CONTENT WARNING: This story is rated a NC-17 for homoerotic sexual content and language. If you are under 18, or are uncomfortable with this type of material, please return to my Fanfiction Index.
-- "'A' is for 'Angel', of the angelic face. . . ."
Giles caught him lurking outside the Bronze on New Year's Eve night, while inside the young adult population of Sunnydale, Buffy included, counted down the last hour to the new year. Angel wasn't especially surprised to see him, didn't resist when Giles grabbed him by the collar of his black duster and strong-armed him back around into the alley behind the club.
"I thought we had agreed," Giles said, inches from the vampire's face. He shoved Angel into the brick wall, his hands tight in the lapels of the duster. "That it would be in Buffy's best interest if you stopped playing the stalker. Is that so bloody hard to keep straight?"
"We had. And yes, it is," Angel told him. He didn't struggle. Even when he felt the end of a sharp stake pricking at his chest, he didn't attempt to argue. "I had to come down for other reasons. And I thought, just a quick glimpse of her, to see if she's doing okay. . ."
Giles said nothing. The muted sounds of a cat fight down the alleyway caused him to turn his head. Light from the bare bulb over the Bronze's back exit flashed across his glasses.
Angel shifted, and instantly regretted it as the stake tip drew blood. "Giles, you know I'm not him?"
"I know," the ex-Watcher said. "But you share a face with him, don't you? Or should I call it a mask?"
Angel realized that Giles had been drinking, that Ripper was close to the surface tonight, perhaps surfacing. On impulse, he reached up and pulled the other man's glasses from his face.
Giles stared hard at him, the stake point unwavering.
"There are lots of kinds of masks," Angel said. "If I'm going to die by your hand, I want to be able to look straight into your eyes when you do it."
"Do you know," Giles said, "how much of a presumption, an invasion of space, laying hands on a person's eyeglasses is?" He smiled then. "Of course you do. Angelus knew."
Angel nodded, aware of how much he was at Giles' mercy at this moment. There was a kind of peace here, if not a redemption, regardless of what the other man did. He let his head fall back against the cold brick wall behind him. The light over the exit was buzzing like a thousand enraged insects, he noticed and wondered if that would be his last impression of this world.
He was almost disappointed when the pressure of the stake eased.
"Bastard," Giles said quietly, bitterly. He slipped the stake back into the pocket of his black leather jacket. "What does it take to get you out of her life, out of my life, for good?" He took his glasses from Angel and put them in his other jacket pocket.
"If I could give you that, I would," Angel said. "But even if I never showed my face in Sunnydale again --"
"You've branded her," Giles admitted. "Yes, I know. Allow me, at least, some bitterness about that." He stepped back from Angel.
"Just as she has branded me. Giles, if I could remove that brand, for you I would do it. I owe you so much. But it's beyond me."
"You're very good at the guilt game, but you rarely do anything to assuage it," Giles said, in a barely audible voice. "You acknowledge a debt between us?"
Angel bowed his head.
The mortal stepped forward, wound his fingers through Angel's hair, and yanked his head in to kiss him savagely.
Stunned, Angel allowed himself to be shoved back hard against the wall of the Bronze. He felt Giles' fingers gouging into his left shoulder. Giles bit at his lips, and he opened his mouth to a deep, tongue-twisting kiss. Angel growled low down in his throat, and Angelus stirred with an angry arousal. He caved to the demon's demands to the extent of grabbing the Giles' ass and pulling him hard against his body, rubbing his own sudden hardness against the other man's groin.
Giles froze, then shoved him violently away. Angel let him go, even as Angelus howled.
"Rupert." He leaned back against the wall, barely containing his trembling in the aftermath of colliding urges. "You started it. It's up to you if you want to finish it."
"So bloody accommodating, aren't you?" Giles growled.
Angel couldn't help smiling, even knowing that it would look like a smirk to the other man.
