[Gunnwesley] Fic: Kungai Part Two 8/12 (Wesley/Gunn, NC17)

[helenraven]

Title: Kungai Part Two 8/12

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 was waiting for them in the living-room when
they came out of the bedroom. He was sitting at the
desk looking at the files, dressed in the clothes
Wesley had laid out on the bed.

"Who took my clothes out? Are we moving somewhere? Do
we need a different apartment now?"

The last thing Angel seemed to remember was Gunn
playing at the computer on Saturday night. Wesley had
to tell him all about the vision again, but this time
Angel was able to discuss it on the same level as
Wesley and Gunn. He agreed with what they'd decided:
said he'd be interested to see the area, but thought
they should all trust that the visions were as urgent
as they felt; if a vision expected them to wait for a
week, then wouldn't it have to be a different type of
vision, totally different? Angel was worried about
them having to deal with Angelus, but in a practical
way, not cringing and ashamed like he'd been when he
was still wearing that ruined shirt.

"We - Charles has a better idea for how we can handle
Angelus. With the two of us, we can control him
properly." And Wesley explained about the chains and
the gag.

"A gag? But you shouldn't need that. The chains should
mean that he'd never get close enough to be able to
bite you."

"It's not because of the teeth. It's because of the
noise he makes. He can snarl and howl for hours. When
the neighbours complain about it I have to tell them
I'm looking after a friend's dog."

Angel looked surprised and offended. "You've never
told me that."

"There was nothing I could do about it on my own.
Especially not since we have to let him speak."
Wesley's tone changed, became very quiet. "Have you
been gagged before?" Angel nodded, frowning. "It's
worse than being chained?"

A long, sombre pause, then Angel shrugged. "Don't ask
me, ask any of the people Angelus gagged. Have you
worked out how you're going to do it? The chains,
too."

"Not yet. We thought you might have some ideas. Maybe
we could adapt the designs for the drive-in."

Between the three of them, they produced a first
design over breakfast. Gunn bought the equipment
during the day, and then they tested it out in the
evening's training. Angel refused to try to behave
like Angelus did during the reverberation phase, just
lay still on the floor during the two minutes Wesley
had set. The beginning of the attack stage felt to
Gunn like any other training bout, and he was taken
completely by surprise when Angel turned into the
vampire, which happened when they'd covered about half
the distance to the rail they were using to stand in
for the bed-frame. The vampire wasn't as savage as
before, was almost quiet; but it still fought them
like they were the animals, like they couldn't win
because they were just food, and this time Gunn could
feel it thinking about what it was going to do to
them, how it would teach them. Wesley had to burn it
to get it to open its mouth for the gag, and it still
struggled so hard against them that Gunn nearly lost
his grip on the buckle. The last minute showed them
that the gag really did work; the sounds from that
throat were still ugly, still promising a terrible
death, but it couldn't make them loud enough to bring
the neighbours.

"Wes, do we - The training's over, right? Do we try to
get it down to the truck, take it home? Or do we keep
it here till it turns back?" The vampire had become
completely still, was hanging against the rail with
its eyes closed.

"I think we -" Wesley broke off because Angel was
back. In all his years of facing vampires Gunn had
never seen that before: the demon giving way to the
human. Why should that be so disturbing? Why didn't he
just feel relieved?

Angel was staring at Wesley, jerking his head and
tugging against the chains - not hard, like he was
reminding, not complaining - and Wesley took the hint
straight away. Wesley removed the gag first, but Angel
didn't speak till he was completely free, and he
couldn't speak in his normal way because his mouth was
bruised.

"I think we need a line around the throat. You need a
better way of getting him moving. And we have to find
locks that are easier for Wesley to close." Wesley got
out the drawings, they produced a second design and
then they put in an hour on their sword-work, like
they were a normal team, a crew of three friends.

They went home to clean up after training and then
they all headed out again. Wesley took Angel in the
convertible to look at alleys, and Gunn drove his
truck to Caritas. Gunn had hardly thought about
Caritas all day, hadn't made any plans. Now he would
have to set himself up for an hour of undercover in a
bar, in one of the few times when he wanted to be
completely alone. Left to himself he would have driven
out somewhere and spent an hour thinking about their
fight with Angel, about the bruises he'd left around
Angel's mouth. He could still feel that fight in every
muscle.

