddenly lost interest in the book halfway
through a sentence in Chapter Three, as Wesley told
Gunn later, when Angel had fallen asleep again. Angel
had closed the book and put it on the floor, and
started asking Wesley questions about where they'd
sent him, and how they'd let him come back, and what
did Gunn mean and how was everything different?

Wesley had told Angel that he'd been ill, that he'd
had to go away until he was well enough to come back.
Angel thought they'd been away for years, and he
didn't seem to have any clear memories of Lilah's
squad.

"Though I couldn't ask any really direct question, to
have him not understand what I was talking about. I
don't want to give him any more reasons to worry about
losing his mind."

Angel didn't remember about Wesley's mistake, wasn't
interested in Wesley's illness as long as Wesley was
better now. He remembered the sex, he remembered that
Gunn had found out, and he thought that Gunn had made
"them" take Wesley away because guards weren't ever
supposed to have sex with prisoners, and Wesley had
felt guilty about that all the time, Wesley had been
tormented by it, but he hadn't been able to stop
himself.

"What's he think now? If it wasn't 'them' findin' out,
but you bein' sick? What's he expect now that you're
back?"

Wesley shrugged. "That we'll restrain ourselves
because it didn't make me happy. And he thinks you
never told them, so they could still find out. It's
not that I'm back because... they've suddenly got a
new policy."

"So he doesn't remember me starvin' him, keepin' him
chained? That threat?"

"He remembers you being angry. Upset. With every
justification. Not the details. He asked a lot about
you. About us. If we were together all the time I was
ill. He's glad we were. He's glad we were able to get
over everything.

Gunn snorted and shook his head. "Y'think he's gonna
be hell, Full-time job t'keep him manageable. Turns
out he's done all the work for us."

Wesley nodded. "Him and the vision. Though maybe we
deserve a few points for experience."

* * * * *

Wesley wanted to get back to work, or at least he
wanted to get back out into the real world, do
something useful. He had to figure out how to deal
with demons again, how to keep going through his own
guilt and shame, and through the anger and the
contempt and the pity. Through anything.

But he couldn't just appear at Caritas one night with
Gunn, like he was taking up where he'd left off. He'd
lost that right, and it was for the demons (for the
Kekulei, really), to decide when he'd earned it back.
If he even could earn it back.

He'd go to see Swift, explain that he wanted to stop
hiding, and ask how he could start to make amends. And
he wanted to train again with the duals if they were
still willing.

It would probably be months, though, before he could
think about earning money from being back out in the
real world. And he was scared of taking on more
translation work - assuming Lilah would ever trust him
with another manuscript - in case he got sucked in
again to that state where it was just him and the
language, shut away from all the rest of the world.
He'd make himself wear the suit, face a roomful of
Kekulei, but he was going to avoid translation for as
long as they could afford, because more than anything
he was afraid of his own mind.

He arranged a meeting with Swift for the Friday and to
take Lilah out to lunch on Monday, and he called Grouw
and asked if Grouw could contact his sister about the
training. Grouw was glad to hear from him, said his
sister asked about him nearly as often as she asked
about Piriti.

While Wesley was out having his meeting with Swift,
Angel had a vision. He was awake when it hit, sitting
with his drawing-pad, working on copying something
from one of the books. Gunn heard him cry out, heard
the thud of his head against the wall, and Gunn ran to
unlock the door so he'd be there to catch every word.

Angel was still in the reverberation phase when Gunn
got in the room: pressed back against the wall,
looking like he was staring at something he couldn't
believe, frozen with the shock except for his right
hand trying to reach out for something across the
carpet - maybe still trying to draw, or maybe getting
ready to draw.

Gunn picked up the pad, and had just seen the crayon
on top of the mattress when Angel cried out again,
louder, tearing, and surged to his feet like someone
had hauled him up by the armpits. A few seconds'
pause, then he took a staggering step forward,
hunching to the side, then seemed to catch himself and
fall back against the wall; and then another step
forward and falling back, and again. And all the time
he was giving these choked, bitten-off almost-screams.
Not words, nothing close to words, but with a change
of tone with each gasp for breath, like each scream
came from a different person, like there was a mob
fighting over who got him next.

