[Gunnwesley] Fic: Kungai Part Three 11/18 (Wesley/Gunn, NC17)

[helenraven]

Title: Kungai Part Three 11/18

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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Wesley got the keys to the new apartment first thing
on the Monday their lease started, and he and Gunn
spent the next few days setting up the security
measures they needed for Angel. Wesley hired the same
magic-user to place the protection on the windows, and
Gunn got the same effect of feeling like he'd never
seen the guy before. The barrier on the windows was
based on momentum, Wesley said, and couldn't be
crossed by any object with momentum greater than that
of an air molecule; no vampire or human was capable of
moving slowly enough to get through it. Before the
magic-user started work on the spell Wesley had opened
all of the windows by an inch and had angled the
blinds, and if they ever wanted to make any other
change to the windows, they would have to get a
magic-user in again to take the spell down for them.

For the door to Angel's room, they fitted a spyhole, a
lock and two bolts, they removed the doorknob from
Angel's side of the door and replaced it with a blank
plate, and they covered Angel's side of the door with
crucifixes that were positioned so he shouldn't be
able to touch any part of the door. They didn't expect
to make much use of the spyhole, because while Gunn
was shopping around for their TV and VCR he'd got the
idea for something better that the spyhole: a video
baby-monitor. He fixed the camera to the ceiling in
the corner by the door, and set the screen on a high
shelf just to the left of Angel's door, where they
could see it from almost any point in the living-room.
Now Wesley would be able to check on Angel without
having to leave his desk. They still had a use for the
audio monitor since they could carry those receivers
around with them, and Gunn set up a bracket in the
centre of the ceiling ready to take the microphone
when they finally moved it out of the other apartment.

They'd decided they could leave Angel out of the
chains, but only if they made sure there was nothing
in his room that Angelus could use as a weapon, or
that he could use to try to break down the door or
disable the monitors. This meant no furniture, not
even the bed, no pictures on the walls, just the
mattress and some clothes, and they'd have to give him
a drawing pad and some crayons or charcoal (not
pencils), and yes, they could safely let him have
magazines and paperback books.

Without the bed, they would need another method of
chaining him in place. They were still going to chain
and gag him when he vamped up during a vision, and for
all they knew there might be other times when they'd
have to keep him chained for weeks. Gunn got two steel
plates with rings attached, and fixed the plates to
the floor along the wall opposite the windows, ten
feet apart, and clearly within the camera's field of
view. With an eleven-foot chain between the two rings,
they should be able to give Angel the same level of
comfort and the same absence of options as he'd had
when he was chained to the bed.

They'd agreed they also needed a form of restraint
they could make Angelus put on himself while they
stayed at a distance, and they weren't happy with the
idea of having him cuff himself to the bolt-rings,
because it would be too difficult to tell from a
distance whether he'd really closed the cuffs. Wesley
and Gunn argued about designs for a couple of days,
and then Wesley mentioned the problem to Angel, and
Angel immediately suggested that they use manacles
that were sprung at the hinges so that they would
always be gaping open if they weren't properly
padlocked shut. They could use chains from the
ceiling, which would give them the clearest view of
everything that Angelus was doing, and make it more
difficult for him to mislead them or to brace himself
against a wall. Long chains, to within a foot or so of
the floor, which would make it more difficult for him
to try to use his weight to pull the bolts out of the
ceiling. Long enough, too, that he could sit down,
maybe even sleep: not out of consideration for
Angelus, but for when he changed back. Gunn got the
chains and manacles made, fixed them up and tried them
out; and that was the last piece of work they needed
to do on Angel's room.

They moved Angel and his mattress between three and
four on Wednesday morning. They'd got the mattress
into the bed of the truck around midnight, and then
they'd waited for Angel to reach a co-operative state,
which would mean either lucid or in hell - and what
they got was hell. They took him down with his hands
chained behind his back and his coat draped over his
shoulders, and secured him in the cab with the coat on
his lap. Wesley rode in the bed of the truck to avoid
crowding Angel, though he sat immediately behind him
and whenever Gunn looked back he seemed to find Wesley
with his hand raised, just about to touch the glass.
How long was it gonna take for Wesley to accept that
Angel couldn't be reassured, not in hell, for him to
really accept it so he'd stop always feeling like he
should be trying?

At the other apartment they took Angel in first,
padlocked him directly to the ring furthest from the
door, locked and bolted the door, then went down to
get the mattress. They put the mattress against the
far wall, just to the right of the hanging chains and
in clear view of both the camera and the spyhole, and
Gunn laid Angel's coat across it while Wesley put the
magazine, books and drawing pad on the floor at the
other side.

