Past and present, shifting like shards in a kaleidoscope, soaking like blood through silk, memory through time. For all his experience, all his long passage through what is history for other people, Angel can't follow. Can't hope to make sense of this spreading stain of memory, premonition, sensation.
He carries Connor, wounded and bleeding, into the hotel. His son is limp, unprotesting, cooing under his breath. Draped over his arms like a new bride as Angel ascends the broad staircase.
Bleeding, Connor smells like home.
Angel has tasted his blood, and will never forget it.
Lived on it for several days.
But this blood is -- better. Connor's nearly grown now. A baby, even (especially) Connor, tastes too new, too sweet, for Angel to bear for long. It's why Dru and Darla liked them so much; before they can walk, babies are as unformed and unstressed as veal or geese strung-up and forcefed until they explode. Sweet as candy.
Half-grown, battered and scared, Connor smells like his parents. Rich, sourbrine, nearly the same scent that Angel has caught off himself; just -- gentler, twined through with something inexplicably Darla, dessert wine or new port.
Connor murmurs as his head slips off Angel's chest and over his arm.
"Stay with me, Connor," Angel says when Connor's eyes drift closed. "Stay awake."
Gunn is at the bottom of the stairs. "Let me --"
"Yes, Angel --" Wesley adds.
Without turning, Angel speeds his step. "I've got it."
Angel locks the door to his suite.
In the bathroom, he props Connor on the toilet seat and cuts off his shirt. Filthy, shapeless thing could probably do more damage than vampires ever could. Angel pinches it between thumb and forefinger and drops it in the wastebasket.
He fills the sink and squats down. As he sponges off the blood, Connor's pale, bony chest emerges. So thin and underfed, every rib underlined with shadows.
Angel would think of Spike, and does, except that Connor's skin is flower-warm to the touch, sheened with humidity. Very much alive.
Connor's head keeps tipping back, his lips parting. He gives out little sighs, nearly whimpers if they weren't so soft, and trembles whenever Angel touches him. His eyes close. Long, sweetly long lashes cloud the dark blue of his eyes.
"Don't fall asleep," Angel says. He cups Connor's cheek -- so warm -- and tucks a lock of greasy hair behind the boy's ear. "Connor. Listen to me."
Connor tries to sneer at him, but his reactions are delayed, his speech slow. He lifts his shoulders, attempting to move out of reach. He cuts his eyes away, gazes stoically at the far corner. "Tell me a story, Dad."
The way he can twist that word, just one syllable, as if spitting out filth and smearing it in Angel's eyes, cracks Angel across the back of his skull every time.
"Connor --"
Inhaling sharply, Connor straightens up, his lips curving, twisting, into a parody of a smile. "Tell me about killing someone."
Angel sits back on his heels, hand dropping heavily into his lap. The warmth of Connor's skin burns his palm and he curls his fingers into a fist, then extends and flexes them. Wills himself placid. "Hardly the kind of story--"
"Hell dimension, remember?" Connor glances at his chest, clean now, bandaged, and crosses his arms.
Angel nods. All he can do is lean over carefully, check the wound on the back of Connor's head.
Ragged, blood matting the hair, soft swelling to the touch.
He starts one of the milder stories that occurs to him. Naval lieutenant, Blackpool, 1837.
"Want one with a girl in it," Connor says.
Twisting figures, two in one, on a filthy bed: Cordelia and Connor, and the fear that the curse was genetic pierces through Angel again. He saw Connor's face.
He knows happiness when he sees it; like antennae, cilia, dog's smell, Angel senses happiness well before anyone else. What makes him run, what makes him hide. He swallows brine again, always, clears his throat, and asks, "What kind of girl?"
"Pretty." Connor nods, and he's a child. Like Dru, decisive in her whimsy. "A pretty girl."
She was nurse to a fierce old man in Cambridge. A little stout, such that her face looked slightly blurred, as if seen through a rainy window. Dark golden hair like real honey dripping from the nest, green eyes, and a deep voice, too deep for a woman, but she was rough-hewn, country, and she reminded Angelus more than anything of Kathy. He wanted her for that, if for nothing else.
