TITLE: VI
AUTHOR: Kita
RATING: Hard R for violence and disturbing imagery
PAIRING: Angel/Wesley, Angel/others implied.

VI
 

He is asleep on my couch, or at least I believe he is; for he is hushed and unmoving, and the night has been overlong. His clothes are a small discarded heap on my floor, a meaningless pile of linen and leather, a cashmere jacket, worn Timberland boots.

A thin bulge in the back pocket of his cast off pants where he keeps his empty wallet. A recently never ending point of consternation between he and Cordelia, that idiotic billfold. She bought it for him following the loss of...everything he owned. A starting over gift, she called it. I could tell he was loathe to hurt her feelings, but honestly what was she thinking? What was he going to put in a wallet? A driver's license? Credit cards? Pictures of family? Foil-wrapped condoms? What use does a vampire have of a wallet, he finally asked her. And she grinned at him, and said, you`ll find something to keep.

I asked him a few days afterward if he had indeed found something to keep. No, he said, the wallet's empty. When Cordelia forgets about it, I'll just put it away.

Nothing. The man possesses nothing, and it fazes him not in the least.

Although I suppose he has *something* on under the thin, white cotton sheet wrapped about his middle. But I wouldn't know what Angel chooses to sleep in. No, how would I know?

It is so odd, to see this man reduced to this. To meager belongings grabbed in haste from a blazing, ruined home, to lumbering on a shoddy couch, to feigning sleep in order to avoid ceaseless, unwelcome conversation.

And yet if he is reduced, if he is broken, what does that make me? He has lost all of his worldly possessions, and yet he lays on my sofa with one large hand resting open on his bare chest, one long leg propped comfortably along the faded and overstuffed pillows, anda look of peaceful repose on his features usually reserved for relief carvings on bronze coins. He was not one week ago told that should he survive the coming End Of Days, he will be granted his eternal soul and a life of relatively anonymous humanity. And yet even after the smoke cleared, and the blood dried, he asked me not one question in clarification, sent me not one glance of worry or anxious regret. Nor did he spare more than a single, small smile in triumph.

''That'd be nice,'' he said, and then changed the subject with all the assumed authority of one regally born.

I am still a walking mass of bumps and bruises, and Cordelia still cannot sleep through the night. Her dreams play out a discordant melody similar to my own, shouts of murderous rogue Slayers, laughter of fiendish lawyers, and the wail of humans enduring unthinkable, unknowable, unbearable pain. But those are all merely the masks we place upon the face of the real nightmare, the one we cannot bear to look at straight in the eyes. The high keening call of Death foiled, as He brushes your shoulder only to be averted at the last minute by some Angel, and I can't help but wonder when I hear that cry if He is angered.

And I wonder when He will be back.

For having thwarted the Reaper once more, for himself as well as others, I suppose a rest is well deserved. And I suppose it is completely selfish of me to wish he chose to achieve semi-naked, unconscious bliss anywhere but on my couch. Then again, I have never been accused of being faultless. If there is any creature in this room whose actions, in recent history at any rate, have been above reproach it certainly is not I. And how ironic is it finally that it is precisely this; it is his faultless, guileless, reclaimed innocence which infuriates me even as it flies in the face of my unwarranted resentment. And how pathetic does that make me as a man, and as one who claims to be his friend?

It is not his fault, no moreso than anything else which has happened to him or even by his hands; no not his fault surely, that I want something from him which he is unable to provide. Not his fault that one night, after drinking too much, and feeling too alone, and watching in silent awe as he once more effortlessly killed some large, hulking something or other which no doubtwould have ended Life As We Know It On Earth, that I reached for his face. Not his fault that in the darkness his skin was luminescent, his eyes part moon and part beast, his skin frost and flame. Not his fault that his lips tasted of blood and comfort. Not his fault that he waited a beat, inhaling my breath and allowing the hope to rise in my chest with the next one, beforepushing me away. I knew it wasn't his fault when his broken whisper of  ''Please...Wes...don't...'' turned the lump of fear in my throat to salt. I knew none of this was his fault, and I knew I had trespassed.

And a brighter, stronger, more confident man may have left it there, may have chalked it up to alcohol and battle fatigue, to camaraderie and brotherly love pushed too far. But I am none of those things, not smart, nor hearty and most certainly not self-assured. And above all, I am not his brother. We are not equals, Angel and I, we never have been, and we never will be. I let myself forget that, and I alone am paying the price for my foolish slight.

Angel does not give of himself casually, he does not love lightly, and he does not become intimate with anyone not his compeer. From the mere two years I have known him, I should have learned as much. Buffy. Spike. Doyle. Any and all of them who could have easily snapped my neck without so much as a second thought. And at least two of the three who no doubt would have relished the act.

