Beyond Surviving
It hurts.
The sweet ache that isn't sweet any longer. Like heartbreak, like beliefs forgotten, there is that pressure between his shoulder blades that says time is running out.
He thinks - this is WRONG.
He thinks - THEY LIED. It isn't erotic, or filled with sensations that made him excited. He is dying.
It hurts.
Everything inside him is centered on the mouth that held him in place, jagged teeth that twist and suck the blood from his arteries that are so vacant. Like a vice, that mouth is clamped around his veins, breaking through it. And there is nothing he can do, his stomach is seizing, the room is cold.
Blood runs slow, but it still runs.
He wants to believe the books. He wants this to be special.
But there is the bitter burn of blood as it boils to the surface and glides as though through a funnel to the waiting tongue and there is NOTHING but being still. Still like a statue as an artist slowly hacks away at the stone. Still like the tree just outside the window, that never moves because it's in a courtyard and surrounded by buildings. No wind touches its branches. It might as well be dead.
He is waiting to be dead now, waiting for his vision to blank out, seep away.
But then he twitches, and hears a growl. The low hum of an animal as it grumbles
The flesh tears, thin like the richest of silks still are, and Wesley can feel his own lips trembling, wide open. Fallen and slaughtered, like the pig Angel spent 100 years using.
No more pigs.
Angelus.
The name flies by in his head like a speeding train, along with facts and motivations and the truth that Angelus doesn't NEED motivations, could simply be hungry and not give a damn that he'd been FUCKED by this man before, in that past life when he was GOOD.
And with the colors whirling in front of Wesley's eyes, the ceiling fixtures and the glossy satin and lace curtains--- it hurts. A strong pain that grows steadier with every half-swallow and fitful burst of air from Wesley's lungs.
Hurts. Hurts. Hurts.
And he cannot help but remember that it always had. ALWAYS.
Before, when he loved this pale creature that now ATE him, and after - when he didn't. When the ache was just as wide and yawning, but filled with anger, betrayal and a need to make it...
STOP.
Angel came to me once, mid-night when the dreams were still vivid in my mind. The thick fog of half sleep was gray, yellow, and red with the outside street light and the sign down the way from a hotel room. I blinked, startled by the dark shadow that suddenly loomed over me in such a threatening way and dragged me away from safe mutterings. My hands came up blindly, but startlingly cold fingers burned into my wrists, held me still as the shadow leaned forward, into the yellow and red and gray.
Angel. I whispered it.
"Angel."
Angel didn't speak, couldn't seem to. His face was a stroke of vivid ivory, flashing into the darkness and stuttering over the lights glow with each tick of his cheek.
I thought for a blinding moment: He's here to kill me. He's here to tell me he's dying. He's here because Cordelia's visions took her. He's here because Gunn was shot. He's here because Fred went crazy.
But it was none of that.
It was Angel sitting on the bed, his hip touching mine. It was Angel looking down at men the darkness with the shadows swarming around him like a mass of bees and I laying very still in the overwhelming silence. It was gray because the street light flickered briefly and then overpowering red because the motel sign still flashed.
"What are you-" Cold fingers silenced my question and I was stunned, there was no room to breathe in the space around me.
I understood what it must be to suffocate and die. To almost want to just so the touch continued.
It had been so long since I'd been touched that it didn't seem to matter who was doing it.
Why's were just a reason to hesitate.
That cold, calculating finger stroked along my lips, and I let them fall slack. Let Angel have what he wanted from my mouth. I had always wanted to let Angel have his way there, between my mouth and my heart. And all the time his finger traced along my teeth, outside and on my jaw, across the stubble, I couldn't help but notice the emptiness on his face, standing out starkly against his leather jacket. This man, this beast, was made up of nothing it seemed.
He was a figment of my imagination that didn't appear in the mirror. Meant to tantalize me for years and horrify me in the blink of an eye, when I didn't realize there was anything left that COULD horrify me. There was so much that I still needed to learn about him... but lately? Lately he was not something that could be learned and I WANTED this touch to make it right again, in a way that it hadn't been.