"Your own sister." Connor's voice is as flat as ever, as casual and bored as other people kick stones down the road.
"Yeah," Angel says.
"You're a monster."
"I was, yeah." Angel shifts, his knees aching, and bows Connor's head with his palm on the nape. Connor's hair is filthy, greasy to the touch. The wound is just making it worse. Blood and gravel, drying. "Need to clean this --"
He finds the last of the baby shampoo in the carton someone, probably Fred, packed but couldn't bring herself to hide. He wants to laugh at the promises on the label -- no more tangles, no more tears. Balm for guiltridden fathers and stolen sons.
"Get in the tub," Angel says.
Connor recrosses his arms, pulling free bandages, and scowls. "Tell me the story."
"You're not falling asleep anymore --"
Eyes like Spike's, perfectly blue, darkening the longer they have to look at Angel. "Story."
Angel crosses his own arms and hears his voice dip deeper. "Get in the tub, and I'll tell you."
"Fine." Connor hisses out a sigh from pursed lips. The sound is so familiar and alien at once that Angel takes a step back. It's the pissy-girl sigh perfected by Sunnydale women, BuffyWillowCordy. He hasn't heard it in years. Doubts even they can do it any longer. From Connor's mouth, it is at once bizarre and comforting; sulky teenagers, Angel can deal with.
He grips Connor's elbow and the nape of his neck, helps him step out of ruined trousers and averts his eyes. Half-grown, he reminds himself, teenagers like their privacy. Buffy always took her bra off from beneath her shirt.
The bleeding is stanched now, just Connor's head left to clean and stitch, and Angel fancies that his mind is clearing.
At least his mouth isn't watering any more.
Warm water, almost hot, just the way Angel runs his own baths. He lets Connor settle in and takes up the tale again.
The girl was an Evangelical. Wesleyan Methodist, upright and pure. Wanted nothing more from this world than hard work, enough to eat, and shelter. She sang in the chapel choir three times during the week, four times on Sundays. Her eyes were fixed on heaven. Even if her heaven was a different place from the one Angelus knew, loathed (longed for), it was her devotion to the image that drew him.
"How old was she?"
"About your age," Angel says. "Maybe a little older. Hard to tell in those days. She --" He stops. She still smelled young.
"Heaven's Heaven," Connor says, pulling his knees to his chest, shielding himself from Angel. "Stupid, thinking they're different."
Angel remains quiet. He went to Hell; it was not the Hell Connor jumped from. There are as many Heavens, he knew even back then, as there are Hells.
He combs Connor's hair away from the wound, turning his head this way and that with two fingers on Connor's sharp jaw. Underfed, so hungry, his own stomach tries to rumble in sympathy.
Connor tenses under each touch. Stiffening against both pain and tenderness. Angel can never tell him, because there will only be more hatred, more disgust, in response, but -- He knows the feeling. He knows better than anyone that fear of one more touch, of the abyss just waiting for you to relax.
He cuts the hair away from the wound, carefully, scissors snickering and whisking.
Locks curl like punctuation marks over Connor's back. Float, then, sodden, start to sink.
He wants to see Connor's face. Take away the fringe and veil crowding his son's face. Lift the greasy curtain that shields Connor's eyes and shadows his cheeks. Let him be.
"Lean over," Angel says when he's lathered the shampoo. "Need to rinse."
"I can do it."
Angel's palm spans a good half of Connor's narrow back. "Just lean over, Connor."
He hears Connor's teeth grind even before his head turns. "Said I can do it."
"Fine."
Angel wrenches open the taps and lets Connor do it. Hears the bitten-off hisses and sharp swallows the boy gives when soap gets in the wound; watches awkward fingers, long as Angel's own but so much thinner, scrabble in the tangles and suds; admires for a moment, before he blinks and looks away, the clean curve of Connor's back, vertebrae sharp as baby's fists.
