FIC: Pretty Screams In Paradise
I'm sure your thoughts are with the families of the victims of VATech, as mine still are.
But this is done; I don't want to work on it any more, and maybe it will take the mind off for a moment for one or two of you. (Not that it's particularly heartening, I should mention.)
Please mind warnings.
*
Title: Pretty Screams In Paradise
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Angel/Connor. Explicit Angel/Connor sex. If the concept offends you, please don’t click, read, or comment on this fic, and we’ll both be happier.
Summary: You can’t be saved by a lie.
Notes: This fic is for kita0610 and ros_fod.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to germaine_pet, who very much helped me write the fic I wanted to write. So, thanks!
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Steven used to ask, “Why is the sky black?”
“It is night.”
“You said night is the absence of day. So what’s day?”
“Never, here.” Daddy used to say, “This is the edge of Hell.”
Tilting his head to see the swirl of stars, Steven would remind himself that it was wrong to look up into Hell and wish for its glittering, gorgeous arms.
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“How did I know the words?” Connor asked, after he and Angel finished singing on the makeshift stage.
“It’s Jasmine.”
“But where does that song come from? Is it on a radio?”
“It used to be ‘Mandy’,” Angel said as they threaded their way through the crowd towards the goddess. “But Jasmine makes Manilow even better.”
“What’s a Manilow?” Connor wanted to know.
Jasmine, in range, now, put hands on both their shoulders. “A musician,” she answered Connor. “With the ability to pull a listener’s heartstrings.”
“Knew she would appreciate a good ballad,” Angel said contentedly, looking with admiration into Jasmine’s face.
Connor shoved his hands into his pockets. “Right. Good ballad.”
“My poor child,” Jasmine said. “Here I’ve experienced millennia of this world’s wonders and beauties. You have known but months, and those filled with trials and pain.”
“But that’s over, now you’re here,” Angel said to Jasmine. He turned from her to Connor, taking his son’s hand. “I can show you now,” he said. “Everything I’ve always wanted to.”
Jasmine nodded. “That’s one of my greatest wishes.”
Connor and Angel smiled up at her, bathed in her light.
Upstairs, Angel showed Connor his collection of music. Recognizing the small disks as CDs, because Cordy listened to these, Connor held one up. Watched it catch the light and shine, thinking of when the stars all fell in fire and Cordelia held him close. Connor put the CD on the shelf; his head dipped down.
Angel fiddled with the CD case. “Was there any music at all in Quor’toth?”
“Holtz taught me some hymns to sing.” Connor shrugged. “But he didn’t like me to do it.”
Angel turned to face him. “Why not?”
Pretending to look at more of the music, Connor carefully monitored the vampire’s expression out of the corner of his eye, and tested, “He said my voice was ugly.”
Face darkening, Angel said, “That’s not true. You sounded like an angel.”
Connor smiled to himself. “Like you, you mean? I thought you sounded like a G’Drawp-ai demon giving birth. To a brood of about eight hundred. And seven. Possibly while hemorrhaging.”
“Okay, so ‘angel’ isn’t the best-”
“It’s really not.”
“Like a choir boy, then. Pure like that. Clean.”
Connor was still smiling a little when he said, “You used to kill choir boys.”
“Holtz told you that, too,” Angel guessed, looking down. “Jasmine says even I can be forgiven.” He moved closer, until the tips of pointy hair on his bowed head almost brushed Connor’s brow. Connor saw his father moved with weak knees. “She says we can forgive each other.” Angel’s hands folded over Connor’s shoulders, clasping only gently, and asked, “What else did Holtz used to tell you?”
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Steven used to ask, “Why won’t they just die?” When after months of tracking it, hunting it-when he was killing it, trying to kill it, hacking bits off-he asked, over and over, “Why won’t it just-Father, why won’t it just-why can’t I just-”
“Because you don’t really want to.”
“I do! It could hurt you. I see that, now. It’s dangerous, ugly, a demon.” The human-sized, vaguely crab-like demon with what Steven had been told was like an ape’s face, was shuddering off a series of soft clucks, sounds of pain. Steven’s face contorted in disgust as he lunged in, grappling with the rearing, crying creature with its pliable spine, blindly trying to scramble away from the place where it went so wrong. Blood from her severed limb spattered Steven’s sneering face. “I want to kill it. Why do I have to listen to it scream?”
“You’re torturing it to torture yourself. Because you can’t bring yourself to deal the final blow.” Daddy used to say, “It’s not in you, my son.”
“It’s in me,” Steven said. Lip curling, he whirled, and split the demon in half. Looking at the two that had once made one, Steven knew. Getting there might take twice the eight years he’d lived already, but he would sever whole worlds to find his real father. Wiping his drenched face, Steven reminded himself it was wrong to long to leave the one who loved you, the one God gave you to. You shouldn’t leave for the sake of a land of lies, Prince of Lies, just the chance to see his eyes before you slaughtered him.
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“Did you kill the boys just for fun?” Connor asked. “Did you do it just to hear their pretty voices scream? Did you get off on it?”
“Yes.” As Connor stepped inward, Angel fell back, as if barefoot on a floor that burned him. “Yes.” Connor pushed in on Angel’s chest until Angel backed against the wall. “Yes.”
“Those are the things Holtz used to tell me,” Connor reminded him.
“Yeah,” Angel said, like a litany. “Everything he told you, about what I used to be. It’s true.” His hands had fallen from Connor’s shoulders. “But I don’t do those things, now. And with Jasmine, I can finally try to be someone new.”
“Someone new.” Connor's mouth twisted. “Someone who doesn’t do nasty things to little boys. Doesn’t make their parents watch; do nasty things to their parents, too, because you liked that, didn’t you? Twisting families up. Still do.”
One of Angel’s hands jerked in stillborn gesture, brushing Connor’s shirt. Angel smoothed the fabric back down, careful, the way Connor had seen him iron. “No.” Angel swallowed. “Not any more. Everything I was-it’s not any more. We get to be with each other, now.” His eyes were lit up from within. “You’ll see. The way we should’ve been.”
Connor’s eyes scanned down Angel’s face, down Angel’s arm to where his hand still held Connor’s hem. Chin protruding in its childish way, he gave Angel a jerky nod, and told him, “Get in your true face.”
“What?” Angel let go of Connor’s shirt. “I don’t even know if I can.”
“I want to see,” Connor said. “To know. You said I’d understand.”
Angel swallowed. He scrunched his eyes closed, pursed mouth twisting out of shape. Only succeeding in looking funny, he released the grimace and opened his eyes. Then, as he stared at Connor, the ridges began to poke out from his face. Connor reached out for one, palm down. “This’ll be gone?” Connor asked, finger-tips stippling the protrusion over Angel’s eye. “Permanently, I mean. Think you’re gonna be beautiful, Dad?”
Angel pressed back against the wall, as if trying to affix himself to the wood. “I don’t think so. Jasmine didn’t say-”
“No.” Connor pinched the ridge, narrow fingers grappling to twist it, but the flesh was hard as bone. “It’s not ever going to go away. It’s in you.”
