[Gunnwesley] Fic: Kungai Part Six 10/12 (Wesley/Gunn, NC17)

[helenraven]

Title: Kungai Part Six 10/12

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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The flight was booked for Tuesday the 19th of March, 5
p.m. with Virgin Atlantic out of LAX. They'd be
sealing the box on Monday evening, and Gunn went late
on Monday afternoon.

Carefully shaved, and his hair combed and neat, but no
colour. You couldn't think for a second that he might
breathe again. Two weeks dead. Nothing to think except
he was two weeks dead.

Gunn stood looking down for a long, long time. Then he
drew a deep, slow breath, and laid the back of his
fingers, so lightly, against that beautiful hand. He
moved his middle finger from side to side over the
ring, feeling the edge, the pattern. Then still for
another breath, a gentle stroke down to the
fingertips, and lifting away. Lips to his cheek, just
for a moment, "Goodbye, English," whispered in his
ear, and Gunn straightened up and left without looking
back.

Gunn finished the work on the church that night, and
he had a last meeting with Leeth at lunchtime to hand
back the keys and explain anything they wanted
explaining. The three priests must've been told about
the meeting, because they all came in together and
thanked him, and said some right things about Wesley.
As the meeting was winding up, Leeth gave a sort of
awkward cough, reached around the side of the desk and
brought out a large bag, the type you get from the
fancier stores, made of thick card with a flat bottom,
and with glossy cord for handles.

"We.. Uh - We know you've ruined at least one set of
clothes doing this. That is, so you can't wear them
outside the house. We think these are... Well, they're
similar to our eyes. And the fit... shouldn't be too
small."

They'd bought him new clothes. Sweet, and weird, and
maybe kinda creepy. The money would've been more
useful, but for this work, no, he couldn't ever accept
money from them. And they must've felt that too. Leeth
obviously didn't want him to take out the clothes then
and there, so Gunn was able to imagine the best while
he was saying what a surprise, and how thoughtful.
(Could be the perfect clothes in there, exactly his
style. Could be.) And it was thoughtful. Wesley would
have been so proud, so happy.

Turned out they were good clothes. More plain than he
would have picked out for himself (no lettering, no
pictures), but no kind of chore to wear. White
T-shirt, long-sleeved orange top, dark-green denim
jacket, and loose-fitting black pants. Sizes all
looked right, too, though he wasn't going to try them
on yet. Wesley's last day in L.A., Gunn was staying in
this outfit, the one Wesley had liked best.

He got to Manhattan Beach around 4:45, found a bench
just above the beach near El Segundo, and stayed there
until 5:30, watching each jet as it came rising into
view and headed out across the ocean. So regular,
clockwork almost; the last one shrunk to just such a
size when the next one would power itself out. He
couldn't read the logos, not really, just as a smear
of colour, but the red at 5:20, that was probably it.
He didn't feel much: calm and sad, like he'd felt
since he'd said goodbye.

He spent the evening at the beach-house, which he'd
planned with Matt since the day the flight got booked.
They went out to rent a movie and get take-out from
the curry place in Santa Monica, but they didn't watch
the movie in the end, just played some Nintendo and
talked. Gunn told Matt more than he expected to about
the last few weeks, even as far as Wesley's family,
and Angel so sure that Wesley would come back.

Matt was horrified at the thought of Angel. "Y'can't
be left with him! He's gotta have some family.
Somewhere? Right?"

"They're all dead."

"What you gonna do?"

Gunn shrugged. "Take care of him. Like Wes did."

Matt already knew most about the church, from Piriti,
and on one thing he'd known more than Gunn, 'cos
Piriti had passed Leeth on to him for advice from a
young human male on what clothes to buy and where and
what sizes.

Woah! Now there was "thoughtful", and there was "too
much thinking". How many meetings had they had over
this? "Can't believe they'd go round half my friends.
Could've just -" Going to be: Could've just asked
Wesley. That was gonna keep happening. Like putting
out two mugs. Feeling six times a day like he should
be making tea.

He switched to soda early, after two beers. Matt said
he could stay the night, but Gunn had been keeping
such bad hours, he'd be better off at home, trying to
get back to normal.

In the morning he dressed in his new clothes, and they
did fit, and they looked even better on. Wesley would
have loved them - and shown it by wanting to get him
out of them.

Angel was awake and lucid, so Gunn went in immediately
to feed him. Angel came up close, as usual, and he was
slow with his drinking because he was in the mood to
tell Gunn what he'd been reading about salt. But after
four mouthfuls he suddenly stopped, and his expression
turned mistrustful and threatening, and his head
pushed forward and moved from side to side like a
snake's. His breathing was building to a snarl and
Gunn was heading for the door, but Angel was too quick
and there was a smash to Gunn's jaw and a crack to the
back of his head, and then darkness.