A babble of teenaged voices rounded the back corner of the Bronze. Angel grabbed Giles' shoulder and pulled him across the alley to the darkest shadows of the building on the opposite side, caught him in a hard embrace for another tongue-filled kiss. Five teenagers, dressed to the designer nines, pranced by without seeing them, intent on their own amorous adventures.
Giles began to kiss Angel back with an angry passion. One knee pressed up between Angel's legs, rocking him slightly off balance. He tugged Angel's shirt from his waistband, then slid his hands up beneath coat and shirt. His fingers dug burning leys up and down Angel's spine, across his ribs, down to the sensitive skin between waist and stomach, slipping under his jeans waistband to rub at the pelvic bones.
The man's lovemaking was literally spell-binding, Angel realized with a jolt. "What are you doing to me?" he managed between soul-eating kisses, clutching at the hands that were relentlessly moving downwards.
Giles stilled. "You gave me leave to take this where I would. What did you expect me to do to you?" he whispered lowly in Angel's ear. "Make up your mind for once in your pathetic excuse for a life."
The pads of the mortal's thumbs rubbed intricate circles against the flesh of the juncture between legs and belly. Patterns. Angel shivered violently again, unable to break free of that deceptively subtle assault on his senses. His erection was painfully hard against his pants. "You've cast a spell on me," he accused, trying to insinuate his own hands between them to free his aching cock. Giles leaned into him, cutting off that avenue of relief.
"Have I?" Giles whispered, and kissed him again.
The teens had gathered only one building down, in plain sight under another alley light. They laughed and bantered obnoxiously, fooling around as only teens not used to being drunk would. One of them tossed a bottle. Shattered glass skittered across the alley bed in a sparkling red rivulet. One large piece of glass ricocheted off Angel's boot. The two men stilled, their hands drifting across one another as they watched the teenagers fumbling into their own sexual preoccupations, oblivious to anything outside their own circle of light.
After a moment, Angel began to lick softly up Giles' neck to just under his ear. A nip there succeeded in bringing the mortal's attention back to him. "Pay attention," he whisper to Giles.
He unzipped Giles' pants, and slipped his hand inside to caress his cock and urge it from its seclusion. Giles slid his arms hard over his shoulders, pushing him down. Angel dropped to his knees and took the other man's cock into his mouth. He ran his tongue twice around the head before taking it in further. Roughly caressing fingers settled in his hair, twisting the strands possessively. Angel would have called out in protest if his mouth hadn't been full. He couldn't, however, seem to get enough of that fullness and grabbed at Giles' hips as he licked and sucked at the hot, pulsing hardness, fingered his balls, then reached back to grip him tightly at the small of the back.
The oblivious teenagers down the alleyway continued to jabber and sing drunkenly among themselves. Two of them -- a short boy and a very tall girl -- were kissing clumsily, seemingly undecided as to what went where. Angel watched them with a detached amusement from the corner of his eye, as he drew Giles deep into his throat and thrust a two fingers hard up into the man's ass, reaching for that magic spot at the prostrate --
Giles cried out soundlessly, his hands twisting cruelly in Angel's hair. Angel wrapped his free arm around his lover's thighs. The other man surged and twisted against him, fighting, then submitting to his climax with a choked off gasp. Angel pulled back a bit, licking and swallowing greedily, the taste of semen hot like blood in his throat.
They remained wrapped and slumped about one another for several minutes. Giles relaxed his painful grip to absently stroke the outlines of his lover's ears. Angel could feel the mortal's pounding heartbeat, heard his panting attempts to regain his equilibrium, and he felt contentedly wicked in causing Giles to lose it.
The other man took his hands from Angel's head, pulling out from his mouth, then knelt in front of the vampire and shoved him down to the alley gravel. He sat on Angel's legs, silently regarding him, then moved back so that he could tug at his waistband.
"You don't have to --" Angel began.