“But-”
“It’s still in you, isn’t it, to hurt little boys. Just to hear their pretty voices scream.” Connor’s fingers were pushing and prodding down the side of Angel’s face, feeling the dead parts that obeyed like lethargic putty and the other hard parts that didn’t move. Angel’s mouth was open, but Connor didn’t know enough about being close to someone to feel it strange that no breath came out. He touched inside, the slippery hard fang, and told his father, “It’s still in you to fuck up families. It’s even in you to fuck up me.”
Angel caught Connor’s hand and folded the prying fingers in on themselves. “I won’t hurt you, Connor.” His fist closed around Connor’s. “I wouldn’t."
“That doesn’t change that you’re a killer, a demon, a monster. That you want to, that you will, do nasty, disgusting things to me.” Connor leaned into Angel’s ear. “That you think my voice is so pure, so clean, and you want to hear it scream.”
“But Jasmine-”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand, doesn’t know, can’t see,” Connor whispered. Connor gripped the sides of Angel’s face, the ridged cheekbones, the demon extrusions around his eyes. “This will be beautiful,” he hissed, and kissed him.
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Steven used to ask, “Why are you doing this?” every time he was beaten. Before the months of tracking the crab-like, monkey-faced demon, the beating that triggered the hunt, he was asking, “What will it change? Five,” he said through grit teeth. His voice was defiant, angry. “Will it change what I did?”
“Repentance. Count. For what you did.”
“Six,” Steven snapped. The lash of tree bark against his backside was beginning to burn, rather than sting. “I let it go. Put us in danger.” Gasping, Steven managed to gutter, “Seven. But,” he panted, “beating me’s not going to-eight. Get us out of danger. Not going to kill it. Nine!” Yelping, tears finally sprung at the corners of Steven’s eyes, but it was not the bark cutting into him that made his voice break. “It’s not going to bring it back” (to them).
“Foolish boy. It’s not about that demon.” Daddy used to say, “It’s about the demon that’s in you.”
It was wrong to care for creatures that hurt people. Steven was being hurt now, but that was different. His father only wanted to teach him what was wrong. Trying desperately to keep still, Steven knew, all the same, that it was also wrong to tilt your hips back, thrusting your bottom in the air, waiting for the proof, the pain, that he loved you. Wrong to be eager for his touch, even through the bark, so you knew you were not alone.
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“Was that what you meant?” Connor asked, as Angel ripped him from his mouth and pushed him away. “Was that what you meant, how we should have been?”
“No.” Angel seemed torn between Connor’s hunched form and the safety of the wall. “You know that’s not it. Feel it through Jasmine. She connects us.” Angel reached out, tipping the balance of his body toward Connor. “You know what I want. Connor. What I’ve always wanted, for both of us.”
Connor looked at Angel’s outstretched hand. He took a step back. “Connor is a lie,” he explained, and without missing a beat, began to undress, his own way of unmasking.
As Connor fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, Angel lurched forward. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” he asked, grabbing Connor’s wrist. White arms folding arms in an awkward arabesque away from Angel, Connor twisted out of the buffer of fabric, and stepped away again. Angel was left holding the shirt, wrinkled and limp in his hand.
“I do know you,” Connor said. “You don’t know me.” His hands went for the fastening of his khakis, unbuttoning them, pulling down the fly.
“Don’t do this.” Angel’s voice was hard, the kind of voice he used whenever throwing Connor against a wall. He stayed where he was, winding the shirt around his fist, unwound it again, still held in front of him as if in hopes of preserving some kind of boundary between them.
“Jasmine said everything would be beautiful, didn’t she?” Connor stepped forward, loosened pants slung low around his narrow hips. “Don’t you want to see me? See who I really am?”
“I know you.” Angel swallowed. “You cried when you woke up and I wasn’t there. You spit up in my hair. I held you in my arms.” Angel’s arms twitched, as if to do so again. The shirt slumped to the floor. “I know you all the way down.”
“No touching. Not yet, Dad.” Connor batted his father’s hands away with one hand, and reached into his khakis with the other, forcing Angel to understand who would do the touching. His hand wrapped around himself, pulled his erection out from his pants, forcing Angel to know how hard he was. He held his cock, hot and red and waiting in the cooler air, fingers wrapped around it, forcing Angel to see. “Maybe you loved me once. Maybe I was your boy, clean and pure like all those good little boys you like to ruin. But I’m not any more.”
“You’re still my son.” Angel sounded like these dreams Connor used to have, where cold covered him and sucked out everything warm he’d ever wanted, known, or been before; Connor used to think the dreams were memories of going through the portal into Quor’toth. “And I still love you,” Angel said, a desperate reminder-to Connor, maybe, or himself. “Jasmine’s giving me a chance to show you how much. So much that this-it can’t be like this. I want-” He cut himself off, sharply averting his face as Connor’s hand moved down his dick. Angel took a ragged breath he didn’t need, and said with a futile attempt at decisiveness, “We’re a family. Not this.”
“Jasmine,” Connor repeated. “I’m her father. I know her, too. Better than you.” He had to tighten his hand on his cock with his words, the second sharp breath Angel took. “I know exactly what she’s giving us. She’s my family. Don’t you think I’d know? Watch me.”
“I am.” Angel’s voice cracked in half between the two words, and his head turned slowly, eyes trained only towards Connor’s face. His fingers closed over Connor’s forearm, as solid but coaxing as his voice, pulling Connor’s hand away. “I see you now and all I can think is how much you’ve given the world, through her. How much you and I, at her side, can change the world. How wonderful it all could be.”
Connor’s hand spasmodically tightened in response, jerking his cock, smearing the wetness at the tip onto his fist. “Don’t,” he gulped. “Don’t talk. I’m the one telling.” He pushed his father square into the chest, over until the backs of Angel’s knees hit his plush leather couch and he bent them, falling into it. “Gonna tell you,” Connor said.
Angel made no further move to get away, to stand up, to touch him. He only looked up, pleading. His hands were open at his sides, pressed into the couch as if nailed there, fingers slightly curled as if to cup something, anything, some kind of salvation.
“I’m going to show you,” Connor said, and filled up those hands with his knees, crushing Angel’s palms, the bones inside with Connor’s weight. Angel winced, looking at the sharp, knobby thrust of one of Connor’s kneecaps rather than that of Connor’s cock, so close to Angel’s chest.
“Look here,” Connor said, jerking Angel’s head back against the couch with one hand, the other brushing against his still open khakis to fist his cock again. “This is it. Right here. If you really love me, you’d watch.”
“I do. I am.” Angel winced again, wormed his hands out from under Connor’s knees. His hands should feel loose, like mashed meat; Connor’d smashed enough creatures to know, but when they hooked behind Connor’s knees the fingers were strong and tight. Angel was still looking up into Connor’s face, hovering over his own. “I’m always watching you. Whenever I could. Always. Right here.”
“There were too many times when you couldn’t, Dad,” Connor said, and wrapped his free arm around his father’s neck. His hair draped down to brush Angel’s ears, curtaining Angel’s face. Connor’s hot breath caught between them in that hidden space, where their noses almost touched, where Angel’s eyes were hot and desperate with that same plea, but his face was lifeless and lukewarm.
