As the sun dims, after the others leave, Wes knows that he, too, should return home. For now, however, he sits on the steps, nodding along while Connor rails against magic. Against curses, demons, and especially the resurrection of notorious demons.
"Really the only option -" Wes says.
"Don't lecture me."
The boy has, at last count, at least three fathers: Angel. Holtz. Angelus. There is no room for Wesley. Connor shifts, constantly in motion, a pale blur slashed with dark eyes, darker mouth.
"Merely suggesting -"
"Don't. Lecture. Me."
Wes laughs at him. Connor scowls, freezing. Sharp features, Darla's feral intelligence and traces of Angel's submerged fears.
They are never alone, even here. Even here, Angel sits a step above them, drawing them in their distrust, longing, hope. Defining every emotion, each gesture.
One thing no father should do is left to Wes.
He shoves the fierce child, gone suddenly, deviously, limp, against the wall.
Connor tastes like blood and brimstone. Beaten and bruised and young, terribly young and *new*. In the darkening sky, memory overlays present, taste and sight, and the dark seeps into under-the-stairs terror, the taste of his own boyish blood in his mouth.
Wes tastes himself.
Dark eyes glaring at him contradict the soft sighs breathing out. But they match and echo long white fingers on Wes's throat, in his crotch, closing and choking out guilt and pleasure as Connor pushes him down, back, up the stairs, clambering over him. He breathes death-innocence-wild in sweet, harsh gasps into Wes's lungs. Feeds his blackened heart and stokes desire.
"Bring him back and I'll kill you both."
Wes merely sucks a filthy finger -- grimy, nail cracked lengthwise, sticky with blood -- into his mouth, biting the knuckle, coaxing fresh blood down his throat.
Connor's face contorts, parodies delight. "You'd like that."
Another thing the three of them share. Deathwishes, homicidal impulses, suicide. Wes sucks Connor's finger more deeply, nail scraping his tonsils, then spits it back at him. "Of course. Love to see you try."
Connor strips off Wes's pants, kisses him raggedly, pushes bony hands over Wes's skin-and-bones body. Mirrored and hateful, rejected sons scraping and battling for Angel's attention. Naked and bruised, fighting to come first and soil each other, they roll across the steps until it is midnight-dark and neither can breathe.
There are always three here. Bared to the sky, moaning like animals, never hiding.