[Gunnwesley] Fic: Kungai Part Six 7/12 (Wesley/Gunn, NC17)

[helenraven]

Title: Kungai Part Six 7/12

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 got a vision around nine of Tuesday evening,
while Wesley was at home and Gunn was out doing the
rounds for that damn picture. Very straightforward
vision, couldn't be clearer: a girl in danger from a
Gogomol demon at 171 Oak, out in Reseda; looked like
some magic was involved, some ritual. Gunn got there
about ten minutes before Wesley, saw the girl moving
around in the front room, no sign of panic or
anything, and no chanting so the spell mustn't've
started yet. He knocked on the door and yelled, "My
name's Charles Gunn. And if you're about to cast a
spell I'm here to tell you it's a bad idea. It's gonna
turn really dangerous, unless you let me help you."

A long, long silence. He'd heard her go to the door
and she had to be looking through the spyhole - at the
last type of person she'd ever open the door to at
night. Yeah, but he didn't know if they could afford
the luxury of waiting for Wesley.

"How'd you know that?" Not a challenge, just freaked
out.

"We've got people who keep track. For the whole of
L.A. You buy the books, you buy the equipment, you ask
questions - they know."

"Oh my God!" And the door was open, and she was
telling him the whole history of this idea she'd had
to bring her father back. She was still talking when
Wesley arrived, though by that time the circle was
dismantled and she was ditzing around collecting every
candle in the house and asking Gunn about every jar of
herbs in the kitchen, whether she needed to get Gunn
to take it away to be really safe. One look at Wesley
and she went quiet; could have been the arm, could
have been the grimness and the stubble, could have
been the bursting in with a sword. Wesley showed her
Angel's drawing of the demon, told her exactly which
herbs, got her to carry everything out to the truck
for them, and really hardly needed to give her the
warning that they'd find out if she made any move to
do it again.

Wesley's glasses were broken: the right side-piece was
missing, so they were balanced just on his left ear
and his nose. Gunn had noticed immediately, but he
couldn't say anything until they were finished with
the girl and they were on their own outside the house.

"What happened to your glasses?"

A sigh. "Angel fell on them. When he had the vision."

"You were in with him?"

Wesley nodded. "An inch the other way and I think he
would have smashed them to pieces. As it was, I
couldn't find them for at least a minute. We could
have lost thirty minutes if I'd had to ask you to come
and pick me up. Not that you needed me there, but..."

"Hey, you stopped her talkin'! Where I'm standin', I
owe you one rescue." They laughed, and then Wesley
said he ought to be setting off for the church; the
caretaker would be expecting him.

"With your glasses like that? Come home 'n' let's try
'n' mend 'em first. They fall off when you're on the
ladder... Y'just don't need another thing to put you
off-balance." Wesley took his point, and Gunn led the
way home.

About four blocks away from the girl's house, a sports
car shot past the truck, and the glimpse Gunn caught
of the driver looked so much like Cordy. He laughed
and looked in the rearview to watch the car pass
Wesley, half a block behind. Cordy in Reseda. Yeah,
right. Her name comes up twice in three weeks, and
that's enough to have him imagine he's seen her in
Reseda. He mentioned it when they got home, expecting
Wes to say, "What sports car?" but Wes had seen her
and had thought exactly the same as Gunn.

They patched the glasses together with tape - good
enough for one night's painting - and the next
morning, while Wesley was still asleep, Gunn took them
and went to see about getting them mended properly.
The side-piece was broken off near the joint; very
difficult to solder back together, and it would
probably break again within a month. But the optician
had some spare side-pieces and they chose the closest
match, which was a fraction of the price of a new set
of frames.

"You should have a spare pair."

"This is my spare pair. If anyone shows you the
picture again, you can admire my 'cool' frames. They
disappeared at some point during the fight with the
Kungai. Since then..." A shrug. "There have always
been other priorities."

"Soon's you get earnin' again." Gunn was stern. "I'll
be in charge of the envelope that says, 'Money for
Wesley's Spare Glasses'."

* * * * *

Life was getting easier. Wesley would be earning soon,
and Gunn was already picking up more work on his own -
probably because of what people were hearing about
Wesley. The displays of hostility at the church were
steadily becoming rarer, though when they came they
were still bad. The other side of that: people had
started talking to him, and to Piriti. Piriti said
that Wesley was so shy (and that was Solito's brother
talking there!): he never presumed, he hardly smiled;
but he seemed to remember every word he'd exchanged
with each of the Kekulei, and he brought that to each
new exchange.