“There were too many times before me,” Connor said, and began to move his hand on himself between their bodies. “Times where you were doing those nasty things to boys. You did make them scream. You killed the fathers and made the mothers watch, or the other way around. You made fathers fuck their sons.” Connor’s thumb pressed in at the head of his cock, the back of his hand brushing Angel’s shirt. “The truth is, I still want you to be my family.”
Angel’s lips parted. “I am,” he husked. “I’m not those other things any more.”
Connor mashed his lips down, bruising them against Angel’s teeth. His narrow tongue pushed inside to wrap around Angel’s, to curl around the words and twist them.
Behind him, Angel’s fingers straightened joint by joint, stiffness born out of being coiled so tightly over the soft skin behind Connor’s knees. Now the fist wrapped in Connor’s hair, but gently, tugging Connor away from his mouth, so that Angel could press his face to Connor’s hot one, his stillness against Connor’s breathless pink. “Don’t,” Angel whispered, and held Connor there like that, hand tight again, but trembling.
“You do want to fuck me,” Connor breathed in Angel’s ear, pressed against Angel’s cheek. “You do,” he insisted. “You want to fuck your own son, and hear me beg, and cry, and scream for you. I can feel it. You’ve been hard since I first put my mouth on you.”
Connor sank down until he was sitting in Angel’s lap, until the back of his hand on his cock was firm against the bulge in Angel’s pants. “Holtz told me other things, you know,” he said. “You want to do those things to me with your dick. I know you do.” Connor tilted his hips, his hand pulling on himself and dragging against the outline of Angel’s erection as it did so. “And the truth is I still want you to be my dad.”
“Let me try to be,” Angel choked out, the sound catching in Connor’s hair as his hand slid under the soft strands, heavy on Connor’s neck as if to choke him too, not his breath but this movement of his hips, this blood sustaining his erection, this helplessness. “Let me try. Sweetheart, I could be so good for you. You and me and Jasmine. Let me show you.”
“I’m the one showing you.” Changing his grip, Connor pushed the heel of his hand down to grind his cock over Angel’s crotch. The tip touched Angel’s belly as Connor rocked his hips in, staining Angel’s shirt with a small touch of wet. “Remember?” Connor reminded him. “It’s not about how good you could be. This part isn’t about you at all. It’s about me.”
Connor rolled his hips again, rubbing their erections along each other; at the same time he lined his lips up along his father’s. Angel’s face was hard, like wax, and when his lips at last parted in shallow renunciation and defeat, his face sagged slowly, stiffly, like a dripping votive candle, distorted in its demise. “It’s about how bad I can be,” Connor whispered into him, his own mouth firm and ripe.
“I saw a little house,” Connor said, jerking against Angel hard now, his hand moving up and down his own naked length. “Not too long after I got here. I remember it had flower curtains, and-laughing people in the windows. I wanted it to be us. I saw a girl-little pink dress-I wanted to be her brother. Her father pulled her into his arms. I wanted to be her; I wanted-wanted him to be you. I wanted it to be us.”
Angel’s hand found the waistband of his khakis, tugging it up from behind to make sure that part of Connor was covered as much as could be. Angel’s other hand pulled Connor closer, his son’s head into the crook of his neck so he could whisper things in the hair, sweet things like, “we could” and “love” and “please, son, we don’t have to.” Where Connor invented a rhythm between them at their crux, Angel did nothing. His hips stayed very still; his cock stayed very hard, and his fingers continued to smooth over Connor’s waistband in back over again and again, carefully, as if there could be any measure of chastity in this situation.
“What if we did?” Connor asked. “If we were a family, you my father, and me loving you like a son-the truth is, I’d still want you this way, too. I’d still want you to be the monster you really are inside.”
Everything felt so close, blood and heat close to Connor’s skin, pushing out everywhere so hard wet leaked from the corners of his eyes, from his cock, up his throat until he almost gurgled. “I’d want you to fuck me, Dad,” Connor told him, the hot bubbles inside still rising like a rolling boil as he rocked against his father. “I want you to do all those things I said. And other things I thought of. On my own.”
Connor reared up, jerked Angel’s head up by the hair so Angel had to look at him. “This is my true face.” Connor asked, “Can it be beautiful, too?” and came, crying out.
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Steven used to ask, “Why do we have to be all alone?” Before the beating, before letting it go, Steven used to bathe the demon in the river, and lay it down, spread on his own bed. Now but a babe, underneath a profusion of pincer limbs and strangled, clacking articulations, its face looked like a child’s. Steven used to call it Sarah. “Why can’t I take care of someone, like you?”
“It’s a demon!”
“She loves me! She wouldn’t hurt anyone. Can’t you see how small and helpless she is?”
“Look at its claws. They reveal the true nature of the beast, which cannot be changed. It will grow into its own, and one night in our sleep, it will turn on us. You might survive, but what of me? To love this-thing-is to kill me.” Daddy used to say, “Do not forsake me, my son.”
Stroking the creature in his arms, hand back and forth along its knobbed shell, Steven thought about how God had taken him from his demon father and given him to his human one. But it was wrong, he knew, to make God give you presents. It was wrong to make what God had already given you different. It was wrong to make God.
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“Was it?” Connor asked. He slumped invertebrately into the shell of Angel surrounding him, pink, well-worked body liquid-like, filling in around Angel’s hard angles. “Was it beautiful?” he repeated. “How about how I sounded? Did you like my screaming?”
Angel held on tighter. “Don’t think about those things I was. Don’t think about the things he told you.”
“Right. I sound like an angel.” He added, in Angel’s ear, “Even when I come for you?” and pulled away from his neck to face him. A few errant strands of hair stuck on Angel’s mouth, connecting them. “Yeah, you’re real original.”
Pushing Connor’s hair back, combing the bit hanging on the side of his face with his fingers, Angel said reproachfully, “He didn’t like your voice, in a world with no music. He should’ve loved it. He should’ve sang you to sleep.”
Connor climbed off of Angel. Found his shirt on the floor to clean himself off. “Lullabies are lies, too.”
“I used to think that,” Angel said, standing as well. “That it was all misery, and ugliness. That’s why I was with your mother.”
Connor dropped the shirt. Angel went on, “After that, when I fought, I wasn’t trying to make a difference. I was just trying to do what’s right. Because it’s all I had. But then there was you.”
Trembling from the brush of Angel’s fingers under his chin, Connor tried for sarcasm. His voice came out reedy. “Okay, know something? Just because maybe you sang me songs when I was little doesn’t-”
“I did sing to you. And you’re right, it didn’t make a difference, either. Until now.”
Unconsciously, Connor twitched into Angel’s touch. “Now?” Connor repeated.
“Now there’s Jasmine,” Angel said, and Connor pulled away. “She is different. She’s going to make the world different. The good we fight for, it’s not just inside us, it’s not just what we believe in. It’s here. It’s now. There’s beauty in the world, Connor, and it’s truer than anything we’ve ever known.”
Connor’s jaw felt tight, looked sharp under his hard, pressed together lips. “Fine,” he said. “Show me.” He stepped back, burning eyes on Angel as he rolled his khakis down his hips, pushed them down the rest of the way, and kicked them off.
Angel watched, inappropriately melodramatic, Connor thought, looking as if Connor was rending off his limbs instead of taking off his pants. “The truth,” Connor said. “Right here. Right now.”