But --
I shook myself from the haze that had swept over me from the initial contact. After all, this was ANGEL that was touching me and it was crazy really - mad, even. But a part of me, some secret, long dry spot had looked at him and became thirsty in the way of alcohol binges. Always had really, from the beginning when I was sillier then strong, but WAITING to be someone and was someone with them. Cordelia and Angel. From the first offer of toast, I was more than a rogue; I was part of a team and a family.
So if occasionally I found myself glancing at Angel's behind, if occasionally was more often than Cordelia did, I ignored it. He must have done the same, because Angel seemed more omnificent than I had ever been comfortable enough to admit. It was always quickly pushed away because the job was never done in L.A. and as they say, this city never sleeps. Or is that New York?
"Angel, what's wrong?" I asked and he dropped his hand away from my face like I had slapped it. His eyes tipped down, toward my chest and I felt suddenly cold, like a chilly wind had brushed across my skin and puckered my nipples into tight little buds that ached. "You can tell me."
"I can't," he had said. Two small words that broke his silence and I almost wanted to shush him, tell him not to speak because it made the way his hand reached forward again, pressed onto the tight skin of my collar bone all too real and dangerous.
"Why can't you?" I asked instead, caught by the lack of his eyes. It was the lack that counted.
He said nothing. Hadn't I wanted him not to?
Still, the silence spoke.
Angel moved forward in the red on gray shadows, face tilted to the side, as he seemed to take a good long whiff of the air, dragging his nose through it as if it was material and touchable.
"You always want me," he murmured and my heart did that school boy hopping it tends to do when I'm around him. The press of thick muscle against the inside of my ribs. "Why? I never encourage it."
"I know," I looked away from him, but his hands were there, above my heart and it was harder to feel alive and easier to let him make it hurt. "I really don't mean to. I apologize if it makes you uncomfortable."
"Not uncomfortable," his voice was strange, highlighted by his jaw as it opened and closed. I was fascinated by this sorrow that seemed to stretch out and wrap around me. It knew. "Just sad. Very, very sad."
I didn't ask why. I didn't ask a lot of things, because there were too many answers that I feared hearing.
He pulled back away from me so suddenly that my bones felt broken, shattered inside my skin and I could NOT reach out to grab him or TRY to make him stop. I wasn't sure if I should. He pulled back, stood, looked at me... and then he began to undress. I was frozen to my mattress; limbs flushed as he slid his jacket from those broad shoulders and let it fall without sound to the floor.
Angel looked down at his hands and began unbuttoning the smooth black shirt that he wore so much recently. I blinked as every button was released from its hole, until it fell apart, slicing up his front and leaving it raw. Past raw when he unbuttoned his cuffs and slid the shirt off.
Feather light, it drifted away into the strange light.
His flesh was without sweat, simply there, waiting for me to look. And I did, I couldn't help it. I'd had thoughts of him like this, had difficulty not thinking when I SAW him like this -- and now he was here, baring himself before me like I was supposed to do something about it besides sit here and watch.
"Would you like to have sex?" He asked me; in a voice so blank it had its own unwritten page.
I went cold inside, like he must have been. With little shivers of ice clinging to the insides of my heart. Was it my imagination, or had it stilled - just the slightest?
'With you?' I wanted to ask, but I knew the question was stupid.
No. I didn't want to have sex. 'With you.' I didn't want things to be this way between us. I wanted him, I had wanted him, I would want him -- but there were so many things to consider, contemplate, so many reasons to say NO.
"Yes," it came out, like a bullet from my lips, undeniable.
Something in his eyes said he needed this. And I couldn't deny I wanted to give it to him even though the consequences were as brutal as my own death might one day be.
He nodded and stood there for a second, as if he hadn't done this in a while. Had sex or had sex with a man, I couldn't be sure. And then he unbuckled his belt, and slid it from his belt loops with the hiss of a snake striking. I winced, embarrassed as I did.