And how does that burn in my chest, but like the most vile swallowed poison? The knowledge that he would sooner lay with his arch nemesis, sooner pine for a woman he can never even kiss, sooner cry alone in the dark for the loss of a man he knew but months, than share his burden, his heart, his body with me.

And knowing the why's and the wherefore's do nothing to assuage this bitter taste which rises inside me when I recall the way she spoke to him in that jailhouse. ''I have someone in my life now...that I *love*.''  

And he would have gone after her, thrown himself bloody and broken at her feet if it would have earned him a glance less scornful. He related the rest of it to me, later. The conversation in Sunnydale, his apologies and her cool acceptance of them, her young new lover, and how he had once again walked away. Such an effective tool, his sober and deliberate retreat. His strong back and square shoulders reveal nothing to the watcher, none of the rage and grief inside those ancient, ancient eyes.

Yes, he tells me almost everything in the end...without my having to ask. I wonder, am I a confessor of sorts to him? And why me of all people? Is it because he knows I am already aware of who he is, of *what* he is? That I don't blindly assume he possesses a greater control over his baser instincts than he truly does? That I don't make such a sharp distinction between Angel the man and Angel the demon, as Cordelia so clearly continues to do? Or is it that he knows how I truly feel about him...and knows that I am unable to judge or condemn him, any more than I am able stop this maddening veneration of the souled version of himself?

He knows full well I worship him, and although it renders him at times confused, and at times merely annoyed, I cannot help but wonder, does he enjoy such admiration? Does it make him swell with pride? Or am I contributing to Angel a conscious cruelty which he no longer possesses?

Certainly he maintains much of his demon's instincts. The need for blood, for hunt, for violence and for .... sex. The type of sex he would not even brook discussion of with me. The type of sex I walked in on shortly before Faith first returned. I descended the elevator and didn't think twice about entering his apartment unannounced. Angel is home. Angel is always home. Angel is always alone. Angel is never....otherwise entertained.

I heard them before I saw them...I am surprised I didn't hear them in the elevator. Had I, I might have turned tail and recoiled to the relative safety of the office, and my fantasies of Angel the Knight, and my illusions about Angel the Man. Or perhaps I would have followed those strange sounds to his bedroom anyway, because perhaps it is Angel the Demon which fascinates me much moreso than such a thing has any right to.

And they were there. On his bed. And the first thing I noticed was that Angel has a mirror over his dresser. Strange and out of place and ...reflecting nothing but the room, and the bed which rose and fell rhythmically to their brutal coupling. There, like some Laocoon in life, a man wrestling his demon to save ...only they were not wrestling. Not arguing nor fighting nor running one another through with pokers. But the barbarous grunts were quite audible from my hidden vantage point, and the merciless ripping of flesh rendered the quilt boldly striped. And oh, the inhuman, unrelenting assault of white marble on white marble made my own cock ache in pity and need.

He only stayed an hour or two; had I not seen this stolen moment, I never would haveknown he had been here at all. Surely Angel would not have mentioned this..but, would he save the sheets I wondered later? Would he cherish this bizarre offering of demonic comfort, or would he revert to shame and burn the offending bedclothes in sacrifice?

His lover, his Childe, his brother. Who did not stay to assist him in bringing down the rogue Slayer, did not stick around to offer aide to him when his world crumbled. In fact, he no doubt chuckled heartily at the misfortune. But for one strange hour at least, he had something priceless. And Angel was not alone. And I am an ignorant and heartless fool that I covet and begrudge him that time. Because it changed nothing.

And what did I think it would change? Angel does not change, he does not grow, or eat or reproduce, he does none of the things which encompass the scientific interpretation of life. Scientists. What do they really know? Do they know that he weeps? Do they know that he feels love? Do they know that he bleeds? And would it matter if they did? Certainly not.

He is not of their world, anymore than he is of mine. He treads between them both, and neither mystics nor Council Watchers nor Initiative Men have an explanation for what he is. Even the prophets themselves merely allude to his presence and purpose. And if he doesn't even know why he is here, why he was created, and cursed, and killed, and resurrected what right do I have to expect anything at all of him?

Weeks after the aborted kiss, and we walked once more in companionable silence through the darkness. His presence solid and self assured, his boot heels clicking a steady, serene beat on the pavement. I turned to look at him, and his eyes never glanced upward from the street before him. And it tumbled from my lips before the thought had fully formed in my brain, it spilled forth and This Cannot Be Undone.

''Why?''

