a.connor  a.doyle  a.lindsey  a.oz  a.spike  a.wesley  a.xander  a.other  three.somes  het.fic  character.study           
Title: A Simple Reaction
Author: Dusk
Pairing: A/W
Rating: NC-17 
Setting: Early AtS



Angel stood in the dark, staring out the window with his eyes closed. The
air was cool, but not cold, with a small breeze that he could occasionally
feel ruffle his hair.

Humans had evolved for daylight, for escaping, for hiding from predators.
Vampires were hunters; they'd never been anything else. The didn't rely on
sight to tell them what the world was like. Without light, a human was lost,
disorientated. Racial memories of terrors in the darkness prevented them
from ever being truly comfortable.

A vampire, without light, was in his natural habitat. They couldn't really
*see* in perfect darkness. They didn't need to.

Of course, he didn't hunt. Not anymore. Didn't mean that he lost the
instincts, the skills, or the desire. Underused senses screamed silently and
continuously to be exercised, building to a thundering peak until nothing
else mattered but setting them free.

So he sat in the dark. Or stood, it didn't matter. From inside, or outside.
That didn't matter either. Cataloguing the temperature of the air, the
sounds spreading out around him for a distance he couldn't really calculate
in mortal measurements, only in lives and territories. The scents of the
same.

He could still do it, track his prey across a city, or a wilderness, though
a hundred conflicting scents and sounds and trails.

Proving he could still do it meant he didn't have to do it for real.

Not so much brooding as running, chasing, leaping, catching, killing,
drinking... without ever leaving the safety of his own head.

Safety - not for him, but for everybody else in his city.

He could spend hours like this. He did spend hours like this. So it wasn't
his mortal acquaintances' idea of a good time; it wasn't even his, actually,
but it was the closest he'd let himself come nowadays.

It wasn't brooding, it was nothing so cerebral as conscious thought. More
the opposite, a deliberate cessation of higher brain functions.

It meant he didn't have to think about anything. At all.

It was a heady feeling, having all that sensory information at his
fingertips yet never acting upon it. He could smell fear, and anger, and
lust. A few other trace emotions, but those were the dominant three. Humans
never changed.

There was a shift in his immediate vicinity and he was abruptly drawn back
from the greater perception of the city to the closeness of just one room,
dry and dusty and stifling. Still disorientated, he shook his head. Dust,
and the harsh scents of chemical dyes used in clothing. Wood polish and
leather, and paper combined with the subtle musk of a living....

Wesley. He tilted his head to one side, then the other. Triangulating with
sound and scent. Behind him. Close. Getting closer. He could turn and attack
and the human would be dead before he even knew he was in danger. He could
drain him and grind his bones to dust between his teeth.

He could. He didn't.

"Wesley," he affirmed aloud, remembering with difficulty how to articulate.
A collection of sounds, barely more than a low rumble. He didn't know if the
human's hearing was even acute enough to hear it.

The emotions he'd revelled in outside still hung around him like a cloud.
Fear soon faded... since it was against his nature as a predator. Anger,
sweet and bitter, but not his. Lust....

Lust was fleeting but it never died, not totally. It moved from person to
person like a disease, living independently of it's temporary hosts.

Or not so temporary. Give it long enough, it could grow, like an acorn into
an oak, rooting itself into it's host....

Wesley was close enough for Angel to locate him just by the heat of his
body. His scent was stronger than anything else in the otherwise empty room.

"Wesssllleeeey," he sounded again, tasting the sound carefully.

"Angel, are you all right?"

So Wesley had heard that. Angel didn't really attach any significance to the
collection of sounds he uttered. The heartbeat was thumping just inches
behind him, relaxed, not speeding with adrenaline. There was no danger for
Wesley to react to. None that Wesley was aware of.

There was no conscious decision made, simply a reaction to the combined
scent, sound, presence and complete lack of fear. It was stupid, not to fear
him. It was potentially fatal. It was...

... arousing.