Wesley heated some blood then released Angel while
Gunn stood guard with the holy-water. Wesley had hoped
the routine would help Angel: being released, then
fed, then left alone. Very hard to tell. Angel seemed
numbly resigned, almost beyond fear. Gunn had seen  it
start a few minutes into the journey in the truck,
when Angel had suddenly stopped reacting, stopped
looking, and since then he'd either had his eyes
closed, or had his gaze fixed on some point just in
front of his knees.

Wesley stayed in the apartment to watch over Angel,
particularly to see if he still had the same reliable
patterns, and Gunn went back to the other apartment to
finish getting things ready for the movers. Gunn took
a last look at the screen on his way out, and saw that
Angel was turned even further towards the wall, seemed
curled even tighter. Should they have made him go over
to the mattress? Probably, but it looked too late now.

They'd hired the movers to deal with the furniture,
except for Angel's bed which they were giving to the
shelter, and the move was all finished by lunchtime.
Their bedroom was large enough to take Angel's
wardrobe as well as their own, and they put Angel's
chair and side-table in the living-room, just to the
left of his door and facing the screen. Gunn moved the
boxes himself, then they both dismantled Angel's bed
and took it to the shelter - and apart from the
spyhole still in the bedroom door, that left the old
apartment clear of every trace of the three of them.

Gunn took the truck and went to Best Buy to get the
TV/VCR combo that he'd picked out, while Wesley took
the car and went to join Blockbuster and rent their
first couple of movies. Gunn was expecting an
art-house and maybe a Spike Lee, and was initially
rather suspicious when Wesley arrived home with "Dumb
and Dumber" and "Jaws". OK, so he'd put it kind of
strong about the sort of movie he and his crew had
always been looking for when they needed to relax, but
did Wesley really think he couldn't cope with anything
more serious? But he soon realised that Wesley hadn't
given nearly that much thought to what Gunn might
enjoy (just to what he probably wouldn't hate), and
Wesley really did think that whole business in "Dumb
and Dumber" with the bird's head - from the way it was
cut off, to taping it back on and selling the bird to
a blind kid, to the fraud getting top-billing on
"America's Most Wanted" - well, he honestly did think
it was comic genius.

As far as they could tell, Angel had been in hell all
day. He'd slept several times, but each time he'd
woken up terrified and bewildered. The arrival of the
furniture had woken him from his first sleep and
driven him to make his first real movement in the new
room, scuttling to the corner furthest from the door,
where he pressed his hands to the wall, hid his face,
and trembled. Wesley turned the monitor off while the
movers were present, but wasn't surprised to find
Angel still in the same position when they left. When
Gunn had finished with the boxes they went in to
install the audio monitor and to feed Angel again, and
this time they did move him over to the mattress and
gently pointed out his coat and showed him that he
could read or draw if he wanted. Of course, he just
hid, first curled against the wall, and then for all
of the rest of the day under his coat.

Having Angel hidden under the coat meant they couldn't
see how much they were frightening him with the sound
of the movies and of them laughing and arguing and
jumping with shock. Gunn wondered a couple of times
how much Wesley would have let the sight of Angel hold
him back, how often he'd've been checking the monitor
if Angel didn't have the coat. Maybe without the coat,
Gunn would never have discovered that his classy,
movie-snob Wes could slide half-off the couch from
laughing at a frozen-tongue gag. Way more fun to watch
than the movie, but they'd have to talk soon about
taking the coat away, about whether they should give
Angel back his bedding after all. Because if Angel
could use the coat to hide from them, so could
Angelus.

They had the talk about the coat soon after they woke
the next morning, and they decided to take it away as
soon as possible. The sounds from Wesley's audio
receiver were unusual: grunts and gasps, and maybe
glossy pages being turned. Surely even in hell Angel
couldn't get that scared by a magazine. Probably a
hallucination, then.

No. A new treat, thanks to the video monitor: the
sight of Angelus masturbating. He was lying on his
back on the mattress with his trousers and shirt open,
and with the magazine propped open against the wall.
If Gunn hadn't been able to see what Angelus was doing
with his right hand he would have said the vampire was
in the reverberation phase of a vision; there was the
same power and the same appetite, lazy, cat-like,
expressed through every inch of the body. Wesley
blushed fiercely and fumbled, coughing, to turn off
his receiver. Gunn watched for a few seconds longer,
enough to see Angelus take his left hand off his
nipple and move it to the magazine, not turning the
page but stroking the surface, it looked like. Gunn
did not ever want to know whose picture Angelus was
looking at. The coat was nowhere in sight.