Silence sweet and darkness pure, as I hovered between the wishing and the praying, and the hoping he would not grant my answer. But at length he spoke, that voice layered with the night, and the seclusion that would never release its cruel hold on him. ''Because you don't have any idea what you're asking for.''

And then we were at my door, and he was gone.

And I was left with the words, with the knowledge and the silence.

Although it was not true, any of it. I had more than an idea, how could he possibly think that I did not? I read about him in garish detail when I was merely sixteen, I have studied his life like other men study botany or medicine, and I *know* coldly and by heart the hideous and grotesque evil of which those hands are capable.

I know that Angelus preferred young, handsome men and well endowed, older women. I know that if neither were available, he would settle without pity or remorse for a long haired brunette child. I know that most of his victims, no matter their age or gender were found stripped. I know that most were mutilated, before their death. I know none of them died slowly at his hands. And I know that what I have seen in my short life, what I have imagined in the nightmares which plague me, and what I fear lurking under my bed in the darkest and most foul night is nothing compared to what he visited upon the hundreds or thousands of innocents which he casually slaughtered.

And so I did the unthinkable. I brought our Conversation into the light of day. I walked into his office, and I closed the door behind myself, and I leaned my hands on his desk. Not for the first time did I notice there were no windows in that room. The inner sanctum. His shelter and chancel. But I have transgressed the sweet, indefinable temple of his mouth, and I have trampled upon the boundary of the night of which he would not speak, and this was just one more small step for Wesley. From cowering ex-Watcher to battle scarred would-be hero. From 'Inferior-Wes-Ol-Boy' to David, slaying the Vampire Goliath with a mean right cross and a handy elevator shaft. What did I have left to fear? The only potential monster in my life is the one I want in my bed.

And truth be told I cannot even recall what challenge I issued him, what words twisted around my tongue to cajole, embarrass or provoke a response more lengthy than the monosyllabic refusals he had uttered at me for months.

What I do remember are his eyes, as they shifted from cinnamon to aureate, the pupils all but swallowed by the furious rush of unholy color. I remember his breath, surprisingly warm on my face as he used it to create clipped, short speech, and I remember his hands on my shoulders as he slammed me against the back wall.

And I remember his words. ''What do you think this is, Wesley, some sort of goddamned game? Do you think I am some great prize? Do you want my head on your Watcher trophy wall? What the fuck do you think you're doing?''

And my protests, cut off by this wave of passion and fury he had so long bitten back. ''No, you think you want me? You think I'm some fucking anti-hero? Some kind of dark god? Huh? You think you want me and all that I am? You stand there and I'll fucking tell you what I am. And then we won't have to discuss this again.''

And so he did.

He told me of the things which were never written in the Watcher Journals, of the things I could not have conjured inside my most horrid dreams had I tried.

He told me of his family, and his first night as an immortal. How he came to the door of what was once his house, and was unwittingly invited inside by his child-sister. How dainty she was, like a china doll, he said. How her tiny hands fit neatly around his neck while he drained her, almost to the point of death, almost...Interrupted by the shout of his mother, and turnedto see her, watching while her first born slaughtered her second. Smiled at her in full demonic visage, and she knew him, of course she did, he was her Son...Held the limp little girl between his legs (so sad, he said, so unfortunate that she was not yet old enough to bleed, because then I could have had my pleasure of her in so many other ways before I killed her) Said,''Mother, Kathy is tired, sing her a lullaby, won't you?'' And she could not, Mother could not force the song from her frozen lips. Laughed, and broke little Kathy's fingers, one by one, ''Can you sing it now, Mother, can you?'' And the last words from her mouth were from an ancient Celtic song she used to lull him to sleep by.

He told me of raping Spike before he Sired him; how the boy bled so much from the assault that there was precious little left to drain from him in the Turning. He told me of using Drusilla as a tool to manipulate and control his disobedient male Childe, and how she continued to adore her Daddy despite what he did to her. He told me he was nothing if not a consummate mentor ofpain and submission.

He told me of all of them, his Demonic family, things which never made it into legend, because there was noone who had survived to even bear witness to the tales. Darla's prowess with a whip, Spike's fascination with Vlad the Imapler and its subsequent influence on his style of killing, and his own personal preference for torture implements....anything with a sharp edge.

How he could carve a human just so, drawing enough blood and pain so that they would linger for hours, hovering on this side of consciousness and begging for a swift death which never came. How he practiced this for years on all of his victims, until his skill became a celebrated art form, and he was asked to perform for the Master on multiple occasions. Ritual? No, he assured me, just sport. Death for festivity.

