Yet another stupid, insolent, foolhardy stunt -- ducking into the last patch of shadow well past sunrise, taunting an entire legion of dockworkers, kicking up a brawl over a tart barely worth a first, let alone second, glance, sassing Darla more obnoxiously than ever, eating the hack and leaving his corpse draped over his carriage with his pants open -- and William's getting wrestled up against the nearest fence gate, still spitting and laughing.
Always laughing, blue eyes narrowed and full of defiance. Angelus smacks him across the cheek with open palm, hard enough that he clenches his fist against the sting.
Still laughing. Hitched breath at contact, then the laughter doubles, trips over itself in its rush to escape smirk-twisted lips.
"The feck you think you're doing?"
"Having fun, old man." Massive, reddening palm print on his pale skin; Angelus relishes the difference in their sizes, yet evidence of it always surprises him. "You remember that, yeah?"
"Telling you to shut -"
William tosses back his head, laughing hard enough to wheeze. Stretch of throat, neck almost as slender as Darla's, skin even softer. "Make me."
With one hand, Angelus holds him, shaking with laughter and delight, against the trembling wrought-iron bars, and with the other yanks his braces off, spraying buttons. "Shouldn't have to *make* you, not by now."
He binds the boy up. One arm shoved over William's head, tied at the wrist, then the other, tight and high enough that his feet almost dangle.
William's smile now is a parody of recalcitrance, his stillness a mockery of behavior. "Oh, but you like having to, don't you?"
Angelus doesn't answer. He shakes his head, lips drawn tight over blunt human teeth. Fury has gone quiet in his veins. No longer raging, but cold and sparkling, a comb in Dru's hair. With the tip of his knife, he slits open William's shirt, then his trousers, until the fabric flaps in the occasional hot gust of wind.
"Should leave you like this until morning," he observes, stepping back. Admires carefully the strain in William's narrow shoulders, mandolin-string delicacy of his ribs, the stone-hard lump in his undershorts. Shadows from the trees all around dapple William's skin with lozenges of light and dark.
"You couldn't -" William starts, but a length of his shirt, cut quickly, recklessly, enough that a long scratch of red wells down his side, gets stuffed in his mouth until all that's audible are squeaks and grunts.
Angelus is cheating. He hates to cheat. The craft of the work comes in compelling silence, not forcing it. But William's cheeks are bulging, his eyes gone small and dark, and if he resembles nothing more than a naughty boy choking on spunk, so much the better.
He tests the strength of the bonds, twists first one way, then the other, the leather creaking in time with the rusty moan of iron. Strung up on the gate, and it wheezes open, clacks shut, as he twists.
"Still, boy." Angelus emphasizes the order with another flick of the knife, a matching scratch down the other side, over hip and thigh until William's prick springs out, red and angry.
"You'll stay still and quiet and take it."
Rattle of iron, croak of leather. Whisper of lashes brushing cheeks is inaudible, yet the loudest, sharpest thing Angelus hears.
William looks back at him, and won't look away, down, aside. Straight on, eyes tracking the movements of his hands and body with the intensity of an animal.
William isn't an animal. He's a stupid, reckless boy who'll never learn his lesson because he enjoys relearning it all too much.
Angelus swings the gate open, crossing until he's behind William. Soft golden hair, flapping shreds of shirt, and bare ass. Smacks with his hand until the skin is red as cherries - blood - autumn, then switches hands and repeats. Waits for the guttural moan, muffled by fabric.
Waits, sucking the inside of his cheek, and is disappointed.
Stands behind the hanging boy, arms around his waist, mouth on his neck.
Tied up and hung here, William is his height.
"Stupid, stupid boy," he says, tracing lines of muscle and tendon with his teeth. "Never going to learn, aren't even paying attention now -"
Knife, unseen but his grip is sure, scratches a rosette over William's sternum. He presses the tip in and twists as his other hand touches William's prick like a virgin girl would, too lightly, fingers shaking with curiosity and revulsion.
William mewls, low in his throat, pulling forward an inch. Angelus thrusts with him, riding the cleft of his ass, tugging on his balls and scratching the flat of the knife over one nipple.
"Like that, don't you? Like it when you have no choice?"
Squeak and pull, throat and leather both straining, and Angelus yanks him back.
"Not answering me."
Thrust, tug, tease, and William is silent. Angelus feels every muscle in William's back, twitching and jumping like spawning eels, but his boy is stubborn as well as stupid, and it takes more than this to break him for the night again.
Angelus cuts off the rest of William's clothes and strides back in front of him. Stands half an armslength away, knuckling thumb and index finger up the boy's shaft, nails digging into foreskin, pulling it down and up until William's eyes widen and he curses behind the gag.
This, this he could do all night. Stroke him, scratch and twist one rosy nipple, then the other. Dart in to lick up drying blood while he rolls William's balls roughly between his palms.
Eyes twice the size of his face, cheeks distended, hair matting over his forehead, and William - simply hangs there. The leather of the braces moans and protests when his body jumps, but he's no longer trying to wiggle free. The movement is unconscious, uncontrollable, and Angelus can smell the anger and frustration William's working up against himself.