"So... be pretty sick, huh? T'get any kind of turned
on from seein' that." Gunn had got turned on, enough
that Wesley would be able to see it if he could bring
himself to actually face Gunn.

Wesley gave an abrupt movement of his head, like he
was trying to shake something off. He opened the
refrigerator and got out a yoghurt. After he'd closed
the door, he stood with his hand still pressed to the
white surface and said, "We won't do anything about
it. Not from that."

"Leave him with the magazine, you mean? Yeah, be petty
to take it away. He's stuck in jail. Wha'd'we expect
him to do?"

Now Wesley turned to look at Gunn, but stepping
backwards, too, till he was against the counter. Gunn
couldn't stop himself from glancing down, and he found
exactly the bulge he'd expected. "No." Wesley
swallowed. "I mean we won't touch each other. We won't
use it. Never, when it's from seeing that."

Gunn nodded. "Yeah. We don't need that. But y'know we
can cope OK with admitting it? Don't have to pretend
we're like... I dunno... monks or something. It don't
mean anything."

"No. No, you're right, it doesn't, does it?" Wesley
looked serious and thoughtful for a moment longer,
then smiled suddenly at Gunn, and then stepped forward
to the refrigerator again, to open the freezer
compartment and take out the coffee. Gunn went looking
for the filter papers, which turned out to be several
cupboards away from where he remembered unpacking
them.

They decided to use Wesley's established system for
the times when Angelus was being disgusting, and for
the next half hour they kept the receiver turned off
and their eyes away from the screen. When the time was
up Wesley turned the sound back on first and they went
over to check the screen. Angelus was asleep, lying
neatly on his side. His face was human now and he
looked very peaceful. The magazine wasn't propped
against the wall any more, but had fallen over onto
the mattress. Wesley and Gunn looked at one another,
sighed and shrugged, then turned away to get started
on the day's work. Wesley was back in front of the
screen within a few minutes, though, sitting in
Angel's armchair with his translation work on the
side-table; he wanted at least another day of checking
that Angel's patterns hadn't changed with the move to
the new apartment.

After another half hour, with Angel still asleep,
Wesley suddenly said, "Of course, this does mean we're
going to have to work out a method for washing him. It
has to be simpler to take him into the shower - maybe
once a week - than to try to give him a sponge-bath in
his room. It would probably be enough to chain his
hands behind his back. We could chain him to the
faucet. Though... at such close quarters... it would
be best to hobble him, too."

"How's he gonna wash himself if - Oh. He's not gonna
wash himself. That kinda close quarters. I dunno. Lot
to be said for sponge-baths. You really wanna go as
far as takin' a shower with him? After seein' that?"
Gunn pointed at the screen.

"We'd have to choose our time, obviously. But imagine
trying to wash his hair in there. And if you think we
won't need to... I believe he's quite capable of
getting spunk in his hair."

"Jeez, Wes!" Gunn raised his arm to ward off the
image, then laughed, turned his hand, and slid it
slowly across the top of his head and down to his
neck. "Or we could give him some real grooming. Sharp
as this. Never have to think about washing his hair
then."

Wesley needed several seconds to take that idea in,
then he looked at Gunn's scalp, then up at Angel on
the screen, then back at Gunn. Then he shook his head,
smiling. "I think if we did that to him, we'd have all
aspects of Angel after our blood, not just Angelus. It
could even be enough to make him fight back in hell."

"You're still set on this weekly shower, then?" Wesley
shrugged. "You got any swimmin' trunks?"

"No?" No, Wesley wouldn't have. If he'd brought any
from Sunnydale, he'd've got rid of them in the first
month or so after he lost his arm.

"Well, get yourself some when you're buyin' the new
suit. Wouldn't put it past him to fake the whole
vision craziness stunt just for the chance of seein'
you naked. But I'm onto him." A silly joke but it did
freak him out, just a bit, imagining Wesley and Angel
naked in the shower, with Wesley soaping Angel all
over. Not freaked-out jealous but... It was gonna be
weird for all of them, probably for Angel most of all.
Gunn's instincts said they'd get through easier if
they used all the ways they could find to keep a
distance. Swimming trunks weren't much, but one layer
of distance was better than nothing.

* * * * *

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