the pearl

Stank

You spend your time talking to a great big mystical panther, and you start getting some strange ideas 'bout marking your territory.

Most of it, easy as pie. The in-house coffee boys always made sure he had that coffee and chicory blend his Auntie Celia got him hooked on as a baby. El Cartero Monstruoso brought him his regular subscription to Vibe along with the latest law journals. The Special Projects five-up basketball team was murdering the Science division (not literally, of course). And that DVD collection he was building up in his office — all the obscure kung-fu, blaxploitation, western and second-rate movies he used to watch all the time on tv — were carefully organized on the shelves next to the high dev, just waiting for a weekend marathon or two.

So Charles Gunn, newly-minted attorney-at-law, had no problem marking Wolfram & Hart as his (well, except for where the Senior Partners were, and Gunn swore that if he was a great big mystical panther, the stink rising up from those areas would just be stank, but aside from that...). It was just...well...

Yeah, something had gone down between him and Wes once upon a time, and, yeah, they wouldn't ever have that friendship of nights with Playstation, beers, and drunken descents into "who would you do," but Gunn kept on feeling a certain way and seeing him in a certain way and, like it was said, marking your territory just started to seem like a good idea.

Despite how fucked up it would be.

He started off simple enough. A few more pats on the back, a few more close-proximity moments, the kinda thing that no one got bothered 'bout. Especially after the buddy handshake months and, y'know, the whole Taking A Bullet For Your Friend thing. And it was pretty good. Spooky little prickly vibes kept on going up and down his spine whenever he was near him now, but it just didn't seem to be enough. Not right now. Hell, it'd just take one good romp in the office with Tall, Dark, and Brooding, and Wes wouldn't be his anymore.

When he was around twenty, he was setting up a new place for his crew in this warehouse on the other side of town. He hadn't really paid attention to what it was before it was just another boarded-up nothing with a permanent "for sale" sign in the window, but one of the kids started playing around in the back, found a bunch of old boxes, and when they opened 'em up, all of them just sat there, staring at the magazines with wide eyes.

Most of 'em had seen men fucking. Hell, a few of them had done all that and more. But with the pissing and the leather and all the raw flesh all over the place... It frightened the hell out of Gunn the first time he saw those magazines.

But then he grabbed one, stuck it in his bunk, kept it the hell away from Alonna, and couldn't stop reading it. Wasn't quite reading, actually, but flipping pages counted as reading, right?

Until the pages got stuck together. But no one was talking about that, much less Gunn's inner Jiminy Cricket, who drawled like his Auntie Celia and couldn't stop gossiping.

So it had been forever since little Charlie'd seen anything like what was going around in his mind whenever Mister Wesley Wyndham Pryce, former Watcher, current scholar, possessing of the finest ass in the British Isles and the cockiest smirk this side of Charlie's own grin, and although it certainly hadn't been forever since the last time he'd had particular feelings towards the male of the species, that tended to lean to images of handjobs and cocksucking — not Wesley lying in a bathtub naked and hard and staring up at Gunn with begging eyes as Gunn whipped it out, all piss-hard and ready, and just let loose all over that damn pale skin...

And it'd fucking stank too. No doubt 'bout that. And Gunn sure as hell couldn't get over how fucking amazing that would be. Wesley Wyndham Pryce, proper British dignity, covered in common street black ass trash piss, stinking to high heaven with beer and stank, smelling like Charles Gunn, smelling fucking terrible, his dick hard and his smile wide and fucking wanting it.

Yeah, it'd be sweet. Sweet-smelling like a goddamned rose.

This Angel/Buffy the Vampire Slayer story was written by Kate Bolin. If you liked it, there's plenty more at http://www.dymphna.net/fanfic/. And you can feedback her at dymphna@dymphna.net.