It smells like sugar and plum pudding laced with lye.
Delicious.
"Open up, brat -" He yanks William's prick down as he digs the gag out with a hooked finger. It spills from the boy's mouth, soaked with spit and curses, but William closes his lips around Angelus's finger. Sucks it deep, rasping teeth and tongue down its length, driving it up against his palate and back towards his tonsils.
His eyes never leave Angelus's. But he smiles, quiet and shy as the altarboy Liam never was, and lets out a small moan as he sucks and tries, despite the bonds, to thrust.
Angelus drags his finger out, scraping his nail down William's tongue and over his plump lower lip.
"Said to open up -" and he smacks William's ass until the gate rattles, then hooks his arm around a bar and slides his finger up the boy's hole smooth and fast and cruel.
"Fuck you -" William's face is motionless as a skull, his words harsh and empty.
Angelus fucks his finger in and out, twisting and crooking, adding two more fingers until William is panting like a fucking mortal.
"Do what you're told, boy."
Waits, and isn't disappointed this time, one hand on William's throat, the other half-sunk up his ass, and gets the hot, whinnying wheeze through William's nose and mouth. Mouth hanging open like a whore's, hips jerking helplessly under Angelus's hand.
Angelus stills his hand when the flush starts to spread down William's throat and over his chest. Uses his thumbnail to reopen the scratches on William's chest.
"Am. Am doing it. *Da*." William whines and wheezes when Angelus works his fingers again.
"You're not. You're fucking everything up. Always do. Always will."
Dark lashes glitter: unshed tears, frustration, anger.
Angelus presses against William, driving his hips hard until the boy's pressed against the iron, his prick caught between his stomach and the rough wool of Angelus's trousers. Angelus crosses two fingers inside William, inside the slick, overwhelming tension, then pushes higher until the tears gather over the surface of William's eyes. "Say that again."
"Am doing it."
William's blood is soaking his white shirt, a smeared photogram of pain. Angelus unbuttons his trousers and grabs their dicks, squeezes them together. "Again. All of it."
"Doing what you say, Da. Doing it -"
He knows William can't bear it, almost as much as he can, and wants to, and needs to. And it's the twist in the boy's shoulders, the bruises already forming around his wrists where the skin's rubbing raw, and his sweet, tight hole clenching around Angelus's fingers, and the jump-twitch-quiver of his prick, and his low, honeyed whine that's making this, moment by fucking moment, less a lesson than an encounter. A tryst.
Angelus hates him for it.
But his own dick is heavy in his hand, and William's bony hips are jerking into him, then back against his fingers, and his slender neck's bowing forward, mouth working on empty air, desperate to taste his sire-master-father.
"Daddy." It's not Dru's baby whine that slices open Angelus's black heart, or Darla's husky whisper, practiced for decades in countless beds before Liam was even born. It's rougher and needier and sweeter than theirs, and it pumps rage through Angelus because it makes him want.
"Shut up."
William squeezes down, twists his hips and bites his lip. The leather and iron sob in protest as the boy smiles again. "Can't, Da. Want it. Want to make you come."
The taste in Angelus's mouth is bitter as rat's piss and he spits it at William, fucking his hand in and out until the boy cries out, finally.
"Like that, Da, just like that."
He can't look at pansy-dark eyes shining with tears, lips gone red. Can't even look at the blood on his shirt. He pulls out and away and swings the gate again, all the way open, cracking William's head against the bars of the fence. Spits on his palm twice to slick up his cock, then reaches through the bars, arm around skinny hips and pushes his way in and up the boy.
"No," he gasps, biting down on William's shoulder. "Like this. Always like this."
He thrusts madly in, pulls all the way out until William mewls again, then shoves back in. Fucks hard enough that the entire fence shakes. Chews down on the boy's shoulder, drinking stolen blood, so he doesn't have to talk. Just wants to come and get away. Let the brat get himself down and follow later.
His braces pull and stretch against William's movements as he screws himself back onto Angelus, grunting.
"Like this, Da. Just like this, taking you, taking it all -"
Maybe because he can't see, or because he's already given up, or maybe, just maybe, because William is tight and sweet and feels so fucking good, stretched to breaking and trussed up, but the boy's voice slips through rage and frustration, flares down Angelus's gut and swells his cock until he's licking the boy's neck madly, hair in his eyes and mouth, whispering to him like a fucking woman.
"Just like this, baby boy. Always."
He comes in a howling, endless moment, vision full of pink and white skin, the taste of plums and William and the sound of paternal endearments mixing with the strain of leather. Feels William's spunk hit the back of his hand and raises it to the boy's mouth, lets him suck it clean and take a little blood, too.
It's only when he steps away, shaking blood and spunk off his dick, buttoning up and tucking back in his ruined shirt, that he remembers himself.
Returns to himself. He shakes his head, anger and impatience fleshing his body back out as he recollects the proper order of things.
Cuts William down with his knife and lets the boy stumble to the ground.
"Best get back to the women."
He turns, knowing the boy will hobble, naked and half-bowed, rubbing his wrists and cursing his name, following.