Angel looked down at the pants, the lost legs severed from a torso. Angel’s hands looked more dead than ever by his sides. “The truth,” he said. At last Angel looked up, his eyes darkening the way Connor had seen blood blackening an innocent girl’s dress, once, when Connor had had to decide the lines he would cross for love. “The truth is I love you, Connor.” Angel’s voice was heavy with the choice. “I’ll show you any way you need me to.”
Connor wet his lips, pulling the lower one into his mouth and releasing it with a huff of breath. Looked around, saw the bed, took Angel’s hand. Connor pulled and Angel followed. As Connor sat down on the edge, Angel’s hand went hard, and he didn’t move.
Connor waited a long time. “Do you think it’s worth it? To do something terrible, to give peace,” he clarified.
Angel’s eyes were still very close to black, like burned wood, as if black charred crib bars had had risen between his vision and the bed. “You’re worth everything,” he whispered.
“Good,” Connor said, knowing it was wrong to force a gift, a difference, his approval. But Connor was impatient, and chewing on his lip again, reached for Angel’s belt.
“Don’t,” Angel said, and took his hands away. “Lay out.”
Connor moved up, pulling himself along the bed until his naked backside was strewn along the sheets like a still river of pink and pale flesh. After a moment of fabric sounds, Angel’s heavy hand settled on his neck, playing with the silken web of hair. He began to pet him there, drawing the easeful strands through his fingers, some of them catching they were so fine. His thumb circled the shell-shape of Connor’s nape, so gentle, Angel’s hands caressing against sensitive scalp, drawing the strands through again and again.
“Are you going to-” Connor began, but Angel cut him off.
“Don’t talk.” His mouth was right by Connor’s ear. “It’s my turn, now.”
The lips pressed in against Connor’s hair, and then on Connor’s back. Angel moved down the vertebrae one by one, like a string of beads, circling each with thumb and forefinger, wetting them with whispers before he kissed them. Then his hands were on Connor’s bottom with that same careful studying, so that when the fingers pried his cheeks apart, Connor felt like a book, like there was something important and precious inside that only he could impart, and he pushed up into the touch until Angel said, “Good.”
Connor shut his eyes, smooshed his face against the pillow, and thought of the way Angel had said the same thing in the same way, when he was teaching Connor how to fight, before Connor tricked him into a box at the bottom of the sea. Connor thought of pretending to accept Angel before hand, and how it had been worth the lies to do what needed to be done. But for the first time, there wasn’t the twist in Connor’s belly, the feeling he thought of as sea-sickness, whenever he thought of calling himself Connor, not Steven.
He focused on the feel of Angel’s finger, on the feel of it down his crack, and then the wet of Angel’s tongue, nudging the opening nestled between Connor’s buttocks, easing up the snug little muscle of it. Connor bit down hard on his tongue. He’d thought of many things when his father explained perversion to him, far more things, he thought, than his human father in Quor’toth could even begin to imagine. The thoughts thrust into his mind, Connor had thought, as a result of his demon heritage; they were intrusions, things he didn’t want to think or be.
But this didn’t feel like that. The warm sweep of Angel’s tongue distinctly tingled, the way drinking something good titillated your tongue, but the feeling kept going all the way inside, and that was untraceable except for the way it filled you up. Warmed you, the way his father had said wine would, which Holtz had had but rarely back on earth, except for each Communion.
“Good,” Angel said again, speaking against Connor’s hole. “You’re doing really good for me. See, this is how it can be.” Connor looked back over the pale angle of his shoulder blade. Meeting his eyes, Angel pulled back, kissed Connor what would’ve been chastely, if not on a dimple above his ass. “Up now,” he said, tugging back on Connor’s thighs. “On your knees, baby. So you can push back on me.”
“Don’t call me that. I said, I’m not your little boy any more.” Connor got on his knees, his arms folded under the pillow, his face still pressed into it.
“And I said don’t talk.” Angel leaned over Connor’s back, so that Connor noted for the first time Angel must be shirtless, reaching for something beside the bed. “Make all the sounds you need to,” Angel said, “but I don’t want to argue with you. I want to make you feel good. Make you feel loved.” He had shifted again on the bed, was touching between Connor’s buttocks again, but his fingers were more slippery than they had been, and greasier than his tongue. “I want to make you feel the hope Jasmine’s brought us.” Angel’s voice frayed. “Make you hope for better things.”
Connor felt buttery now, loose where Angel was touching him, pressing gently again and again against his hole; he felt almost obedient. But as Angel’s first finger began to push deeper, and the burn started, he suddenly panted, “Would you really make me?” Connor instinctively tightened as the finger pushed deeper, cheeks clenching, his mouth screwing tight in echo as his breath caught inside of him. “Would you make me feel good,” he panted again, “if I didn’t want to? Or what if I didn’t know how to be happy? Would you give it to me-hope-for my own good?”
There was a silence from behind that made Connor look over his shoulder again. The way Angel knelt, shirtless, still in pants, made the broad expanse of exposed chest look like an unmarked gravestone. One hand still at Connor’s ass, Angel’s other swept up firmly, circling Connor’s cock, and Connor found it all appropriate because for one fleeting moment, he thought he might be dying. “Yes,” Angel said, finally, and Connor couldn’t read his tone. “Yes. I would. I would do anything.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was by Connor’s ear again, so soft. “Is that what you want? Do you need me to force you, Connor?”
Connor squinched his eyes shut very tight. “More,” he whispered, and that was all.
“Okay,” Angel said, and Connor could recognize the tone now as relieved. The hand loosened at his cock, stroking more gently now, and the finger inside him moved. When the second one began to push in, Connor cried out. “How’s that feel?” Angel asked.
“Don’t stop,” Connor panted, and tilting his hips back, thrust his ass back onto Angel’s fingers, knowing it was wrong to be eager for the burn of it, the pain, but replaying the part where Angel said he’d hurt him if he had to over again in his mind anyway. “Please.”
“That’s good. Beg me. Better to know you want it,” Angel said. He placed a kiss in the middle to Connor’s back, between the straining shoulder blades. Laying the side of his face against one of the sharp protrusions of scapula, he whispered, “You do sound sweet to me.”
Connor released a gulp of air in an audible pant. “Do another,” he said. “Put another one in.”
“Also better to go slow.” As the two fingers scissored inside, Angel’s other hand left Connor’s cock to cups his balls, squeezing gently. “Don’t want to hurt you.”
“I want you to,” Connor said, squirming under Angel’s touch. “I want you to do another. Right now.”
Angel’s brow pressed into Connor’s back, as hard as Connor’s forehead to the pillow. Connor’s back arched under the weight, pushing against Angel’s hand as Angel worked another finger in, the pressure working all the way up through Connor and out his mouth in a tight, sharp cry. “Really sweet,” Angel murmured into Connor’s spine.
The hand on his balls moved back to his cock again, stroking almost absently. The fingers inside of him sawed gently, stretching Connor out, twisting and curling and finding places inside him that made him call out. “Good,” Angel told him all the while. “Relax. You’re doing great. Relax, remember I love you, want you to feel happy, want you to feel happy as me.” Angel sounded horribly sad.