Piriti was back in touch with Matt and Grouw, and they
were meeting at the beach-house at least once a week,
with Gunn included about one session in three. No
singing, though, no talk about returning to Caritas;
that part of their friendship definitely seemed to be
over.

Angel was having much less trouble with the headaches.
He was still getting the mis-sent visions, about once
a week, was still left so bad afterwards that he'd be
sick to his stomach if he tried to stand up, and was
still showing the damage with the multiple tracks. But
he recovered more quickly each time, like maybe the
scar-tissue was getting thicker. Or tougher. Giving
him some protection, anyway. And he wasn't fighting
the pain any more, he just waited it out and the
waiting seemed halved if Wesley was with him.

Gunn had no idea how often Wesley and Angel were
having sex. Two times a week? Three? Some times were
obvious, like when he got back from the beach-house
and Angel was sitting there reading, and Wesley was
horny-as-hell. Probably obvious, too, when Gunn woke
up in the middle of the night and realised that Wesley
had got home and was in with Angel, and then Wesley
would have a long shower before he'd come to bed. Gunn
never pretended to be asleep, and by the third time
he'd decided that, no, he didn't need to say anything
to reassure Wesley about his privacy with Angel, so he
could stop puzzling over how to raise the subject, how
far he really wanted to go.

Wesley stopped talking in his sleep - or anyway he
stopped talking in the way that worried Gunn. Wesley
was thinking about normal things during the long hours
of painting - or for a lot of them, he said, not
thinking at all, just lulled by the rhythm into an
easy trance. Still, no signs of anything being
cannibalised, and when Wesley started wondering about
the chances of Lilah having a piece of work that would
fit in with his three-or-four spare hours a day, Gunn
passed him the phone and told him there was only one
way to find out. The work from Lilah didn't quite put
Wesley into "earning" (or not as Wesley's spreadsheet
would define it), since it was all done in hours that
he owed her under the retainer, but felt like climbing
out from massive debt and they decided they could
start to rent movies with the beer money.

* * * * *

On the first Monday in March, Angel had a vision late
in the evening as Gunn and Wesley were getting ready
for bed. A Laclar demon above an alley at Alameda and
6th, Downtown, with a net laid as a trap down on the
ground, set to hoist the victim straight up to the
third floor and through the shutters into its lair.
Fishing for humans.

Gunn didn't like their chances of dealing with it in
its lair. Even if they were quiet enough about finding
the way in, why would it stay and fight when it could
just jump out through those shutters? They'd do better
if they could get it down onto the street and surprise
it there. What if they triggered the trap in a way
that looked like an accident? Wouldn't it come down to
reset the trap? Hard to arrange an accident, though,
at midnight in a quiet alley, when the Laclar could
probably see everything happening for half a block
around. Why would a skateboard be rolling around on it
own? If they even had a skateboard. Gunn got the idea
when they were nearly turned onto 6th: they'd drive
the truck over the trap; and then circle around and
come at the Laclar on foot, from behind it, it if was
looking the way the truck had gone.

The Laclar was already down on the street when they
got into position. Wesley stepped out with the
crossbow, Gunn heard the thud and the howl, and in the
next second Gunn was taking the bow and handing Wesley
a fresh one. He was listening for the next thud as he
started to reload the first bow, but instead there was
the crack of a gunshot, and Wesley cried out and fell
to the ground. Gunn dropped to his knees, and grabbed
the third crossbow to keep the Laclar off while he
started to pull Wesley behind the cover of the wall.
But the Laclar was running away, fast like it was
panicked, and Gunn put down the bow and looked
properly at Wesley.

He was hit in the chest, on his right side. Gunn
leaned over him to take hold of his ankle and push his
left leg up to an angle, and then used his bent knee
as a lever to roll him over onto his right side. Give
the blood a way out of his lungs, make sure he
wouldn't drown in it.

"The phone's in the truck, Wes. You hang on." He ran
around the block to where they'd left the truck, the
sword and the axe slamming against his back. He got
through to 911, dumped the weapons on the front seat,
and ran back to Wesley.

Wesley was fighting to breathe. The sucking sounds
from his chest as he breathed in, the bubbling as he
breathed out, the dragging, the rasping in his throat,
the effort in his face. Nothing else that Gunn could
read in his face: just the effort. Gunn knelt in
blood, soaking cold to his skin, and folded both his
hands around Wesley's hand where it was pinned to the
ground up by his chest.