"Shut up," Giles told him, with a bent smile. He tugged Angel's pants down his hips, then sat back again to study his cock, hard and achingly erect. He ran the fingers of one hand down and then up the shaft, barely exerting any pressure at all. The caress was unnervingly loving and threatening at the same time. Angel kept very still and watched the finger-play with a anxious fascination.
Giles leaned in, pressing Angel's erection between their bellies, to ask him, "Have you ever had to let go of anyone you loved?"
Angel had a sudden gut-wrenching feeling of grief and loss as a face, a whisper of an Irish accent, passed through his mind. He shut his eyes and began to weep unashamedly, without sound.
Warm lips pressed against his, trailed up to his eyes to taste his tears. Despite his grief, Angel's arousal grew, and he pulled Giles full on top of himself, hands pressing hard against the man's hips. He felt Giles hardening again above him, and he writhed to bring their arousals together.
Giles raised himself half up on his elbows and stared into the vampire's eyes as they moved hard and fast against one another.
Angel came with a painful intensity, bit his tongue in cutting off the accompanying orgasmic shout. Then Giles was plundering his mouth, sharing the taste of blood from his wounded tongue as he came to another climax of his own. The sensation of the other's tongue probing across the fresh wound brought Angelus snarling towards the surface again. He pushed Giles' head to one side and nipped at his throat, sucking and lapping, almost out of control, careening through a dark thicket of blood and desire.
Drunken feminine laughter from down the alley broke through their frenzy. Giles lay heavily across Angel, his head resting against his cheek. They listened to the rattle of firecrackers, the shouts and wolf calls of the teenagers, the faint strains from the ajar back door of the Bronze of a rocked-up version of 'Auld Lang Syne'. The scent of sulphur, borne up alley on a fluttering breeze, veiled for a moment the smell of blood and sweat and sex.
Giles sat up, Angel reluctantly releasing him. The mortal had twin streaks of blood trailing down his neck where the vampire had nipped him.
Giles rubbed at the faint wounds with little more concern than he might have had for a razor nick. "You need to leave Sunnydale," he said. "Before Buffy sees you." He pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket, used it to clean first himself, then Angel. He zipped and fastened his trousers, then stood looking tousled and wild and utterly unfazed.
Angel stared up at him, wondering where the stuttering, uncertain, gentle Watcher of three years ago had gone. But he knew, really. Angelus had done more than anyone else in turning that man to this other one.
'All things change, Angel. That's life,' a voice with a hint of a brogue murmured to him out of nowhere. Angel glanced back down the alley, but the teenagers were still in their own world. "But must change always hurt?" he whispered.
"What's a little more pain, to a vampire?" Giles said. The retort should have been hurtful, but Angel heard a weary lack of animosity in it. He fastened his pants and stood. An impulse to take the man into his arms, to reconnect, almost overwhelmed him. Giles had once been a friend, the first human friend he'd had in two hundred years. Angelus had destroyed that friendship. That hurt, maybe more than anything else the demon had done during his brief reign of terror in Sunnydale. What was left between them, other than whatever perverse emotion had triggered tonight's eruption of furious passion? A simple hug was beyond them.
"If you must know how she's doing, I'll write," Giles said. "I can't force you to stay away. But you only seem to cause each other pain."
Angel drew his coat up on his shoulders. Grief and gratitude and another strange expanding emotion flooded through his chest. He nodded. "Take care . . . of her," he said, knowing that there was something he wanted to add, but the words wouldn't form.
Giles smiled, a warmer smile with some life in it.
"Of course you will," Angel acknowledged, with a small smile of his own. He turned then and walked down the alley, past the gaggle of teens, who drew back in alarm at his sudden emergence from the dark alley shadows. "Happy New Year," he greeted them with a half-hearted smirk, but apparently there was enough of a spark there to send them scurrying back towards the lights and noise of the Bronze.
He didn't look back, but he sensed Giles watching him as he walked away.