His skin is flushing in the heat of the bath. Blurring in the steam.
Angel hands him a towel when Connor sits back. He wants, at least, to scrub the boy's hair dry.
Help him. Connor must be so tired.
He keeps his hands knotted together in his lap.
Connor peers at him, disgust legible all over his face. "Go on," he says. "So she was pretty and good. So? What did you do to her?"
"Don't you want to get out of there?"
Connor whips the towel at him. Wet terrycloth has a sting against his face Angel has only heard about.
"Warm in here," Connor says. He pats the surface of the water as if it's a sleeping cat. Angel has never seen him so gentle.
"Your place doesn't have running water, does it?" Angel asks quietly.
Connor glances over his shoulder and shrugs. "Story."
Angel tells him the entire story.
Goes slowly, tells the seduction and the capture all the way through to the final wet whimpers from her broken, naked body.
Loses himself in the story, inscribing detail, lingering on dialogue he'll always remember. Tasting blood, lymph, spit, every fluid she had.
Sinks past words, through texts he repeats to himself night after night (all murders are the same, so many, he keeps track of them all, he still loves them all). Sinks into memory, vibrant and sensuous for all its terror.
When Angel finishes, his eyes are closed.
Squeak and splash in the silence.
Opens his eyes to see Connor yanking at his groin.
Angel blinks, mouth gone dry. Lips remain half-parted long after the last word has evaporated. Goes more still than ever.
Connor's shoulders bow and flex. He's -- he's touching himself.
Connor's sharp elbow knocks hollowly on the side of the tub. Shifting, shielding himself with an upraised knee. The water slaps against the tub as he tugs and rubs roughly, soft skin on softer.
Angel isn't the only liar in the room. Angel isn't alone in his desire, either.
Connor whimpers once, almost inaudibly over the water. Lost, pained, needy whimper.
Angel pitches his voice as low, as gentle, as he can. "Connor? What's wrong?"
"It keeps --" He yanks again, hard enough to make Angel wince. "It hurts when it gets like this and --" Connor mutters until his voice drops lower and lower, falls into silence.
Angel doesn't want to think about what Holtz told him, if he ever told him, about this. He has a fairly good idea, if his own childhood is any guide: It involves damnation, agony, terror.
Self-pollution.
Of course, the question always returns: How do you scare a child who has already been to Hell?
"It's not supposed to hurt," Angel says.
He folds the towel lengthwise, then again in half. Strokes the nap of the fabric and keeps his eyes downcast. Tastes iodine and salt on the back of his tongue, light for all its bitterness. Can't pray, but can assume prayer's posture.
The room is silent, save for the slip and whisper of water on porcelain.
Connor stops breathing, and Angel smells something new.
Something that has been gathering strength, something he cannot identify.
Angel's arm is whorled and streaked with Connor's blood, but beneath the drying mess, his skin is nearly as pale as the porcelain. His hand, reaching for his son's shoulder, is stark, thick-fingered, hovering over Connor's flushed, damp skin.
Pink like strawberry ice cream.
That's what he smells. Sweet, cut strawberries. Not fresh, but crusted with frost from the depths of the freezer. Cordy's 'smoothies', concocted every afternoon, wheatgerm and cheap fruit. Until Wesley broke the blender trying to chop ice to help reduce swelling.
"Connor?"
He finally reaches Connor's shoulder, curves his palm over goosebumped skin, and squeezes.
Connor doesn't answer, but his hands still. The water calms.
He's touching his son.
Connor sighs as Angel's palm slides over his shoulder. Commas and parentheses of hair, dark, silky, shift over the bottom of the tub.
He helps Connor stand and wraps a towel around those narrow shoulders.
Every time he touches Connor, he feels Darla. He feels her damp, soft skin again.
Hears her honey-sweet temptations and sour vitriol. His mother, his lover. Something final -- unbearably, classically circular; wrong, doomed, and sweet -- spirals beneath his ribcage when he holds Connor by the waist, helping him step out of the tub.