He wasn't facing the window now, the breeze was behind him, he could feel it
on the back of his neck. His hands were full of heated hair and skin. The
heartbeat spiked, a flash of fear, yes, but scent didn't lie, and that
wasn't fear he smelled. His mouth was caught up in another, warm and wet and
tasting just like blood and coffee and human male. He felt Wesley react,
slowly but as fast as he could, flailing his limbs, thumping Angel in the
chest, but that stopped almost immediately, all movement ceasing.

Angel pulled his head back fractionally, his eyes opening but not focusing,
testing with scent and sound again. The speeding heartbeat was already
returning to normal, Wesley was making no move to leave and not just because
he knew Angel could stop him without even trying. Still no fear.

"Angel?"

"Wesley." Enough words, they said nothing, meant nothing. Angel dropped his
head again, lips whispering silently against Wesley's throat, and this time
Wesley wasn't taken by surprise; nothing but a minute shift of muscles under
the skin, under Angel's lips, as he swallowed. Hands were raised tentatively
to Angel's arms, pausing there a moment before moving back down to rest on
Angel's hips.

"What...."

That was as far as Wesley got; Angel's attention was caught by the movement
of mouth and tongue and he lifted his head to quiet them. Wesley wasn't
pulling back, or staying still, he was opening willingly, slowly, to Angel's
insistent lips.

"Oh, God... Wesley...." Angel murmured, pushing his hips against Wesley's,
the new scents and breathy moans released by this action filling the air
around them like smoke, made tangible.

"... Angel...." Wesley breathed into his ear.

"... Wesley...." There was a slow trail off of movement. Something clicked
into place in Angel's brain, something that overrode the sensory clouding
from a night of hunting and tracking. He cleared his throat. "... Wesley?"

There was a questioning note to the word, now. Wesley shook his head to try
and clear it.

"I think so," he said weakly.

Angel didn't move his hands from their perches, one on a shoulder, another
on the waist. He didn't move his head, staying cheek to cheek with the human
he was wrapped around. He stayed exactly where he was.

"Why are we... you... what are we doing?" he settled for, suddenly unsure
how much of this was real, how he'd gone from a simple few hours alone to...
this.

"I have no idea," Wesley told him honestly.

"But you...."

"I...?"

"You were... were you...? Yes, you were." I can smell your feelings, he
didn't add aloud. You were reacting to me. "Why?"

"For heaven's sake, Angel, you can't just assault a man like that and expect
him to do the honourable thing and back off."

"I can't... I what?"

Wesley's breath was hot against his ear. "When somebody... when... look,
you react automatically, all right? If you didn't like it, you shouldn't
have groped me in the first place."

Angel still didn't move. "I groped you," he stated, hoping to clarify
things. It didn't help.

"Thoroughly, yes."

"And you...?"

"I let you."

"Did I give you a choice?"

"I know you don't think much of my ability to defend myself, but no, I don't
think I would tolerate sexual assault without causing at least *some*
physical damage on my attacker. Yet you appear to be intact."

"Good."

"Yes, it was."

Angel relaxed minutely. Wesley was makes jokes. He hadn't fucked everything
up beyond redemption.

"You hit me. I remember you hitting me."

"Well, yes, I did. Briefly. I was rather taken by surprise, after all. I
just came up to see how you were doing. You've been up here all night."

All night. The air outside the window was very slowly warming, he could feel
it now that he was paying attention. Had to be nearly four in the morning.

"You're alone here? Why are you here at all?" That sounded wrong. "At this
time," he added.

"Cordelia declared her social life of paramount importance and left some
time ago. It's possible she had a date, but she told me to mind my own
business. Gunn probably didn't have a date, but he went for a beer and some
sleep, since nothing much was happening here. Said to page him if any demons
needed a good... ass-kicking. His words, not mine."

"And you're here."

"I have no date, no life, and didn't want a beer. Staying here with a
fascinating treatise on ethnodemonology seemed as good a plan as any."

"You stayed to check up on me," Angel divined from this apparently careless
answer.