"They're on their way, Wes. They're on their way."

Wesley arched his neck back, rolled his head slowly
against the ground. Effort. " 'ngel." Arching back
again as he breathed in, shoulders working harder even
than his neck. " 'ngel."

Did he think it was Angel with him? Thrown back to
that day with the Kungai? "Angel's at home, Wes. When
I've seen you settled in the hospital I'll get back to
him. Help him if the headache's bad this time."

A fight now to keep his eyes open. His head jerked to
the left, then back. " 'gel. 'gel."

"Don't you worry about Angel."

Gunn wanted to think he'd heard, and heard what he'd
needed to hear, and that was why he let his eyes close
then, and let his shoulders and his neck relax. But it
only looked like that, and just for a second, and then
his body slumped low, so low, and a sound came from
his chest that was like the sucking and the bubbling
combined, but slow, and far too long, longer than he
ever breathed out in the deepest sleep. Gunn knew
there was only one sound like that, he'd heard it
before too many times: the death rattle. The eyes
closing, the shoulders slumping: that was Wesley
dying.

Gunn was thinking... No, he didn't know what he was
thinking, or for how long. He was looking at Wesley,
he had Wesley's hand held tight, and maybe he was
thinking that the ambulance would be there soon, that
the paramedics shouldn't see the crossbows. And then
Wesley breathed in, a shallow gasp that made his head
rock back slightly, and the breathing out was the same
long, slow slump under gravity. The rattle was
different: quiet and short, almost a murmur.

Gunn had gasped with Wesley, and he held his breath as
Wesley breathed out, and kept on holding it, waiting
for Wesley to breathe again. Twenty heartbeats, maybe
thirty, before he had to give up, but then when he
took his next breath, Wesley breathed with him.

Another long, long wait, and another breath, and then
more waiting, through all the time before the sirens
approached. Gunn stroked Wesley's hand over and over,
coaxing him, willing him to take another breath.
Knowing that Wesley had died some short time after
that third breath, maybe even at the end of that third
gasp. But waiting, not able to stop waiting, because
Wesley had looked this still, this empty before each
of those breaths. There was no difference yet, no
difference that was sure enough to let Gunn stop
waiting.

There was still no difference by the time he heard the
sirens, but he knew there was something else he had to
do now. Something Wesley would expect him to do. He
got up, found all the crossbows, and hid them under a
dumpster that was halfway back to the truck. They'd
been driving home and they'd thought they'd heard
someone in the alley calling for help. There'd been
two guys and one had pulled a gun and then they'd both
run off. And no, Gunn hadn't got any kind of look at
either of them.

He wouldn't ride in the ambulance, he'd come after in
his truck. Yes, he knew him, he hadn't just found him
there.

He watched the ambulance out of sight, then collected
the crossbows on the way back to the truck. Hide all
of the weapons in the space behind the seat, in case
the cops wanted to walk him to the truck. Or followed
him with another question. Or something.

He stripped off his jacket with the blood all up the
cuffs, and his sweatshirt under that, down to his
T-shirt. The blood on his hands was drying sticky
between his fingers, stiff over the sides and the
backs. He wet the sweatshirt with water from the
bottle in the side of the door, and wiped them off
before he'd put them on the steering wheel. His pants
were dark, you couldn't see the stains, or not for
what they were. He could still feel them, though, cold
and clinging, from his knees all down his shins.

At the hospital he helped them with their forms. Next
of kin? "I - I - His family's in England. I'm his
partner. He's got no one else here." They helped him,
told him straight away that he didn't need to do
anything, not here; just find a funeral director,
because then they'd take care of all the arrangements.
Was there a firm that his family...? No, then maybe he
knew someone who'd recently... who might recommend...?
Though if the funeral was going to be in England, then
there were rules and procedures, and he'd have to ask
for a firm that knew all the special arrangements.

He waited for the police. Told them the story, how "it
all happened so fast". The guys were white, mid-20s,
street clothes, but that was all, he was never gonna
remember anythin' else. They went in to see Wesley
while Gunn waited outside, and then they asked about
Wesley's arm and how long he'd been in L.A. and what
he did for a living ("He knows a lot of languages.").
They said the slug might tell them something if they
could recover it, but probably not enough. They had
his address, he took their cards, and they walked him
to the truck.