He can nearly span that waist with his filthy, bloodied hands, just as he could Darla's corseted form.
"Need to get your --" Angel says, reaching to turn Connor's head, check the wound.
"I'm fine." Connor twists, slides, steps away until he's against the wall. Arms crossed, shaggy hair plastered to his skull. Hard dick jutting, angry, red, until he wraps the towel around his waist with a violent jerk of the wrist.
"Trying to help. Just let --"
Connor lifts his chin and shakes his head. Like he's trying to clear his eyes, but his hair is too short now. "Can take care of myself."
Angel studies his palms. Water reanimating the dried blood on his skin. A moment ago, Connor sighed. Went quiet. Inconceivable now, now with all the familiar pain shrinking the boy's face to a scowling skull, dark, dangerous eyes levelled at him. "Connor --"
"This is about Cordy. You thought she loved you."
Angel looks up, honestly startled. Whorls and streaks of old blood hover before his eyes, over Connor's face. "No, I --"
Connor nods. "You did. But she doesn't."
He smiles at Angel. Light and cruel, ink spilling from a splayed nib and curving over paper. Taste of salt and blood in Angel's mouth, flooding him, carving messy and random down the center of his chest. That trembling, pink-skinned boy is not the same, can't be the same, as the sneering little bitch smirking at him.
But he is.
Just as the half-man yanking his dick, getting off on rape and murder, has to be the same as the fat baby who laughed at Angel's demon's face.
Connor smiles more widely the longer Angel is silent. Delighted and obnoxious.
Blue eyes daring him -- Darla, Spike, Lindsey, fucking Wesley. From the sublime to the ridiculous. Connor worse than all of them, too close, knowing and feeling too much. So fucking close.
Rage is beautiful, more comfortable than silk, slicing through Angel until nothing's left behind. Slides up his throat, convulses his tongue. "Damn it, boy --"
"She slept with me, Dad. Not you."
"She changed your diapers, Connor. Cradled you, cared for --" Angel leans in, desperate and lost. Rage wrapping around pity and hope. Connor cuts his eyes away. "She's almost your mother."
"Like Darla? She was your --"
Angel kisses him. Only way to shut him up, muffle the noise, muzzle. Connor bites back, growls and flails, beats at Angel's face. Brings up blood and strawberries, fills Angel's mouth faster than water, and Angel fists his hand in the boy's short hair, holds him still, grips a hip sharp as broken china.
Hungry, desperate baby.
Connor doesn't know how to kiss. His tongue is thick and fumbling, his hands uncurl and flutter helplessly, and his teeth are blunt, indelicate, injudicious. Angel groans.
"Liked the story, boy, didn't you?" Muttered, half-growled, into the ivory complexity of Connor's ear. "Not so pure."
Connor pushes against his chest and Angel lets himself step back. Connor's mouth is half-open, panting, his eyes darting. Angel squeezes his hip.
Like an hourglass, need narrows down. Flares at the top about the general, abstract, holyrighteous mission of champions and help, tapers down to bandages and antiseptic, hot baths and bedtime stories, contracting until there's barely anything left that isn't animal.
Until it's shut up, behave and obey, win.
Angel guides Connor into the bedroom, eyes set, feeling -- Nothing. Moment to moment, need and want.
Connor chatters, old words, already set and carved in Angel's mind. He knows them by heart. "My mother was a whore and a demon. And you, you're worse, you're all of that but you pretend you're better."
"I'm not--. I don't --" Angel mouths the denials and taps Connor back onto the bed.
"Yes, you are."
"I --. Connor, I'm your father, I'm not --"
"Demon whore."
If Connor could know how he looks there, naked, rosy, fucking dewy. Steady eyes and long, graceful limbs -- But he can't know, he's a boy, a self-styled warrior who's still confused when he gets a hard-on. Who gets hard over his father's sins. That it's unconscious, though, his grace and seductive languor -- it's even more beautiful.