"I most certainly did not. You know how much I enjoy curling up with a good
book."

"Which you could have done at your place. You have books. And chairs to curl
up in."

"I have bony, uncomfortable chairs. You have a fine study. And a better
stocked refrigerator, which is peculiar if you think about it."

"You sat in my chair. My leather chair, in my study. You ate my food,
although that's what it's there for, so that's okay."

"Um... yes, I did. To all of the above. You're out of those charming folded
pastry things."

"I can buy more. Actually, I can ask Cordelia to, because she won't let me
near the grocery store anymore."

"You bought strange things, Angel. I really don't blame her for putting her
foot down."

"It's *my* kitchen. I should have some say in what goes into it. Do you know
how long it's been since I bought real food? Most of the things people eat
now didn't exist then. I just asked the saleswoman what you three might
like."

"I don't think she meant for you to buy *all* her suggestions. And yes,
life without cookie-dough ice cream and vanilla flavoured coffee. How tragic
it must have been. I think we're straying from the subject slightly?"

"That's what I was aiming for. Straying. So you like the pastry things?"

"You don't want to admit that you molested me while in a brooding trance of
some kind and are, even as we speak, cuddled around me like some kind of
living blanket, without the slightest clue how you got there."

Angel debated how to react to that, and settled for not moving, again.
"You're a very perceptive man, Wesley."

"Thank you. You also want to know why I'm not running, screaming, from the
room."

"No," Angel said carefully. "I don't need you to tell me that."

"Oh? Pray enlighten me."

"My nose is an inch away from your skin. You smell... horny. And you have a
hard-on, which I am in no doubt about whatsoever, because, as you said, I'm
wrapped around you like a blanket."

"Oh. That. Circumstantial evidence, at best."

"You didn't smell horny when you walked in here."

"Because as fun as ethnodemonology is, it really doesn't arouse me
sexually."

"But I do, right?"

Wesley gave in. "Apparently, yes."

"Apparently."

"Yes, you do, very much so, and you damn well know it so stop messing
about."

"I just wanted you to say it."

"You are a complete bastard."

"A very insecure bastard who just minutes ago thought he had molested you.
Go easy on me."

"I'd say the physical evidence speaks for itself, for both of us. How about
you stop hiding your face in my neck and actually look me in the eye?"

Reluctantly, Angel did so.

"Thank you. Now, please hurry and get to the part where you invite me into
your bed."

Angel looked at him for a very long moment. "That's not what I was expecting
to hear."

"Or you could get to the part where you tell me I'm insane and should
leave," Wesley offered quietly. "But that one's really not as much fun."

"I don't like that option either," Angel said. "So... maybe we should sleep
together...?"

"For Christ's sake, *yes* already."

"Good."

Neither moved.

"And I'd prefer it if you were actually conscious this time. A good groping
really doesn't mean as much when the groper is practically in a coma."

"Wesley... shut up."

"Shutting up now," Wesley agreed breathlessly, as Angel lowered him gently
to the floor. "So... no bed, then?"

"Bed's far," Angel told him, pulling off his own shirt.

"Yes, and that window faces east. And it's open. Do you happen to know when
sunrise is?"

Angel stood up, shut the window and the blind, and then dropped to his knees
beside Wesley.

"Much better."

"Didn't I say something about you being quiet?" Angel began undoing the
buttons on Wesley's fly.

"I never was very good at following orders, I'm afraid."

Angel finished with the removal of the pants, Wesley obligingly lifting his
hips in the process, which set all sorts of interesting thoughts flying
though the vampire's mind. He bent over and blew softly on the faint trail
of dark hair below the navel, watching it stand on end as a shudder ran
through Wesley's entire body.

He moved down, hovering above the nest of dark curls. "Wesley," he said in a
conversational tone. "I want you to scream for me."

Angel bowed his head.

Wesley moaned at length, then, at some convincing non-verbal prompting from
Angel, was more than happy to turn it into a scream.

[end]


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