20 December 2003

Angel S5
Wes/Gunn

For Sheila.
Three words: choice corner mouth




All this glass.

He's set up for life.  Money, power, the best legal education money can't buy.  He has a corner office that even Angel might be envious of.  This little mini-fridge that produces the junk food he used to live off as a kid, comfort food for the man in the power suit.

Sometimes he doesn’t think it's him.  Like he cut the skin off some luckier guy, someone higher up the food chain, and slipped it on over his own.  He looks at himself in the mirror and doesn't recognize the man in the Armani.

That's not fair, though.  Mostly, he got himself here.  Choice after choice: join Angel, follow Wes, kill this thing and not that thing.  Say 'yes' when Wolfram & Hart offered them this too-sweet deal.

They all have their own places, but they don't go home anymore.  Or, not much.  Gunn has a bedroom off his office.  Wes came in and warded it himself.  No retainer-wizards get to mess with anything so intimate as sleep.  Not anymore.

There are people who can walk through the wards without waking him, but not many.  Just two.  One of them doesn't come knocking anymore.

He turns over, smelling his work-cologne all over the sheets, and Wes' cologne is there too.  Wes' body.  The arm's too hard against his fingers, because they both know it's not safe here, not really.  They don't sleep as soundly as they would outside.  But sometimes this is easier.  And with both of them inside, they can put up stronger walls.

Four in the morning and Gunn's not quite awake enough to be waiting for the sun to rise.  This glass world all around him turns his head down towards his desk, somehow, instead of making him look outward.

He's bitter, but not for the reasons they all think.  He made himself this thing: mystic lawyer, carrier of knowledge even Wesley doesn't approach.  And for the first time in his life, he doesn't look down.  Ever.  To anyone.  Even in his mind.  Years he spent flinching whenever Wes opened his mouth.  That old-world education was the sharpest thing Gunn had ever seen, and Wes threw it at everyone he met.  The sharp edges of this guy with no armour.

And now, when Gunn's as sharp as Wesley is, and Wes has thicker skin, it may actually be too late.  Too hard.  Both of them prickly and constantly tired, solitary in ways they never expected to be.

Except.  Wesley's asleep in this bed, and he comes night after night, and Gunn always lets him in.


jane
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