As Angel’s fingers slid out, Connor couldn’t feel his muscles contract in the instinctive way they would have earlier. He felt limp and wet and utterly open; he doubted death felt this warm, but he felt like someone could open up his veins right now and he would barely feel the penetration, like the blood that would seep out wouldn’t feel like loss but like self-extension, an offering. It felt incredible, and he wondered if people felt like this when they looked at Jasmine.
Angel’s belt clinked behind him. The sound of the teeth on his zipper separating was audible, more so than Angel taking out his own cock and rubbing the slippery stuff over it, which Connor never heard, but Angel must have done. Presently the head was pressed at Connor’s hole, wet as the blood Connor had been imagining. A firm, clean hand closed on Connor’s hip, the other, slick, again around his cock.
“I know you grew up,” Angel said suddenly, still just poised there at Connor’s entrance, his chest pressed to Connor’s back, voice at Connor’s neck. “Don’t think I don’t know. I know you’re Jasmine’s father. You’re partly responsible she’s in this world. And I’m proud of you, so proud.” His thumb circled soothingly over Connor’s hip bone. “You did the right thing. Against all odds.”
Then Angel was pushing into him, filling him up, until the empty places in him didn’t feel loose at all but clenching and unwelcoming in a way that made it so Connor felt like he couldn’t catch his breath, like there were hiccups being pushed up inside. Angel went slowly, but he didn’t relent, pushing and splitting and opening until Connor could feel his father’s thighs lined up behind him, Angel’s face near his. Angel kissed away where the sweat was starting at Connor’s temple, and said softly, “But you’re still my boy. Nothing’s ever going to change that.”
The hand at Connor’s hip came up; that arm wrapped under Connor’s chest and pressed them closer together as Angel whispered. “A part of you is mine. Always will be. My beautiful baby boy, needs his Daddy. And I’ll always be there to take care of you, Connor.”
A shudder wracked down Connor’s body, pressing in on his lower back, out into his hips until they snapped against his father’s, and Connor whimpered, “Please.”
“Yes,” Angel said again, and pulled out until Connor almost sobbed, then Angel began again until he did sob, muffling the sound in the pillow. “Like this,” Angel instructed.
Connor bucked under every thrust, writhing under every touch. “Tell me,” he begged. “Tell me it again.”
“Which part?” Angel said, squeezing Connor’s cock lightly in his hand. “How I’d cheat the world for you,” he guessed, his voice the sound of a heavy breath. “How I’d fuck it all over, fuck everyone in it. I’ll fuck you, too, just to make it a better place for you.”
“Yeah, that.” Connor finally freed a hand, found Angel’s head. Tugged hard on the hair, keeping that face there beside him, almost cheek to cheek. “All of it. Dad.” His hand twisted so hard in Angel’s hair his knuckles hurt. “Tell me I’m good.”
“Christ,” Angel muttered, the steady rhythm of his thrust inward stuttering, slamming into Connor harder than he had before. “You’re perfect,” he grunted. “Beautiful. Proud of you, son. And fuck, you’re so good. So warm, so tight for me, honey, you’re doing so good.”
Connor smothered another ripped out sound with the pillow. Angel was saying broken things, now. “Love the way you push back on me,” and “God, the sounds you make,” and “you make Daddy so hard,” and “please, baby, let it out. Let it out.”
And when Connor, under command of those words, began to cry, began to jerk uncontrollably out of rhythm into Angel’s thrusts, Angel slowed and petted his hair, held him still across the chest, connecting two places you touch to cross yourself, and kissing the other in between soft words, like, “Good,” and “yes” and “don’t stop. Don’t stop,” he said. “Cry for me. Good; get it out. I want to hear you.”
Connor remembered how Angel’d said he liked his voice, something about the purity of it, and how the defilement of it, screaming in agony or torment, could make his father come. The intrusion of the nasty thought almost made Connor come as well, but Angel’s hand was tight on his cock, and Connor was not quite done crying.
So instead of about that, Connor thought about the deep place inside him, warm right now, maybe Angel’s place after all, the pure place, the place of the child Angel had never gotten a chance to know. And in that place he thought about how if Jasmine could give them such joy, and if this act of wrongness could bring him such comfort, then maybe it wasn’t the pain in Connor’s tears Angel wanted to hear, but the release.
Kisses could be choirs, he supposed, as he angled his face, placed his lips against Angel’s cheek. Connor reached down and laced his finger’s with his father’s, digging his nails into the backs of Angel’s palms. Hands could be psalms. Crying could be a chorus, he guessed, and lies might be worth it.
“It’s right,” Connor choked. “The truth. We’re right. Aren’t we? Show me.” As Angel pushed inside him, Connor pushed his throat against his father’s mouth, twisting so the veins might touch his teeth. “Show me the truth.”
Instead Angel kissed him there, buried his face in the crook and made tickling, breathing sounds. “Everything’s going to be all right,” Angel said. “Everything.”
“It’s . . .” Hot tears were still streaming down Connor’s cheeks. “It’s the only way. I have to. I have to.”
“Everything.” Angel slid back into him, deeper now. His hand left Connor’s cock to tug back on his hair, to arch him into rearing, crying creature with a pliable spine, blindly scrambling to get into the place where it went so wrong. Angel worked inside the mess of flesh, strong, steady, speaking on every thrust. “Everything, let it go, I’ve got you Connor, I’m here. We’re going to be so happy. I’m your father; I love you.”
“Dad.” There were spots of lights on Connor’s eyes, and then black around the edges of his vision. He shouldn’t long for that darkness, but he did, for its generosity, gentleness. “Daddy?” he asked, and reached for it.
| | |
Steven used to call her Sarah.
Daddy used to call his daughter that. Before Angelus killed her, and she came back from the dead to be like Steven’s demon father.
Before killing her, before hunting her for months, before the beating for letting her go, before his human father told her to kill her, Steven had seen Sarah, child-faced and small, huddled some distance from her mother. The latter was a crab-like, human-sized demon, engaged in a battle with a ridgetail creeper. Knowing that creepers were vicious, and that if the creeper killed the mother it would come for Steven and his human father next, Steven slew it.
Baby Sarah, pincers, clicking, demon eyes and all, came clacking forward after that, and Steven watched its mother scuttle for it, watched them reunite. Then Steven stalked forward and slew the mother too, because it could follow them also. Besides, he had killed his own mother. Perhaps this was his destiny, too. But the baby, shivering and afraid, he picked up around his blades and knives. And he used to love her, around all the sharp places inside.
He knew, even in that moment, that loving her was wrong. You shouldn’t ever think that maybe your father should’ve loved Sarah, demon as she was, instead of throwing her out of her home so the light would burn her up.
| | |
After Angel had been shot with Jasmine’s blood, after Connor had been cut and tried to have a truth forced onto him that he had once offered Angel with his throat, after the door between the truth and lies broke down, when Angel fist was coming down again and again in his own son’s face-then Connor didn’t ask why. No, why are you doing this? or what will it change? No, it’s not going to kill her, not, it won’t bring you back (to us).
It was because of Connor the Beast had blotted out the sun, and no one asked about the color of the sky any more. Connor had seen to that. He’d made it so they couldn’t question, so they could only love.
Love, with everything in them, except the truth.