Gunn guessed afterwards that he was probably out for
three or four minutes. As soon as he'd surfaced enough
to remember what had happened he struggled to his
feet, fighting against the nausea from the blow to his
head. The door was wide open and Angel was gone.

He needed a crossbow. The net, chains, a pike - in
case he managed to take Angel alive. If Angel had just
run out into the street, then he was already dust. But
if he'd managed to find his way underground...
Couldn't ask the crew to help search, but Angel was so
strange, so damn loud, some demon down there was gonna
notice him and talk about it - and Gunn would be
listening everywhere he knew.

The front door was closed. But the door to the bedroom
was open and they always left it shut.

Angel was stretched out face-down on Wesley's side of
the bed, and he'd pulled most of Wesley's clothes out
of the closet and piled them on the bed, and he was
holding onto them like he'd never let go, pressing his
face into Wesley's shirts like he wanted to drown in
them. Moaning very low, and rocking his head and
shoulders in time with the moans.

Gunn went over and sat on the edge of the bed, and put
his hand on Angel's shoulder and made soothing noises.
Eventually Angel became still, then quiet, and then he
slowly rolled over onto his side and looked up at
Gunn. Reaching up to touch Gunn's jaw: "I'm sorry."

Gunn wasn't going to tell him it was OK. "Is this
because I don't have his smell on me?"

A nod. "I know I should be patient. You're - You're so
patient. They have to find him or bring him out. It's
not... But it's - There's a space where he'd supposed
to be. It's worse than - It hurts to touch it. I know
I should be patient, not think... 'It could be today.'
Because when it's not.... I - I - I almost wish I
could stop thinking about him. Until he's back."

Tell him again? But he wouldn't believe. He knew,
deeper than Gunn could ever reach, that Wesley had
been taken from him before - and always brought back.

"You can't be in here, Angel. Come on. Come back to
your room."

When Angel got up, some of Wesley's clothes got
dragged off the bed onto the floor, and Angel stood
and looked at them, then closed his eyes like he was
going to start moaning again. Gunn grabbed the nearest
shirt from the bed (the blue one, from the first time
they'd kissed), unfastened the pin from the sleeve,
and pushed the shirt into Angel's hand. "You should
have that. To be patient, yeah?"

They cleaned up the spilled blood together, and then
Gunn brought another pint. Angel didn't stand close to
drink it but took it back to the wall with the books,
where he'd folded the shirt. When he was alone again
he took the shirt over to the mattress, and curled up
over it, and rocked again.

* * * * *

Gunn got back to his Wyndham Gunn work. But it was
lonely, even out talking to people half the day, and
he didn't have a chance with the languages, and he
didn't really know his way around the books, and it
never felt like anything more than a chore. He could
manage the cases he had now: he'd been sure enough of
that when he'd taken them on, and besides he'd talked
them all over with Wesley. But looking for more...
He'd feel like a fraud.

And he wasn't made to be on his own. He'd never
thought he might be but this was the first time he'd
ever done it and God, was he not! He had to find some
other way of working, some other way of living, but
what? Every day he was saying it to himself now: "What
are you going to do?"

On the Saturday after Wesley left, Gunn got a call
during breakfast from Lilah Morgan. Could she come
over, in half an hour perhaps? She had a proposition
to put to him.

Her firm wanted to take over the care of Angel. She
knew the task had been hard enough with two people, it
must be nearly impossible with just one. She would
have approached him immediately - probably should have
- but she'd decided to wait until she had something
concrete to show him. Would he come with her for a
short ride downtown?

She turned in to a large parking garage, and parked in
the lowest level. In the elevator, she brought out a
key for the control panel, turned it one way, then
back the other, and the elevator went down. The doors
opened on a bright space at least the size of Gunn's
apartment. One main room, twice the size of Gunn's
living room, with major renovation work going on:
wiring everywhere, and plumbing over in the far
corner, and partitions going up, and boards and boxes
and wrapped shapes stacked in marked-off, numbered
areas against the wall.

She took him over to a large trestle-table in the
middle of the room, with a hanging-rack of drawings
next to it. The drawings on the table were the
designer's drawing, of the finished room, but Lilah
would pull out the working drawings from the rack when
Gunn asked questions about any of the details. Angel
would have a shower area, right there in his room. And
a chair and a table that folded out of the wall, and
the mattress up on a platform. And shelves for his
books and a closet for his clothes, and transparent
areas built into the walls so they could give him
pictures. And everything could be shut tight and
locked down when Angelus was there - just with the
flick of one switch - so he had no props, nothing to
use as a weapon; but when Angel was back then another
flick and everything was returned to him.