When he'd killed the vampire that had used to be
Alonna, he hadn't felt rage, just sadness, like this
was something he'd done a hundred times before. If
he'd had dreams about having to do that to Alonna he
couldn't remember them, but they all knew, in the
crew, that any one of them could be turned, and they
all knew that the only thing to do with the vampire
was kill it. Dealing with Angel as a vampire, he had
felt rage: he wouldn't show a scrap of mercy, he'd
make the vampire suffer. And then a night or a minute
later, he wasn't dealing with Angel as a vampire any
more, but with Angel as whatever he was. Not human but
maybe a person. Sometimes a person. A person he almost
liked. A person he could see was brave, keeping to a
hard, hard duty. The person who'd saved Wesley, been
there for Wesley in the hospital, brought Wesley home.
Wesley didn't hate the vampire, or not like this, not
with this rage. Wesley wouldn't have left bruises. Or,
he'd know he'd left them for all the right reasons,
because there was no other way.

But he was thinking like Wesley had been born perfect,
like he'd known from the start how to keep the two of
them separate in his mind. Angel one thing, and the
vampire - (Angelus. Try it. Past time to try it.) -
and Angelus as something else. Was selling Wesley
short to think that'd come easy to him. He'd worked at
it, he must've worked at it, like he'd worked at
learning to fight. So this was Gunn working on it.
This was how it started with him.

Caritas was quieter than he'd seen it before. He got a
beer and sat at a table by the bar; and tried to look
like a karaoke fan when he was still thinking so hard
about Angel and Wesley and bruises that he could
hardly tell one song from another. He'd stay for the
full hour, anyway, though he wasn't in a good state to
notice much of anything; didn't matter, when he could
always come back another night.

After he'd been in the bar about twenty minutes, a
human came up to the table and asked if any of the
other seats were free. Gunn waved his hand to say "go
ahead", only looking away from the stage long enough
to see if the guy asking was human or demon. When the
next song started, Gunn turned his head to watch the
MC leading the previous singer off to the side for one
of those short, serious conversations. He watched for
a couple of seconds, then as he was turning back to
the stage he noticed that the other guy at the table
had also been watching the MC, must have watched just
a second longer than Gunn. That made Gunn look closer
at the guy, and it turned out that the guy was Matt,
the human from the Three Musketeers. Gunn checked the
room for the other two, but Matt was on his own, at
least for now.

Matt wasn't paying any attention to the current song,
but was looking through a thick stack of paper, and
rolling a pen around and around the middle finger of
his right hand. Gunn guessed he was choosing a song,
and this must mean the others weren't gonna be joining
him. If it was gonna be the three of them, wouldn't
they do the choosing together or even have chosen
something before they arrived?

Gunn leaned forward. "You sing sometimes with a
Chachaspe demon and a Hull demon, don't you? I saw you
doin' 'Walk Like a Man' last week. Was quite an act."

"Oh. Hey. Thanks." Casual, almost automatic. That was
probably because he'd been concentrating on the list
of songs, because in the next second he looked
properly at Gunn and said, "I haven't seen you sing,
have I? Are you new here, or you just don't sing?"

"Both. Just found this place last Thursday."

A nod and a smile. "So you come back for the beer, the
sounds, or the sights?" He gestured with his head
around the room.

Gunn shrugged. "Well, the sights, mostly." A slight
pause and he pulled a face. "Sorry. I just diss half
your friends?"

"Kinda, but you get to do that your first few visits.
Normally five, or six if you're willing to try
'Bohemian Rhapsody' on your own. So how d'you find
us?"

"Guy gave this address to meet him. Never showed.
Practical joke, I guess."

"Girlfriend brought me, year or so ago. And someone
had brought her, and so on. Word doesn't seem to
spread that far, though."

"What she tell you? About where you were goin'? Were
you freaked?"

"Oh, she said demons and karaoke. And the psychic
host, and everything. I thought she was joking. Still
thought it was a joke for the first hour. Some
all-year Halloween thing. Then I went to the men's
room and..." He shook his head. "No way those were
costumes. Then I was freaked. But I was freaked enough
to get up and sing with Carla and..." A shrug. "They
were a good crowd."

"Yeah, I got that too."

"Hey, d'you mind if I - It's Matt, by the way."

"Gunn. With two ens."

"Hi. D'you mind if I get back to this?" He pointed at
the list of songs. "I don't get my sheet in soon, I
could be here all night."

"Sure."

Over the next few minutes Gunn half-watched Matt as he
scanned the pages, stopping a few times to make a note
on a small sheet of paper. Then he flipped the book
closed, studied his sheet of paper while twirling his
pen at double-speed, flipped the book open again,
turned the sheet over and filled it in, and took the
book and sheet to the bar.