He didn't say anything; I couldn't tell if he was even thinking about me.
The blankets were itchy, I thought. Why are they so itchy when they never were before? I pushed them to my waist and sat up further, eyebrows raised. He split through the room like a knife, and came back before me, taking a seat on the bed again. This time leaning forward and placed his cold mouth over mine, unmoving at first. I hesitated, unsure even as those lips opened my own and his tongue slid inside, pressed against the roof of my mouth. Implored me to do something to make whatever was haunting him that night, go away.
They Why's still hung in the air, never silent.
But he was pushing down the covers and his fingers brushed over my thighs making the muscles there twitch. He nearly smiled, just a quirk of his lips that was quickly gone and he kicked the covers toward the end of the bed where they wouldn't be in the way of whatever he had planned.
I shivered, feeling as naked as I was while Angel's gaze raked up his thighs and across his sex.
Hard already, I swallowed. Time was angry and it passed. Then he cupped my bony knees with his palms as if measuring the strength in my bones. I worried that he would come away disappointed at my very human fragility. If he were looking to be reckless with his passion, he'd have to look elsewhere, in another vampire's body.
The thought made me sick, beyond sick - toward hollowed out.
I watched as those fingers came up and touched my belly, smoothed across the muscles and up toward my neck. Careful - they brushed the arteries. Briefly, he closed his eyes and seemed to savor the tide of my blood. I once heard that animals are as much swayed by the moon as the ocean is because of their blood, the way it circulates through everything in us.
Of course, I heard it from a vampire I was about to stake.
The air shifted somehow, became thicker. I saw the muscles in his abdomen clench. He grabbed my mouth with his, and it was done. Suddenly he WASN'T careful, he was holding my shoulders tightly, with that unnatural strength of his and I didn't know what to do but kiss him back. Slowly.
I had wanted this.
I wanted this.
I would want this.
And I should have said no.
I fell back toward the bed and he followed me. Our combined weight made it bounce and the springs squeaking.
His chest was heavy over mine, a crushing force that I enjoyed even as I wanted to push it away. I wanted to have control here, but I didn't. He was overwhelming in his need and I felt sucked dry, like he would take everything inside of me.
He had.
He did.
He would.
The pleasure of skin on skin, and the sticky-sweet taste of his flesh burned into my brain as I moved with him on the sheets. His muscles shifted beneath my tongue, with the press of my hips into his stomach and the riding of body on body.
He brought me to arousal and down to sweet anticipation and back up again until my breath dragged like stones through my lungs and I wanted nothing more than to climb onto his back and slip inside of him. Still, a part of me whispered: No. If we do this NOW, it will never happen again.
And staring into his pale face, skin drawn tight across his cheek bones as I moved my tongue along the line of his shoulder --- I fell in love. Hard.
It rocked me so that I pushed him onto his back, straddled his waist and licked like a cat at his chest. Down. Further. Until he arched up against me, grabbing onto my hair and pulling me up again.
He was my cancer, eating away at me even as I starved for the strength in his bones, the steel of his penis as it pressed against my hip, cold as rain always seemed to be and just as wet. Vampires were room temperature; I should have turned the heat up.
I let myself fall under, to that place where his head hung over mine as I bent on the bed and his hips pressed forward, IN. To the burning, stretching, and wanting MORE.
I grabbed the pillow and squeezed it into my face to keep from screaming. Near suffocating.
This was Angel.
ANGEL.
And he wasn't himself, not nearly.
He hadn't been, he'd been quiet and withdrawn, and he'd been sleeping altogether too much.
I felt a flash of panic, of knowledge, of WHY but it was too late already.
I groaned, and came into the hand that had snaked around to my sex.
When it was finished, when we were both chilled and wary, I didn't know what to say. There would be a tomorrow and it was coming fast, flying through the red-gray-yellow light and sparking into dawn.
"Sorry," he said abruptly, a blast of something other than air on my cheek as he leaned over and kissed me. The word hung like a bruise in the air, falling into my heart and taking shape.