All that strength and fury, hidden, veiled, coiled away.
Dissembling.
Show them what they want to see. Darla always said whoring and killing were differences of degree, not essence. Give them what they want.
"You want me to say yes?" Angel says. Needs to fight, needs to throw something, behead or snap bones. Taste blood. But he's human, too, at least he appears to be, and it's language they're using, not swords and fists.
Connor goes up on one elbow. Hair in his eyes like the tips of knifeblades. "Want you to stop lying."
Pink lips, long throat. Pulse in the hollow of his throat, breath on his lips. And Connor's blood tastes like home.
"Don't want to lie --" Doesn't, can't. Dear boy, good Lord. Angel's hands dangle empty and useless at his sides.
"Do it, then," his son says. "Show me what you did to her before she died." Connor lies down, pillows his head on one arm. "C'mon, Dad."
"You want that," Angel says. Flat voice, leaden, granite, seasmooth and uninflected.
"No." Sweetly, full of lies. Connor's eyebrows lift and his mouth curves and his skin is warm, so warm.
He can touch Connor. He is touching Connor.
Neither flinches at the contact and even though Angel's fingertips are numb and thick, and he tastes brine flowing through his mouth, he's touching his son.
Connor's eyes are dark, heavy-lidded. No sneer, no loathing.
"He had her on her knees first," Angel says as he kneels between Connor's legs. "He --"
Lashes flicker upward. Whites of Connor's eyes ivory now in the dark. "You. You did this."
"Yeah. F-first I had her on her knees. Rubbed my prick --"
He bows his head, watches Connor wrap thin fingers around his cock. Pink on red, roses and blood. Can't close his eyes. Connor grunts when his cockhead touches Angel's cheek, then goes silent, reenacting. Enacting. Faster, and this is the beginning of a rite, altars and distant priests, conjuring desert pasts and offering with hands, incense, Latin words. Connor paints Angel's face, fast and faster, slick, over brow and lips.
Tastes of sea and fruit, wine and grapes.
When he speaks, Connor's voice is sweet and high. Hymnal. "You came on her face. Cleaned her, she tasted like, like -- the ocean. Tidepools. And clover."
It's not supposed to hurt. Connor rubs himself, hard, pulling, tugging, and Angel watches red prick, pink face, waiting.
Connor jerks, knees bending, waist jack-knifing, come spurting over Angel's cheek. Curves his arm around Angel's neck, clutches him and moans high like a dying animal.
"Polluted her," Angel says against his son's chest.
Connor flops back, narrow ribcage heaving, face invisible beyond the sharp point of his chin. Legs unfold, extend, twitching. Angel mouths over the tremors shaking Connor's thighs, needs-wants to help. Make him feel good. Touch him.
Quiet but for the whistle of Connor's breath.
Breaths slowing but his heart hammers against walls of muscle. Red patches, flushed and angry, spot his skin. Blood on paper, cotton, silk.
Home.
Never thought of the demon as something caged, something roiling but safely held within him. Never that easy. Huge coils of rope, naval, heavy and fibrous. Spun, twisted, indistinguishable from the rest of him. I felt it. I felt how you care, Darla had said and it wasn't enough, was never enough. Did she feel the agony, desire, flaming fucking need and thirst when Dru clutched her to her breast and it was home again as much as it was hell?
Hangman's trick, rope and self and soul.
"She was crying. You shut her up." Connor's murmuring now, half to himself, half to Angel, and it's the voice inside Angel's own mind, it's the quiet sweet voice of thoughts, of a child reading to himself, losing himself, escaping and dreaming. Singing hymns, pride of the family.
His hand drifts over Angel's cheek, smears the filth in a little deeper. Scenting him, sinking the smell back to where it belongs. Fingers in his hair, brushing his scalp and Angel looks up.
Nods.
"After I broke her arm and her ribs, she was quiet. Quieter. Wanted to hear her, though, her singing voice. Put my tongue inside her. Ate and licked until she moaned."
