Title: Snapshots from the Shadows 1/1
Author: Princess Twilite ( Jeana C.)
Rating: R- just in case.
Spoiler: Season 3
Summary: Angel's fallen in love.
Disclaimer: Grr arg.. guys own them. Joss is the one with the power.
Feedback: I would love some.
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SNAPSHOTS FROM THE SHADOWS 1/1
A heart is the size of a fist. Bigger. It fit itself into a space too small. Inside himself. Where it could not escape. A prison made of bone, flesh, and borrowed blood. He was not a creature of love. His teeth were sharp, honed like the razors edge, a dark man slashing out at you from the shadows.
*Click*
Another memory best kept in chains, the chains he had worn and loved, despised and hated. Acid dripping down his chest, a twisted smile curving his face...
He was not a man.
He was not a lover.
He was death in it's raw form. Split open between indifference and need. He knew the weaknesses of his prey. Knew their taste before his tongue lapped their blood. He had known, he still knew what it was to kill. Didn't matter what side he was on, didn't matter that he wanted to do good, that he had a son and loved a woman. He still got off on the thrill.
If it wasn't for that heart shoved in deep, it wouldn't make a difference that he couldn't see his face in the mirror. Wouldn't really give a damn either way if the sun turned black before he ever got a chance to see it again. That indifference, that beautiful, hateful numbness that he had lived in for hundreds of years.
Now he had that heart, and the only thing that saved him from complete oblivion was the fact that it didn't beat. He imagined the sight of her would make it beat straight through it's cage just to fall at her feet. When had this begun? When had his soul start to twist at the mere sound of her voice, rooms and rooms away?
This heart, this love for his bestfriend terrorized him the way he had once terrorized his victim. It stalked throughout his veins as if she were already inside him.
She was blind. Saw right through him and his escalating need. He wanted to shake her. To lift her up and have her stare into his face, to see himself there- inside of her. Those laughing, hazel eyes staring at him over her shoulder. That sly grin. She thought she knew so much.
*Click*
Cordelia Chase. A snap shot of her filed away. He would pull it out when he was alone and it got dark and quiet. See her in his mind's eye. He was a marked man. A jagged X across his chest.
It hadn't been planned, sure as hell hadn't been expected. One day she was his confidant and most trusted, cherished friend. The next she was all that, and everything more. As if his eyes had been wiped clean of all the blood he had spilled and there she stood. Where she had for the past three years, right up front and personal.
She understood him. And she understood nothing. She saw what she wanted to see. He wondered when she would open her eyes and realize that she could love him. That she could burn for him. That he could make her.
But he was not a man...
He knew she loved him. It was written in her eyes everytime she looked at him. In her hands patching up the latest gash. Her grin peeking out from between her fingers when he made her laugh. Her curt, one liner's that tailed the line of down right rude.
But she was not *in* love... and she was torturing him.
*Click*
Cordelia sitting at her desk, brushing her dark hair away from her face. Her fingertips trailing along her cheek. That soft, tan jaw. He bet she liked to be kissed there. To be teased and tormented and then given everything all at once.
He bet.. but he didn't know, not for sure.
Her neck is long, he knew it's dips and curves. Knew the scent that lived in her skin. Had even managed to touch it when she hugged him. What a true friend he had become, lusting after her when she wasn't even aware. Coming so close to just taking what he wanted.
He was a vampire after all. Soul or not.
But he couldn't hurt her. No matter how much he wanted to make her love him back, if she ever did, it would only cause her pain.
So he watched her, loved her, desired her while she had no clue. He hated it. He reveled in it. He couldn't stand it. But she did not love him, so there was no choice.
This was crazy. She was Cordy. She painted her toe nails with her feet on the desk. She moved his weapons around to where he couldn't find them. She made things so damn difficult in so many ways. And she knew him so well.
Cordy holding his son with tender arms. Eyes bright. Face alive with each breath, each flicker of an eyelash.
A mother. And she didn't even know it.
*Click*
She likes the quiet almost as much as she likes noise.
Bent foreward, she rests her elbows on the counter. Reading from a paper back book that had the cover half-ripped off. It was a book he'd seen her reading a million times before.
He'd see her reading it a million times more.
She stood half in the sunshine, half in the shadows. Like she belonged in both. Like she had made both her home.
When had it become about her and only her?