Sorry, he had said.
I closed my eyes and listened to him leave.
Yes, he was sorry.
Funny that. A week later he fired all of us.
A week later he fired me.
A week later was a week after all, a week to not understand anything at all, most importantly why he acted like he'd never been in my bed.
Betrayal has many definitions.
One could go so far as to say there isn't a single moment you're NOT betraying something.
Friend. Foe. Family.
Yourself.
Wesley stood in the center of the hospital room with his shoulders aching on his spine. He slowly packed up the bandages and medicine the doctor had prescribed to him, one labeled bottle at a time. The act of breathing twisted in his throat like a scalpel against pink, tender flesh. Heat from his wound was a constant companion, recognized by the swells and ebbs of movement that his body could not help.
Wesley zipped the bag up with a click-click-click, slow, torturous - but fast jerks were simply out of the question. The stitches pulled the skin of his neck taut.
He was lucky to be alive. Yes, lucky.
Wesley smiled bitterly and tucked the strap of the bag over his shoulder.
He turned and walked out of the hospital room, into the sound of beeping and talking. Hospitals were never quiet, even though their patrons occasionally tried to respect the other wounded or family of the wounded.
That was about as possible as the green Jello tasting GOOD.
Wesley shook his head, and moved past a nurse with her hair plastered high on her head and a thick line between her brow from too much working and not enough living. Not that he was one to speak; he hadn't live in quite a long time. Not in the trust spirit that he had imagined as a child.
Hospitals were made of whites, blues, and grays; each over lapping until one color blended into the next and a human face was hardly recognizable in a room full of inhumanity.
He supposed he should be grateful they saved him.
He wasn't.
The look of Angel's face looming over him still remained, a solid footprint in his over-trod brain. Furious, betrayed, volcanic, those expressions had flitted over the stone-solid skin and pale nostrils like they belonged, like they were coming home.
Wesley nearly stumbled over a patient's bed, which sat in the hallway. Overbooked, as always. The little girl with dark black hair was asleep, bruises tinting the side of her neck and collarbone.
Asphyxiation.
Wesley would have cried out, but even the urge hurt too much. Almost as much as stifling it did, making it catch down deep so that it couldn't get out.
He jerked himself away from the bed, edged around the patient as if she might bite him. His throat burned, sharp little jolts that grabbed his tongue and made it jerk in his mouth as he tried to still the ache.
Everyone died sometime, right?
Past other rooms, with patients and doctors talking softly to one another past the curious man with a long, spider-webbed beard who stood in the center of his room, the back of his gown open, uncaring in general as he held onto his own elbows, fighting some demon. Wesley paused, and the man glanced up, eyes meeting his own.
Weathered, wearied.
Wesley fell back, away from the door and continued his trek down the long, colorless hallway until he reached a sign that directed him toward the elevators. It was at the end of the hallway and the elevator must have had other users because it took forever, minutes beyond when he called for it with that blinking, yellow button beside the glass-mirrored doors.
When it arrived, finally, with a ding similar to that of a stove, Wesley was surprised to find it unoccupied. He stepped past the doors, into the little box that was eerily reminiscent of a coffin.
The inside was all mirrors as well.
Why would they have elevators made of mirrors in a hospital, when those that used it naturally looked like death warmed over? Wesley shook his head, and closed his eyes against his own reflection.
A slash of vivid red traced startlingly across his neck.
The first floor came sooner than he expected, and he was forced to hold onto the bars made for the handicapped and maybe for the disillusioned, those who no longer knew how to stand without falling over.
The doors pulled apart and Wesley forced himself to step through, even though he KNEW no one was waiting urgently for him to come through, to be well, to EXIST.
Wesley wasn't entirely sure he gave a bloody hell any more.
He signed himself out at the reception desk, gritting his teeth as the secretary took his sweet time looking over the forms. People buzzed around him, inflating in the air as though they couldn't keep to their own space. But not one single word or person was meant for him. No one would come to make sure he got home all right.