Four cameras. Total coverage. And they could feed him
without going into the room, just put the beaker
through a special hole in the wall. In fact, all of
Angel's storage spaces could be reached from both
sides; they could give him things, take them away,
without putting anyone at risk or scaring Angel. And
they'd set everything up so they could monitor him
from a distance, though they wouldn't make full use of
that until they were sure that he'd use the electronic
drawing-blocks that they were building into all the
walls, always use them to draw out his visions.

The rest of the space would be set up with the
assumption that there might be up to three people on
duty, sometimes for hours at a time, sometimes
overnight: with a bank of monitors (with built-in
VCRs), racks of weapons, a reference library, internet
access and all the normal facilities of an apartment.

"You gonna keep him in solitary, then? Everything
remote. Just a few minutes each day to give him the
blood through the wall. Like someone in to water the
plants."

Lilah shook her head. "We've designed it so we can do
that. If it's easier for him. But we're hoping you'll
help us to make contact with him. And to understand
him. If you could be here during some core hours for
the first few months, and maybe hold a two-hour clinic
once a week to discuss problems or options. And be
on-call to help us interpret the visions." A small
smile. "I won't quite say, 'Name your rate,' but I
think you'll be happy with the range that the senior
partner has approved. It will be strange, I know,
taking a different responsibility."

"Can I come and... just see him?"

"Of course. You'll have the highest rights of access.
Though we'll have to agree on the limits of your
authority."

Gunn nodded slowly, looked all around him, then walked
very slowly to the far end, into Angel's space. He
paced it from one side to the other, his hands
brushing the walls, imagining the table, the bed, the
pictures, the gleaming shower-room with Angel's
shampoo and soap and washcloth all laid out.

He went back to Lilah, who had waited by the drawings.
"When will it be finished?"

"In a week. I sent the contractors on a break. They'll
be back and working as soon as we've left. We can move
him any night after that. When you're satisfied with
the training of his staff." Another smile. "You'll
know most of them from December."

Gunn took a deep breath. "He'll be terrified. He was a
wreck last time we moved him and he was halfway sane
then and he had Wesley to see him through. Anchor him.
I'll have to work out something to tell him 'bout
what's happenin'. Christ. He'll probably think we're
takin' him to find Wesley."

Lilah nodded, pulled a sympathetic face. "But it has
to be done. And he does adjust. Doesn't he?"

"Yeah. Yeah, he does."

They went back up in the elevator, and arranged their
next meeting for 10 a.m. on Monday, with Lilah coming
to the apartment to discuss the details of Gunn's
contract and the plans for the training and the move.
She dropped Gunn off at the kerb and he immediately
got in the truck and went to the park and ran and ran
until he'd thrown off enough of the blaze of bubbling
energy that he felt small enough to be able to fit
into the apartment. He put music on loud, and attacked
the rest of his breakfast like a wolf thrown a steak,
and then danced around the apartment like he was
boxing.

But Angel was in hell, and anything new was bad,
especially new and loud. So Gunn stopped after his
second-favourite track and went to have a shower. He
did sing in the shower, but once he was dressed again
(in his new clothes), he threw himself backwards
across the width of the bed, and stared up at the
ceiling and tried to get calmed down.

Lilah was right, the change would be strange. He'd
been thinking, as he paced Angel's space, "If only
Wesley could have seen this." But Wesley would have
turned it down, because his duty to Angel was
completely his. He would never have surrendered that
responsibility, not while the task was on the right
side between "possible" and "impossible".

Wesley would understand, though, wouldn't he? That it
was impossible, now, and this was taking care of
Angel. Much better care. And the visions would be
covered, really covered; so Angel's pain, the damage,
it wouldn't be wasted, it would go to the purpose that
they knew Angel wanted. Yeah, Wes would understand.

A movie. He wanted to see a movie. Something just
opened, whatever there was. Maybe Matt'd be up for
that, too. He went out again to get a paper, read the
reviews and the listings there in the truck, then
called Matt and they were soon settled on "Panic
Room", 12.30 in Redondo Beach.

The moment Matt saw him, his eyes went wide and he
said, "Something's happened. Something good?"

Gunn nodded, over and over. "Turns out Angel does have
family. Here in L.A. And rich. God, what they're
setting up for him... He's gonna be - Near's he c'n
get to a life."

After the movie they went to a coffee-house. Matt was
meeting Holly at four, but she'd be totally cool if he
cancelled, or if Gunn was there too. He hadn't been
telling her much about Gunn and Wesley (and Angel),
but, yeah, enough.

Nah, time Gunn went home. His brain was already racin'
away, workin' on plans for helpin' Angel settle. He'd
just be starin' into space half the evenin', Matt and
Holly having to talk round him. Out on the street they
hugged goodbye, a tight hug, happy.


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