He was supposed to love Buffy. That's what he'd sworn. He had loved Buffy... but this was different. It was new. It was bigger. It was completely insane.
Impossibly right. She made him feel real. Like their was something good inside of him. Like he could be more than he was. More than the giver of death.
More than a vampire with the jaws of a killer.
He could not walk away from her. Even when he had, he hadn't really. To leave, to cut himself off from her would be tearing out that hateful, needy heart of his and falling to ashes.
She was everything.
*Click*
Her shoulder are sharp and smooth. They moved without her consent, gyrated, shrugged and sang. They tripped him up everytime he saw them. Always moving, like she was dancing.
He could hear the music, that slow-pulsing beat of her heart. He knew she couldn't.
That made him grieve. She would never know the symphony she danced to. But he would. He would listen and watch. Wanting... but he was in a cage. A cage with curses and echoes.
He would not echo his past again. Loved her too much for that. So he let her be. And let her dance.
Cordy has a tatto of a sun, on that part of her back that curved like a question mark. It peeked out at him from beneath her t-shirt when she moved. It burned him. How many times had he reached out to touch, just touch that one spot on her body to be frozen by her eyes when they jerked to him.
" What the hell are you doing?"
" Nothing."
" You've got to stop sneaking up on people Angel."
Sneaking. Stalking. He was a predator. Skulking. Slinking. From the shadows only. Watched and needed her to look at him. But what the hell would she see if anything at all? Sharp teeth and yellow eyes. A monster.
Or worse... she could see his love. The sudden burst of it. The blue nova, burning hot forever.
And it was forever. Not first. Just forever.
*Click*
The longing was bittersweet. It outweighed his craving for blood. What did that say when he wanted her more than what he survived off of. The hunger moved through him like an ache, settled heavy in his gut. In his itchy fingers. If she looked at him, she might see a wild animal, panting, shaking, scratching at the steel bars that held him back.
Limitations. Limitations. Limitations. He had so many. But he had a heart- and it was all hers...
Her eyes... They jerked him, caught his throat in a vice grip. Was he paying for his sins? Day after day. The way she moved, the twitch of her hip. The way her shirt fit her breasts. So close he close, he could breath her in, smell her, taste her... but he could not. Not really.
She smiled at him. That wide spread, special smile that was reserved for him and only him. Her bestfriend.
Her bestfriend.
Her best friend wanted to make her cum. Would that sicken her? He didn't think so. But there was always that haunting doubt, because she was always there, so oblivious of the heaven and hell she gave him.
She saw what she wanted. And it obviously wasn't him.
Her long legs, striding in his direction and away. Bare belly, taught skin, navel winking at him. Collar bone as inviting as southern hospitatlity.
*Click*
She made his cold body hot. Sweat. Charred his skin with a glance. Dragging these snapshots aroud inside his prison, picturing himself there with her. Over her, holding her down. Being held down by her, wrapped around her. Behind her, beneath her. Touching... Loving, sometimes just plain fucking. He was a beast. He saw and smelled his mate and he just wanted to grab her and climb on top of her. Prove to her that it was right and true. Maybe it wasn't pretty, maybe he wasn't clean, but she was right when she told him he was something.
He was something because of her.
Maybe that something was crazy.
Had to close his eyes. There were memories of before her. Of Buffy, naked and white in the moon light. He had loved her, but not enough. And now he understood the force of her pain when he had walked away.
Because he loved now, too much. Someone who didn't love him back enough.
There were memories before Buffy. Of rat infested sewers, of the dirty, dank smell. Of himself, climbing the walls like a mad man. Before that even, of hard sex with someone who sure as hell didn't want it. Of skin ripping open, and blood pouring out like red, red wine... remembered the joy he had found in that.
And couldn't blame Cordy. Not really.
Could not expect her to love him the way he did her.
But he could not stop wanting her to. His son filled him up, but there was still a space, surronded that one, inside that one... all for her.
It made his heart too big. Filled up the space behind his ribs, pressed against the bone. All that space where she existed and yet didn't. Made him happy and desperate. This instrument of destruction was loving...
But he was not a man.
And he couldn't be her lover.
So he watched her dance, spinning around and around. Twirling and laughing and seducing. Listened to her heart beat, calling out to him. The way she followed the rythym, smooth and hot- dark and rich with untapped sensuality. His mate on every level, dancing.
And she didn't even hear the music.
*Click*
End.
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