But this is done; I don't want to work on it any more, and maybe it will take the mind off for a moment for one or two of you. (Not that it's particularly heartening, I should mention.)
Please mind warnings.
*
Title: Pretty Screams In Paradise
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Angel/Connor. Explicit Angel/Connor sex. If the concept offends you, please don’t click, read, or comment on this fic, and we’ll both be happier.
Summary: You can’t be saved by a lie.
Notes: This fic is for kita0610 and ros_fod.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to germaine_pet, who very much helped me write the fic I wanted to write. So, thanks!
| | |
Steven used to ask, “Why is the sky black?”
“It is night.”
“You said night is the absence of day. So what’s day?”
“Never, here.” Daddy used to say, “This is the edge of Hell.”
Tilting his head to see the swirl of stars, Steven would remind himself that it was wrong to look up into Hell and wish for its glittering, gorgeous arms.
| | |
“How did I know the words?” Connor asked, after he and Angel finished singing on the makeshift stage.
“It’s Jasmine.”
“But where does that song come from? Is it on a radio?”
“It used to be ‘Mandy’,” Angel said as they threaded their way through the crowd towards the goddess. “But Jasmine makes Manilow even better.”
“What’s a Manilow?” Connor wanted to know.
Jasmine, in range, now, put hands on both their shoulders. “A musician,” she answered Connor. “With the ability to pull a listener’s heartstrings.”
“Knew she would appreciate a good ballad,” Angel said contentedly, looking with admiration into Jasmine’s face.
Connor shoved his hands into his pockets. “Right. Good ballad.”
“My poor child,” Jasmine said. “Here I’ve experienced millennia of this world’s wonders and beauties. You have known but months, and those filled with trials and pain.”
“But that’s over, now you’re here,” Angel said to Jasmine. He turned from her to Connor, taking his son’s hand. “I can show you now,” he said. “Everything I’ve always wanted to.”
Jasmine nodded. “That’s one of my greatest wishes.”
Connor and Angel smiled up at her, bathed in her light.
Upstairs, Angel showed Connor his collection of music. Recognizing the small disks as CDs, because Cordy listened to these, Connor held one up. Watched it catch the light and shine, thinking of when the stars all fell in fire and Cordelia held him close. Connor put the CD on the shelf; his head dipped down.
Angel fiddled with the CD case. “Was there any music at all in Quor’toth?”
“Holtz taught me some hymns to sing.” Connor shrugged. “But he didn’t like me to do it.”
Angel turned to face him. “Why not?”
Pretending to look at more of the music, Connor carefully monitored the vampire’s expression out of the corner of his eye, and tested, “He said my voice was ugly.”
Face darkening, Angel said, “That’s not true. You sounded like an angel.”
Connor smiled to himself. “Like you, you mean? I thought you sounded like a G’Drawp-ai demon giving birth. To a brood of about eight hundred. And seven. Possibly while hemorrhaging.”
“Okay, so ‘angel’ isn’t the best-”
“It’s really not.”
“Like a choir boy, then. Pure like that. Clean.”
Connor was still smiling a little when he said, “You used to kill choir boys.”
“Holtz told you that, too,” Angel guessed, looking down. “Jasmine says even I can be forgiven.” He moved closer, until the tips of pointy hair on his bowed head almost brushed Connor’s brow. Connor saw his father moved with weak knees. “She says we can forgive each other.” Angel’s hands folded over Connor’s shoulders, clasping only gently, and asked, “What else did Holtz used to tell you?”
| | |
Steven used to ask, “Why won’t they just die?” When after months of tracking it, hunting it-when he was killing it, trying to kill it, hacking bits off-he asked, over and over, “Why won’t it just-Father, why won’t it just-why can’t I just-”
“Because you don’t really want to.”
“I do! It could hurt you. I see that, now. It’s dangerous, ugly, a demon.” The human-sized, vaguely crab-like demon with what Steven had been told was like an ape’s face, was shuddering off a series of soft clucks, sounds of pain. Steven’s face contorted in disgust as he lunged in, grappling with the rearing, crying creature with its pliable spine, blindly trying to scramble away from the place where it went so wrong. Blood from her severed limb spattered Steven’s sneering face. “I want to kill it. Why do I have to listen to it scream?”
“You’re torturing it to torture yourself. Because you can’t bring yourself to deal the final blow.” Daddy used to say, “It’s not in you, my son.”
“It’s in me,” Steven said. Lip curling, he whirled, and split the demon in half. Looking at the two that had once made one, Steven knew. Getting there might take twice the eight years he’d lived already, but he would sever whole worlds to find his real father. Wiping his drenched face, Steven reminded himself it was wrong to long to leave the one who loved you, the one God gave you to. You shouldn’t leave for the sake of a land of lies, Prince of Lies, just the chance to see his eyes before you slaughtered him.
| | |
“Did you kill the boys just for fun?” Connor asked. “Did you do it just to hear their pretty voices scream? Did you get off on it?”
“Yes.” As Connor stepped inward, Angel fell back, as if barefoot on a floor that burned him. “Yes.” Connor pushed in on Angel’s chest until Angel backed against the wall. “Yes.”
“Those are the things Holtz used to tell me,” Connor reminded him.
“Yeah,” Angel said, like a litany. “Everything he told you, about what I used to be. It’s true.” His hands had fallen from Connor’s shoulders. “But I don’t do those things, now. And with Jasmine, I can finally try to be someone new.”
“Someone new.” Connor's mouth twisted. “Someone who doesn’t do nasty things to little boys. Doesn’t make their parents watch; do nasty things to their parents, too, because you liked that, didn’t you? Twisting families up. Still do.”
One of Angel’s hands jerked in stillborn gesture, brushing Connor’s shirt. Angel smoothed the fabric back down, careful, the way Connor had seen him iron. “No.” Angel swallowed. “Not any more. Everything I was-it’s not any more. We get to be with each other, now.” His eyes were lit up from within. “You’ll see. The way we should’ve been.”
Connor’s eyes scanned down Angel’s face, down Angel’s arm to where his hand still held Connor’s hem. Chin protruding in its childish way, he gave Angel a jerky nod, and told him, “Get in your true face.”
“What?” Angel let go of Connor’s shirt. “I don’t even know if I can.”
“I want to see,” Connor said. “To know. You said I’d understand.”
Angel swallowed. He scrunched his eyes closed, pursed mouth twisting out of shape. Only succeeding in looking funny, he released the grimace and opened his eyes. Then, as he stared at Connor, the ridges began to poke out from his face. Connor reached out for one, palm down. “This’ll be gone?” Connor asked, finger-tips stippling the protrusion over Angel’s eye. “Permanently, I mean. Think you’re gonna be beautiful, Dad?”
Angel pressed back against the wall, as if trying to affix himself to the wood. “I don’t think so. Jasmine didn’t say-”
“No.” Connor pinched the ridge, narrow fingers grappling to twist it, but the flesh was hard as bone. “It’s not ever going to go away. It’s in you.”