Connor's hips swerve and jerk. Young, young like William, like Penn, like Angel. Buffy. Skin on his thigh is hot, soft, damp with bathwater and sweat.
Angel knows what to do. Grips Connor's ankles, bone and sinew, slides his feet up the bed until his knees are bent and splayed. Whore and demon and beautiful.
He lowers his face again and cleans Connor's dick with his mouth. Salt and sour and wine, incantations and prayer. Connor's hardening again -- young, so young, recovery coming fast like the seasons, the wind -- and kisses secret skin. Warm and drunk, bolder with every little gasp Connor lets slip.
Blood under fine thin skin, air in lungs. His son is alive. Needs to breathe, speaks with breath and moans. Touching, kissing, tasting, screwing his tongue against wrinkles and whorls. Whining above him, sliding fast like threads of silk through Connor onto Angel's tongue.
Kisses him, kisses away soap and water until he tastes just Connor. Home, Galway peat and Darla's Londoner fog and Hell's fiery fear and sweet sacramental wine. Until Connor rolls beneath him, wind and rain, sea and tide, organ's swells. Thrash of wet hair against the pillow, incoherent and full of need.
Single long sharp whine when Angel pulls away. Ought to be breathless, but he's dead. He is dizzy, confused and thick-skulled and the boy is breaking, shimmering, beneath him.
Angel's voice thick, hoarse. "She kept moaning. Loud and dirty, happy, and -- had to fuck her."
Connor whines. Opens and closes his mouth several times -- strawberry tongue, thrumming pulse in his throat -- before he can speak. "She wanted it."
Angel can't nod. Can't prolong that lie. It was what the story needed, what Connor wanted to hear, what Angel thought, believed, made true.
"No, she --" Last stab at something, at truth, something bigger than the truth of touch and need and fighting.
Connor sits up on both elbows and licks his lips. Darla's mouth, expert and pink. "She did."
This is more wrong than anything he's ever done. Murder can be justified, rationalized, forgiven. Not his murders, but the act itself. People have spent millennia finding excuses for it. Rape can never be excused, and what is this except a reenactment of the inexcusable, a method to get close to a child who loathes him?
They're both hard. Connor kisses Angel's neck, light and sweet, lips greeting a rosary. It burns worse, deeper, than holy water. "Wanted it."
Angel loses the grand view, lets need dwindle back down into the angry grit, microscopic and sharp.
Angel fumbles, rips, yanks off his pants. It's not supposed to hurt. "Yeah, yeah, she did --" (No she didn't. Liar.) "-- and I spread her legs --"
Pushes Connor back, chases the clouds of warmth and sun that circle him with his hands and mouth. He soaks his hands and dick with baby oil from the carton. Smells it, sweet and slick, hears Connor groan again. Remembers diaper rash, bathtime in the kitchen sink, Darla rupturing into wet black ash. Once under blue nightclub lights, again in the rain.
Tastes ozone and cigarette smoke at the memory.
Connor twists underneath him. "Daaaaaaaad --"
Angel's eyes roll closed. Touching, slicking, penetrating, and this story is different. He can make it different.
He fucked the girl and ate from her neck until she died, until the last breath clenched her so tight around his dick Angelus thought he'd die. That's the real story.
He can do better by Connor. Has to. Must.
Kneels, holds Connor's hips, slim as a girl's, bony. Kisses him long and slow and Connor clutches hands in his hair, mumbling, asking, and every breath that shakes free from his lungs sounds like 'Dad'.
Angel raises one dancer-long leg, wraps it around his own hips and sucks Connor's lip, fruit and wafer, into his mouth, between his teeth. Struggles in the heat and sweetness enveloping him, clouding around him, to keep his human face.
"Dad."
Angel groans brokenly at that, grabs the base of his straining, aching cock, and kisses Connor's forehead. "Slid inside -- Ssshh. Whimpered then."
Hearthfire, hot, leaping and tight: Connor. Burning.