How he used similar methods on Giles, after his ill fated tryst with Buffy. Giles never told you about any of that time, did he? he asked, looking into my eyes. No, no he had not...Didn't tell me how Angel had sliced the skin off the inside of his arms layer by layer. Didn't tell me how Angel had lapped at the blood like a kitten. Didn't tell me how Angel didn't miss a drop, even those small, traitorous beads which spilled into his lap. Didn't tell me how Angel had lapped at those as well, that long tongue flat against his wool-covered crotch. Didn't tell me that he was saved by Xander only moments before his certain rape at the hands the vampire.

But Angel told me. That evening, in his office, Angel told me everything. And I listened, and the sweat covered my brow; and I willed my brain to quiet, and my mouth to salivate, and my trembling, cold body to not betray my emotions. My hands closed into fists at my side, and still he kept talking, a sing song voice with the slightest hint of Ireland, and gold eyes at once faraway and devastatingly present.

There is more, he said, there is so much more. There was Doyle, whose half demon get proved woefully insufficient to withstand more than the occasional tryst. And there is Spike, isn't that right, Wes? You think we didn't see you there? You think we didn't *smell* you? Is that how you like it, Watcher, is it? Do you want it like a fucking animal? Do you think you could take it?

And then his hand, desperate and angry on my wrist, grabbing at it, pulling my palm open, and pressing it against him. There, beneath the layer of denim, the unmistakable evidence of his arousal. Undeniable, unrelenting, its very existence unnatural. Attached to a dead man, wholly barren, with no design other than to provide pleasure..and pain.

A shiver ran through me then, and he stopped. Dropped my hand. Looked away. Hunched his broad shoulders. ''Now you know, '' he said finally, in the Angel's voice, ''Now get out and we never mention this again.''

And we never did. I am weak and I am needful, and I continue to adore him, but I will not jeopardize what I have been given, and my own chance to make amends and make something of myself at his side.

And I cannot lie and say that I am satisfied. I cannot say that when his home and office and world exploded, and he rushed into the flames to save what he could, that my heart did not stop at the thought that he saved me. That he plucked me from the wasteland and the ruin, that he chose to rescue me again, that he gave me another chance to be redeemed, that metaphor is not lost on me. And I cannot say that I did not briefly and foolishly hope that it was for reasons which went beyond duty and friendship. When my hands brushed the back of his thighs as he carried me from that burning building, when he looked down at me on the concrete, when he stared at me with those sad, chocolate eyes so full of obvious concern and love, of course I dared hope. And there are moments when we are alone, and the past is the past, and our Conversation never happened, and I still dare hope.

I don't want to be Buffy, I don't want to threaten his soul, I don't want to deliver him into the arms of perfect happiness. But I want. Truth be told, finally, I have no idea what I want of him. What I fear, what I lust, what I loathe with all that is decent and human in me, and what I love more than I have loved anything else in my pathetic existence. It is too much for mere mortals to bear, and maybe that is what he was trying to tell me all along.

But I wonder, still. I wonder inside the secret hope, if perhaps all those things he told me were delivered solely in his fierce desire to push me away. An attempt to raise in me a loathing and a recoiling which should have been instinctive given my calling, but somehow never was. Oh I do not doubt the accuracy of his tales. But how could he live with that inside of him every day, were it truly so close to the surface of his skin? How could he demonstrate such tenderness to the mortal women he adores, as lover, sisters, friends? How could he fight each day for the side of Light if that Darkness was always roiling just under his calmveneer? Surely, he pressed the point in order to prove his case.

And so I trespass once more. I step over to where his clothing lay discarded, and I reach into his jeans, and I pull out the small leather billfold. Empty, just as he had assured me. Nothing to link him to this plane, to the Sons of Adam, to the brotherhood of Evolution and the explosion of billions of stars.

But as I move to replace the stolen object, I see it. It flutters to the ground, a dying white bird. And as I press it to my palm, I read the words, and it is all clear suddenly. My absurd, ill-considered crush, all the arbitrary lines even I have drawn, my foolhardy attempts to wrench sexual tenderness from a being who would lose all goodness in the aftermath of bequeathing such a gift.

I am a perfect fool.

I have lived in poverty and riches, through near apocalypses and on Hell Mouths. I have been bested by Slayers and by Demons, and once, with a combination of physical agility and blind luck, I took down the Scourge of Europe. And it is apparent that I have as much to learn as a wailing infant.

I put the slip of paper back into his wallet, knowing that its carefully penned words will remain always with me, tattooing my future visions with its gently smudged black ink.

Thou Shalt Not Kill.

I walk up to him on the couch, and I tuck the sheet around his legs. Then I turn round and retreat to my bedroom, and carefully, quietly, shut the heavy door. But I do not sleep for a very long time.

-End

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