“But-”
“It’s still in you, isn’t it, to hurt little boys. Just to hear their pretty voices scream.” Connor’s fingers were pushing and prodding down the side of Angel’s face, feeling the dead parts that obeyed like lethargic putty and the other hard parts that didn’t move. Angel’s mouth was open, but Connor didn’t know enough about being close to someone to feel it strange that no breath came out. He touched inside, the slippery hard fang, and told his father, “It’s still in you to fuck up families. It’s even in you to fuck up me.”
Angel caught Connor’s hand and folded the prying fingers in on themselves. “I won’t hurt you, Connor.” His fist closed around Connor’s. “I wouldn’t."
“That doesn’t change that you’re a killer, a demon, a monster. That you want to, that you will, do nasty, disgusting things to me.” Connor leaned into Angel’s ear. “That you think my voice is so pure, so clean, and you want to hear it scream.”
“But Jasmine-”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand, doesn’t know, can’t see,” Connor whispered. Connor gripped the sides of Angel’s face, the ridged cheekbones, the demon extrusions around his eyes. “This will be beautiful,” he hissed, and kissed him.
| | |
Steven used to ask, “Why are you doing this?” every time he was beaten. Before the months of tracking the crab-like, monkey-faced demon, the beating that triggered the hunt, he was asking, “What will it change? Five,” he said through grit teeth. His voice was defiant, angry. “Will it change what I did?”
“Repentance. Count. For what you did.”
“Six,” Steven snapped. The lash of tree bark against his backside was beginning to burn, rather than sting. “I let it go. Put us in danger.” Gasping, Steven managed to gutter, “Seven. But,” he panted, “beating me’s not going to-eight. Get us out of danger. Not going to kill it. Nine!” Yelping, tears finally sprung at the corners of Steven’s eyes, but it was not the bark cutting into him that made his voice break. “It’s not going to bring it back” (to them).
“Foolish boy. It’s not about that demon.” Daddy used to say, “It’s about the demon that’s in you.”
It was wrong to care for creatures that hurt people. Steven was being hurt now, but that was different. His father only wanted to teach him what was wrong. Trying desperately to keep still, Steven knew, all the same, that it was also wrong to tilt your hips back, thrusting your bottom in the air, waiting for the proof, the pain, that he loved you. Wrong to be eager for his touch, even through the bark, so you knew you were not alone.
| | |
“Was that what you meant?” Connor asked, as Angel ripped him from his mouth and pushed him away. “Was that what you meant, how we should have been?”
“No.” Angel seemed torn between Connor’s hunched form and the safety of the wall. “You know that’s not it. Feel it through Jasmine. She connects us.” Angel reached out, tipping the balance of his body toward Connor. “You know what I want. Connor. What I’ve always wanted, for both of us.”
Connor looked at Angel’s outstretched hand. He took a step back. “Connor is a lie,” he explained, and without missing a beat, began to undress, his own way of unmasking.
As Connor fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, Angel lurched forward. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” he asked, grabbing Connor’s wrist. White arms folding arms in an awkward arabesque away from Angel, Connor twisted out of the buffer of fabric, and stepped away again. Angel was left holding the shirt, wrinkled and limp in his hand.
“I do know you,” Connor said. “You don’t know me.” His hands went for the fastening of his khakis, unbuttoning them, pulling down the fly.
“Don’t do this.” Angel’s voice was hard, the kind of voice he used whenever throwing Connor against a wall. He stayed where he was, winding the shirt around his fist, unwound it again, still held in front of him as if in hopes of preserving some kind of boundary between them.
“Jasmine said everything would be beautiful, didn’t she?” Connor stepped forward, loosened pants slung low around his narrow hips. “Don’t you want to see me? See who I really am?”
“I know you.” Angel swallowed. “You cried when you woke up and I wasn’t there. You spit up in my hair. I held you in my arms.” Angel’s arms twitched, as if to do so again. The shirt slumped to the floor. “I know you all the way down.”
“No touching. Not yet, Dad.” Connor batted his father’s hands away with one hand, and reached into his khakis with the other, forcing Angel to understand who would do the touching. His hand wrapped around himself, pulled his erection out from his pants, forcing Angel to know how hard he was. He held his cock, hot and red and waiting in the cooler air, fingers wrapped around it, forcing Angel to see. “Maybe you loved me once. Maybe I was your boy, clean and pure like all those good little boys you like to ruin. But I’m not any more.”
“You’re still my son.” Angel sounded like these dreams Connor used to have, where cold covered him and sucked out everything warm he’d ever wanted, known, or been before; Connor used to think the dreams were memories of going through the portal into Quor’toth. “And I still love you,” Angel said, a desperate reminder-to Connor, maybe, or himself. “Jasmine’s giving me a chance to show you how much. So much that this-it can’t be like this. I want-” He cut himself off, sharply averting his face as Connor’s hand moved down his dick. Angel took a ragged breath he didn’t need, and said with a futile attempt at decisiveness, “We’re a family. Not this.”
“Jasmine,” Connor repeated. “I’m her father. I know her, too. Better than you.” He had to tighten his hand on his cock with his words, the second sharp breath Angel took. “I know exactly what she’s giving us. She’s my family. Don’t you think I’d know? Watch me.”
“I am.” Angel’s voice cracked in half between the two words, and his head turned slowly, eyes trained only towards Connor’s face. His fingers closed over Connor’s forearm, as solid but coaxing as his voice, pulling Connor’s hand away. “I see you now and all I can think is how much you’ve given the world, through her. How much you and I, at her side, can change the world. How wonderful it all could be.”
Connor’s hand spasmodically tightened in response, jerking his cock, smearing the wetness at the tip onto his fist. “Don’t,” he gulped. “Don’t talk. I’m the one telling.” He pushed his father square into the chest, over until the backs of Angel’s knees hit his plush leather couch and he bent them, falling into it. “Gonna tell you,” Connor said.
Angel made no further move to get away, to stand up, to touch him. He only looked up, pleading. His hands were open at his sides, pressed into the couch as if nailed there, fingers slightly curled as if to cup something, anything, some kind of salvation.
“I’m going to show you,” Connor said, and filled up those hands with his knees, crushing Angel’s palms, the bones inside with Connor’s weight. Angel winced, looking at the sharp, knobby thrust of one of Connor’s kneecaps rather than that of Connor’s cock, so close to Angel’s chest.
“Look here,” Connor said, jerking Angel’s head back against the couch with one hand, the other brushing against his still open khakis to fist his cock again. “This is it. Right here. If you really love me, you’d watch.”
“I do. I am.” Angel winced again, wormed his hands out from under Connor’s knees. His hands should feel loose, like mashed meat; Connor’d smashed enough creatures to know, but when they hooked behind Connor’s knees the fingers were strong and tight. Angel was still looking up into Connor’s face, hovering over his own. “I’m always watching you. Whenever I could. Always. Right here.”
“There were too many times when you couldn’t, Dad,” Connor said, and wrapped his free arm around his father’s neck. His hair draped down to brush Angel’s ears, curtaining Angel’s face. Connor’s hot breath caught between them in that hidden space, where their noses almost touched, where Angel’s eyes were hot and desperate with that same plea, but his face was lifeless and lukewarm.
“There were too many times before me,” Connor said, and began to move his hand on himself between their bodies. “Times where you were doing those nasty things to boys. You did make them scream. You killed the fathers and made the mothers watch, or the other way around. You made fathers fuck their sons.” Connor’s thumb pressed in at the head of his cock, the back of his hand brushing Angel’s shirt. “The truth is, I still want you to be my family.”