"What you goin' for?"

" 'Can't Buy Me Love'. The Beatles. You know, 'I don't
care too much for money.' S'what I need a readin' on.
I'm doin' this accountancy course and yeah I can see
it makes sense, but would I be better doing something
I liked? You doing something you like?" Really wanting
to know.

"Yeah. Haven't made any money from it yet, though."

"Wha'd'you do?" Gunn gave Matt one of his cards; he'd
been thinking this move over while Matt had been busy
choosing a song. Matt read the card then did a
double-take. "Oh, wow! Seriously, man? This isn't just
your joke on this place? Good joke, anyway."

"Seriously."

"So that's how you knew Piriti's a Chachaspe and
Grouw's a Hull. Was gonna ask."

"Well, I didn't know, but my partner did when I
described them to him. Now, he really did think I was
joking. Said they shouldn't be friends."

"God, no, they should hate each other. Or despise each
other, maybe. It was months before they'd take the
risk of meeting away from here. Didn't know what
they'd do to each other away from the spell. Made me
stand between them with stun guns." He shuddered.
"That was seriously weird. Things they should warn you
about when you start making friends with demons."

"But they were OK?"

"Yeah. They're friends. That seems to be more
important than... But without the spell here, Piriti
wouldn't ever have let Grouw get close enough to
talk."

"D'you know exactly what type of spell it is?"

A shrug. "Not exactly. Some kind of anti-violence
thing. Works on all types of demons. Maybe there's
hundreds of 'em. I dunno. That the sort of thing you
deal in?" He tapped Gunn's business card.

"Not so far. Mostly it's been humans who've been
having problems with demons. But there's gotta be at
least as many demons havin' problems with humans. Or
with other demons."

"At least." He laughed. "Hey, if you could get Kersa
off Marianne Faithful and back onto Doris Day, you'd
earn a hundred bucks, easy, from every demon here."

"Is that Kersa up now?" Gunn hadn't been listening to
the host's introduction.

"No, that's Illis. Kersa's over there, by the stage.
You can see the spines on her head, got a line of
silver through them."

They settled to listening, and the few times they did
talk, it was only about the songs and the singers.
Gunn enjoyed himself, while swearing he would never,
ever get up on that stage; yeah, he was an extrovert,
but not that kind of extrovert. After a while the host
took a turn (a special request, he said), with a song
that Gunn was sure he hadn't heard before, all
romantic and yearning. "You go to my head. And you
linger like a haunting refrain. And I find you
spinning round in my brain. Like the bubbles in a
glass of champagne."

It was about him, about all the stages of him falling
in love with Wesley. And exactly, totally, about how
he'd felt that first morning after, sitting in the
diner looking out of the window. Feeling like his
whole body was glowing with how good they were
together, knowing they could be sweet together, and
fierce, and everything in between. And they were. They
were.

No, it wasn't about them. Not really, not when you
heard the rest of the words. It was too one-sided, and
too romantic, too fizzy and carefree. "Get a hold of
yourself, can't you see that it never can be?" No,
he'd been luckier than that, he'd known he was
important to Wesley, right from the moment he had
realised what he wanted. "This heart of mine hasn't a
ghost of a chance, in this crazy romance." Made it
sound like it was just a game, just fun. Not something
that would change your whole life inside a week. Make
you understand for the first time how a man could want
to be fucked.

Not about them, but closer than anything else he knew,
and the mood - if you took the words as just sound,
put in your own meaning - the mood was everything he
felt when he looked and looked and looked at Wesley's
face. He needed to be with Wesley now. They might not
have the sex they'd planned for tonight. Angel might
have found something in the alleys, and they'd all be
spending the night working. Or Wesley might be angry
about Gunn giving Angel bruises from the gagging, or
just too shaken by that whole fight - like Gunn had
been before Caritas had wound him down. Didn't matter.
He had to be where Wesley was. He shouldn't be here
now.

The song was finished. He'd applauded, hadn't he? He
hoped so. He checked his watch, saw he'd been in the
bar nearly an hour. Wesley should be home. Unless
Angel really had found something and they'd gone
straight in, without him. No. No, Wesley would have
called.

He drained his beer, then turned to Matt. "I have to
get home. Sorry. Hoped I'd catch your turn, but I have
to get back."

"No problem. Y'won't be missing anything. You'll be
coming back, yeah?"

"Oh, yeah."

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