Was that it? He was having more than one vision? And
he wouldn't speak, he wouldn't draw until one vision
beat the others out? God, let it work like that,
because... Two sets of clues mixed together, two
places where they had to be at the same time. How in
hell could they handle that?

He watched Angel, trying to read the fight, figure out
how many were still in, if the end was getting close.
Maybe a minute went by and he hadn't seen any
patterns, and then Angel froze in mid-scream,
mid-step, was held for one second, two, then crashed
sideways to the floor.

His eyes were open but he was completely still, and he
looked very dead. Gunn stepped forward in range of
Angel's feet, knelt down, and reached out slowly to
touch his fingertips to Angel's ankle. He was ready to
see the body fall in, sink to dust, but instead he
felt the cold skin yield, he felt the bone underneath.
Still solid. You couldn't say "still alive" but...
still whole enough to be a home for a demon.

This must be the pause at the end of the reverberation
phase, before he had to speak, had to draw, had to do
something about what he'd seen. Longer than usual,
deeper, because the vision had been different, was
still working through?

Gunn stood up, stepped back, and waited. Should he
call Wesley? No. Not yet. But he should get the tape
recorder so Wesley could hear it in Angel's own words.
He put the pad down by Angel's hand and went to get
the recorder from Wesley's desk.

Five minutes, and now Gunn couldn't see Angel suddenly
pulling out of this, sitting up desperate and urgent,
too many seconds already gone. Whatever the next phase
was, that would be different too, and there wasn't
much point in Gunn staying here, when he could just as
well watch while he was at the computer.

He'd watched Angel sleeping a hundred times, thought
little of it except to wonder what he was dreaming
about Wesley. But this wasn't sleep. Even in grainy
black-and-white on the screen it looked nothing like
sleep.

That body wasn't resting: it was abandoned. Like
something thrown out in the street, a house left with
the doors wide open. Felt wrong to be looking at it,
like it was... the wreckage from an accident. There
was a spare blanket in the bedroom and Gunn found it
and spread it over Angel. Not his face because that
would be saying that he would never come back. And of
course he'd come back. He'd found his way back from
hell, he'd learned Wesley's name again, of course he'd
come back from this. Gunn left Angel's hand uncovered
too, where it touched the pad, so if he woke and was
looking for the pad, then it'd be there in front of
him.

Wesley saw the open door as soon as he came home, and
he was shocked by the empty eyes and had to do the
same as Gunn: kneel down and press the skin. No, there
would have been no point in Gunn calling. The blanket
was a kindness, it was right. More than one vision?
Poor Angel. There had been no warning of this in the
books. Did other seers do so much better? Or did they
do so much worse that there was nothing to tell? They
should get the weapons ready, though it had been hours
now, they must already be too late.

Wesley got out all his books on seers, just in case
there was something, and he hadn't known enough before
to take it in. Gunn made tea and then asked what had
happened with Swift.

Swift had thought that Wesley might do best to leave
town for a while. Six months, maybe. A year. Enough
time for other things to happen, push Wesley out of
people's minds. Right now there was still enough of a
jolt left to make people feel uncomfortable,
especially if you caught them in public. Pretty much
what Gunn had said to Anne, when he'd just left his
crew: about how they'd need time to cool off, but
they'd be ready to move on once they were sure that no
one was watching any more.

But how could they move with Angel? Give up this
apartment with the deaf, deaf neighbours, and take
their chances in a city that none of them knew? And
you had to know your city to have any chance of
reading the clues in the visions. No, they couldn't
leave L.A., because so much for them was tied up with
Wesley's sick friend.

In that case, yes, they had to go for the opposite: do
something drastic, and in public. Swift would meet
with the Kekulei, ask them what they'd need to see
from Wesley to be able to clear his account. Might
take weeks before they'd agree, but she thought she
knew how to keep things moving, make sure they didn't
dig in and refuse to even see him.


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