Angel was still in the vision, but far enough along
that the worst of the noise was complaints about his
head. Nearly three o'clock. What time would it be in
England? Gunn booted up the computer and looked
online. Eight hours ahead. OK. So he should call now.
He couldn't find the number in Wesley's card-file (why
would he, when Wesley knew it by heart?), but it would
be in their phone records. Yes. Back in July. His
mother's birthday?

The longest number he had ever dialled in his life.

"Chichester 40305." A man's voice. Very brisk.

"Is that Mister Wyndham-Pryce?"

"It is. Who is this?"

"My name is Charles Gunn. I'm a friend of Wesley's. I
work with him in Los Angeles. I - I'm sorry but I'm
calling with bad news."

A brief pause. "You're telling me that he's got
himself killed. What happened?"

Gunn swallowed. "It was three hours ago. He was shot
in the chest when we were out in the street. I called
911 but he never made it to the hospital. I'm so
sorry."

"Who shot him? Was it a human? Is this a matter for
the police?"

Well of course he knew about demons. That was how Wes
had grown up. "No, it was a Laclar demon. Wesley had
hit it with a bolt from a crossbow, but it got away."
And then he explained what he had told the police.

A grunt. "I suppose there'll be an autopsy but after
that they should agree to release the body for
transport. Even if they had any prospect of obtaining
a suspect, they couldn't claim that it constituted
evidence. In this situations it's unwise to set a date
for the funeral until the body is in the country, but
one likes to know the likely range. You'll have your
undertaker keep in regular contact with ours?"

"I - Yeah. I'll find one tomorrow. He'll take care of
all those arrangements."

"Good. I'll give you the number of the firm we'll be
using." Then he shouted away from the phone: "Sylvia.
Get me the number for Albins, will you? It's for the
boy." Another voice, sounding shocked but Gunn
couldn't hear the words. No longer shouting: "Yes, a
few hours ago. He was still in Los Angeles. Have you
got it?"

Gunn wrote the name and number  - on the phone bill,
not on Wesley's pad with the notes for his
translation, and not using Wesley's good pen - and he
read it back for the father.

"Good. What was your name again?"

"Charles Gunn."

"And your telephone number?" Gunn gave it. "Well,
thank you for calling, Mister Gunn. We'll call Albin's
now to tell them to expect the information from
America. Goodbye, then."

"Goodbye." Gunn hung up then sat back with a thud,
with his eyes closed and feeling cold, so cold. The
boy. It's for the boy. Shock. And stiff-upper-lip. And
a bad father for Wesley anyway, so Wes had been glad
to be sent away to that school. Gunn had known that.
He'd already known that. And he'd called
half-expecting them to want Wesley sent home, and he
hadn't prepared any arguments, he hadn't been any way
ready.

What did Wesley want? Had he left a will saying he
wanted to stay, or saying it was Gunn's decision? And
if he hadn't, was Gunn going to fight? Would Wesley
have hated to go back? He didn't want to be deported
but... There were things that he missed about his
home, there were times he'd been happy there. He'd
been happier with Gunn, though. Much happier. But he
didn't trust the landscape, he thought the landscape
didn't want him.

The will. It all depended on the will. Gunn was about
to kneel to look through the bottom drawer of Wesley's
desk when he realised that he was still wearing the
same pants. They were dry now, but kneeling in them...
No. Never again. He stripped them off right there,
then went to the bathroom and washed his legs where
they'd touched the clothing, washed his hands again,
over and over, and high up his arms. Into the bedroom.
Their bedroom. With their bed. Pain crashed over him,
where he'd been numb before. He couldn't deal with
that, this wasn't the time for that. He kept his back
to the bed and he got a clean pair of pants and a
clean jacket, and he took them back to the living-room
and he got dressed. He took the other pants and he
went down to the truck, and he got the jacket and the
sweatshirt from the passenger seat and he threw them
all in the nearest dumpster. Then he got the weapons
from the truck and carried them up to the apartment.
And then he went looking for the will.

There wasn't one. He looked everywhere there could be
paper, and there wasn't one.

No. Well. Why would there be? He and Wes had never
talked like that, about Angel as immortal and them as
mortal and what that meant. They would have. They
would have. In time. A year's time, maybe, if the year
was easier like it looked, if they could plan. But
with Angel how he'd been, and Wesley... No, they'd
never talked.

So he wouldn't fight it. In the morning, when he went
looking for a funeral director, the first question
he'd ask was if they knew how to get Wesley home.


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