The truth of that made his cheeks burn with shame.
Finally, the secretary scribbled on a little card with a pen and handed it to him with a tight smile on his worn face.
"You'll return in a week exactly, for a check up," the man said. Wesley took the card between two fingers and slipped it into his back pants pocket. He wasn't sure how he responded, or if he responded at all. He was sure that he had to get there as fast as he could before he just exploded.
Couldn't speak, couldn't say a word.
It was like being suffocated.
SUFFOCATED.
Wesley turned, walking quickly toward the doors with the big, red exit sign over them. It had a No Smoking sign right next to it, but that didn't seem to draw as much attention. The doors whooshed open when he stepped in front of them and Wesley breathed a sigh of relief when they did the same behind him.
The sigh slashed against his Adams apple, making it hop. Tissue stretched and Wesley had to pause in his footsteps, stand still for a long moment just outside the hospital as people passed by him with clicks of their heels and the scent of blood, fresh and spilled on their skin.
When he was able to move, he did so slowly. Walking down the side walk, further and further away from the hospital. I wanted away from that place where betrayal leaked through the cracks and licked at the wounds available.
A place where Angel had broken a secret part of him, a part that Wesley had thought buried deep enough so as not to matter. But it did matter, GOD it did.
"You're DEAD!"
Wesley blinked, and pulled himself out of his thoughts.
The convenience store blinked at him with its lights. A part of him wanted to stop, but the other wanted to get home before sundown. So he didn't.
He just walked on, so that his feet hurt and his lungs burned. Wesley gently probed his throat, a stitch stung his finger and he pulled back, glaring at his thumb. Bloody -- no, he wouldn't lose control. Everything was going to be okay. It WAS.
His apartment was bare when he reached it, empty of people and heartbeats and all those annoyingly human things that Wesley himself was. On the answering machine - a few messages blinked, waiting. Wesley let them. There was no use listening to things that were in the past. It was probably Fred, or Gunn, from before, when they still considered him family.
Some family they were.
He would survive. He WOULD. There had to be something beyond them. Beyond him. Of course there was. The world didn't revolve around Angel.
Wesley took a seat on the couch and stayed there for a long time, letting the shadows pull around him like a blanket.
Once, he'd been in love. Foolishly.
Once he'd loved a vampire, even after he told himself he didn't, after they had pretended that ONE NIGHT didn't exist. Once, he'd nearly loved someone else while wanting and waiting for that one vampire to love him in return. That bouncy Fred was Angel's perfect contrast and that was something Wesley needed to move on.
But... he hadn't. Not then. Fred was wonderful and all kinds of things to desire. But Angel remained, eternal. A disease Wesley couldn't shake himself free from.
Once, he'd loved a vampire enough to want the vampire's son safe. Enough to take the son into his own arms and be willing to spend his whole life away from those he loved, to keep that child from harm -- no matter what he might grow up to be.
Once.
And now, he wanted away from it all. He wanted silence and he wanted for forget.
Because a man that he had loved, a man that he had let inside in more ways than one...
Wesley closed his eyes.
Angel wanted him dead. Too bloody late.
Angelus was gripping Wesley tighter, so that a bone could be heard and felt cracking in his arm. Wesley doesn't say a word or scream or blink at the pain. It is nothing compared to the life being siphoned from his heart and soul and that small place in his brain that remembers everything. Red spots were flashing before his eyes, vague and distant. The touchable is becoming unreachable.
"Thanks for bringing me back, Wes," Angelus voice hissing like a belt freed from pant loops, like a memory. His fingers twisting - twisting - twisting and another bone cracked. "I really appreciate it. You thought it was the end of the world before? You haven't seen anything yet."
The teeth returned, digging into a new spot like a hungry wolf.
Love, once. There had been love.
Wesley closes his eyes and begins to forget.
Begins to... SUFFOCATE.
The last drop of blood is always the hardest to give up. It always hurts the most.
But it was gone anyway.