Slim waist, twisting, wrapping legs around Angel's waist, hands on Angel's shoulders, nails digging in. If he closes his eyes, he sees the other blondes, all of them, little Moira who liked to play ponies on Liam's lap and giggled when she came, all the way through Darla and Spike, all the way to Buffy, riding him, her eyes closed so she didn't have to see what she was doing to him, good girl, never wanted more than bubblegum and handholding. Not like Faith, just like Faith. Fucking through the past, and he's worse than animal because he can remember.
Demon whore.
Angel fucks Connor. Covers his teeth with his lips and bites Connor's neck, has to, can't help it, and Connor presses into the contact. Wants it, flush like a pox's fever, wine spilling endlessly off the altar, darkening his cheeks and chest, tightening his tiny ass under Angel's hand.
Give them what they want.
Angel slams into Connor, holds him down, mouth on his neck, asking and taking and Connor moves inside. Angel can feel it, feel memory and knowledge deeper than experience, genetic and familial, feel the twists and throbs Connor gives back as his head and spine bend like rope. Bearing down on, around, through Angel, tightening and moaning.
Angel smells the secrets spilling like seeds from Connor, the blood around his cock and need from his pores and lonely moans from his lips.
Claps his hand over Connor's mouth. Teeth in his palm, tearing him ragged, sound penetrating skin and blood. The ones downstairs, they wouldn't understand. Can't understand, won't; they live in higher realms, better ones, but he and Connor can't ever leave Hell.
Slides his palm off Connor's mouth, kisses him again, the boy so tight on his dick he can barely move, bruising Angel back, just as deep as the bruises Angel's leaving in his hips, on his throat. Blood and baby oil, sweet and salt running warmer and warmer. Connor is tight and hot and hard, fucking like a demon, like family. Nails like claws in his skin, teeth in his hand, and Connor fucks back.
Grabs Connor's dick and yanks at it. Connor yowls, low in his throat, startled eyes and his heart speeds up.
"Dad --"
"Connor."
Fucks and jerks. Until they come. Until they collapse and fall apart, aside.
Until he's empty again. Until the buzzing starts back up in his head, all those voices, screams, pleas, terrors, weeping, endearments. Until he can't hear the sweet boyvoice, hymns and prayers, that he thinks of as his. Until Connor's skin pales, flush dissipating, until his eyes brighten and burn away the gaze of lust. Until his mouth tightens and sneers.
Until it all returns.
It takes half as long as forever.
Ages but it all it comes back.
Always does.
"Fucking monster," Connor says. Sits up, winces. He touches the come on his stomach and tastes it. "Worse than I thought."
Angel shouldn't want anything. Not the point, insulting to grace and God to think he can have anything. Wants anyway, to touch and fall backward, not be here, now, later. "Always is."
"You --" Connor twists around, deigns to look at him. "You --"
Connor's strong, like his parents, a soldier and a hunter, but Angel has pounds on him, experience, expertise. He could snap that twig of a neck in half a second. Bear, lion, wolf: Some alpha beast, putting the whelp in its place.
But he's worse than a beast, and they both know it.
"You wanted it," Angel says. "You always do, just like that. Always will."
Empty sneer, flat beautiful eyes, and Connor shrugs. "Don't know anything about me. Can't."
Angel's sick of this conversation. Sick of the same-always-ever script, copied and recopied by the same careful, worshipful scribes, not a letter or period out of place. Wants silence, touch, warmth, not the chill whisper of paper, prophecy, hate.
He's not allowed to want.
"Fine," he says and rolls onto his side. He hears Connor grind his teeth, hears the slick rapid blinks he gives, smells blood, shampoo, oil and come, in clouds off Connor, ground into his own palm.
"Hate you, Dad."
He won't sleep tonight, but sleep thickens his voice anyway. "Love you, Connor."
He's alone again.
Always already ever alone, curling on himself within a tightening noose. Alone, well before Connor slips like prey from the room and escapes again. Because, eventually, Angel fucks (over) everyone he loves. Especially his children.
Home.