Angel’s lips parted. “I am,” he husked. “I’m not those other things any more.”
Connor mashed his lips down, bruising them against Angel’s teeth. His narrow tongue pushed inside to wrap around Angel’s, to curl around the words and twist them.
Behind him, Angel’s fingers straightened joint by joint, stiffness born out of being coiled so tightly over the soft skin behind Connor’s knees. Now the fist wrapped in Connor’s hair, but gently, tugging Connor away from his mouth, so that Angel could press his face to Connor’s hot one, his stillness against Connor’s breathless pink. “Don’t,” Angel whispered, and held Connor there like that, hand tight again, but trembling.
“You do want to fuck me,” Connor breathed in Angel’s ear, pressed against Angel’s cheek. “You do,” he insisted. “You want to fuck your own son, and hear me beg, and cry, and scream for you. I can feel it. You’ve been hard since I first put my mouth on you.”
Connor sank down until he was sitting in Angel’s lap, until the back of his hand on his cock was firm against the bulge in Angel’s pants. “Holtz told me other things, you know,” he said. “You want to do those things to me with your dick. I know you do.” Connor tilted his hips, his hand pulling on himself and dragging against the outline of Angel’s erection as it did so. “And the truth is I still want you to be my dad.”
“Let me try to be,” Angel choked out, the sound catching in Connor’s hair as his hand slid under the soft strands, heavy on Connor’s neck as if to choke him too, not his breath but this movement of his hips, this blood sustaining his erection, this helplessness. “Let me try. Sweetheart, I could be so good for you. You and me and Jasmine. Let me show you.”
“I’m the one showing you.” Changing his grip, Connor pushed the heel of his hand down to grind his cock over Angel’s crotch. The tip touched Angel’s belly as Connor rocked his hips in, staining Angel’s shirt with a small touch of wet. “Remember?” Connor reminded him. “It’s not about how good you could be. This part isn’t about you at all. It’s about me.”
Connor rolled his hips again, rubbing their erections along each other; at the same time he lined his lips up along his father’s. Angel’s face was hard, like wax, and when his lips at last parted in shallow renunciation and defeat, his face sagged slowly, stiffly, like a dripping votive candle, distorted in its demise. “It’s about how bad I can be,” Connor whispered into him, his own mouth firm and ripe.
“I saw a little house,” Connor said, jerking against Angel hard now, his hand moving up and down his own naked length. “Not too long after I got here. I remember it had flower curtains, and-laughing people in the windows. I wanted it to be us. I saw a girl-little pink dress-I wanted to be her brother. Her father pulled her into his arms. I wanted to be her; I wanted-wanted him to be you. I wanted it to be us.”
Angel’s hand found the waistband of his khakis, tugging it up from behind to make sure that part of Connor was covered as much as could be. Angel’s other hand pulled Connor closer, his son’s head into the crook of his neck so he could whisper things in the hair, sweet things like, “we could” and “love” and “please, son, we don’t have to.” Where Connor invented a rhythm between them at their crux, Angel did nothing. His hips stayed very still; his cock stayed very hard, and his fingers continued to smooth over Connor’s waistband in back over again and again, carefully, as if there could be any measure of chastity in this situation.
“What if we did?” Connor asked. “If we were a family, you my father, and me loving you like a son-the truth is, I’d still want you this way, too. I’d still want you to be the monster you really are inside.”
Everything felt so close, blood and heat close to Connor’s skin, pushing out everywhere so hard wet leaked from the corners of his eyes, from his cock, up his throat until he almost gurgled. “I’d want you to fuck me, Dad,” Connor told him, the hot bubbles inside still rising like a rolling boil as he rocked against his father. “I want you to do all those things I said. And other things I thought of. On my own.”
Connor reared up, jerked Angel’s head up by the hair so Angel had to look at him. “This is my true face.” Connor asked, “Can it be beautiful, too?” and came, crying out.
| | |
Steven used to ask, “Why do we have to be all alone?” Before the beating, before letting it go, Steven used to bathe the demon in the river, and lay it down, spread on his own bed. Now but a babe, underneath a profusion of pincer limbs and strangled, clacking articulations, its face looked like a child’s. Steven used to call it Sarah. “Why can’t I take care of someone, like you?”
“It’s a demon!”
“She loves me! She wouldn’t hurt anyone. Can’t you see how small and helpless she is?”
“Look at its claws. They reveal the true nature of the beast, which cannot be changed. It will grow into its own, and one night in our sleep, it will turn on us. You might survive, but what of me? To love this-thing-is to kill me.” Daddy used to say, “Do not forsake me, my son.”
Stroking the creature in his arms, hand back and forth along its knobbed shell, Steven thought about how God had taken him from his demon father and given him to his human one. But it was wrong, he knew, to make God give you presents. It was wrong to make what God had already given you different. It was wrong to make God.
| | |
“Was it?” Connor asked. He slumped invertebrately into the shell of Angel surrounding him, pink, well-worked body liquid-like, filling in around Angel’s hard angles. “Was it beautiful?” he repeated. “How about how I sounded? Did you like my screaming?”
Angel held on tighter. “Don’t think about those things I was. Don’t think about the things he told you.”
“Right. I sound like an angel.” He added, in Angel’s ear, “Even when I come for you?” and pulled away from his neck to face him. A few errant strands of hair stuck on Angel’s mouth, connecting them. “Yeah, you’re real original.”
Pushing Connor’s hair back, combing the bit hanging on the side of his face with his fingers, Angel said reproachfully, “He didn’t like your voice, in a world with no music. He should’ve loved it. He should’ve sang you to sleep.”
Connor climbed off of Angel. Found his shirt on the floor to clean himself off. “Lullabies are lies, too.”
“I used to think that,” Angel said, standing as well. “That it was all misery, and ugliness. That’s why I was with your mother.”
Connor dropped the shirt. Angel went on, “After that, when I fought, I wasn’t trying to make a difference. I was just trying to do what’s right. Because it’s all I had. But then there was you.”
Trembling from the brush of Angel’s fingers under his chin, Connor tried for sarcasm. His voice came out reedy. “Okay, know something? Just because maybe you sang me songs when I was little doesn’t-”
“I did sing to you. And you’re right, it didn’t make a difference, either. Until now.”
Unconsciously, Connor twitched into Angel’s touch. “Now?” Connor repeated.
“Now there’s Jasmine,” Angel said, and Connor pulled away. “She is different. She’s going to make the world different. The good we fight for, it’s not just inside us, it’s not just what we believe in. It’s here. It’s now. There’s beauty in the world, Connor, and it’s truer than anything we’ve ever known.”
Connor’s jaw felt tight, looked sharp under his hard, pressed together lips. “Fine,” he said. “Show me.” He stepped back, burning eyes on Angel as he rolled his khakis down his hips, pushed them down the rest of the way, and kicked them off.
Angel watched, inappropriately melodramatic, Connor thought, looking as if Connor was rending off his limbs instead of taking off his pants. “The truth,” Connor said. “Right here. Right now.”
Angel looked down at the pants, the lost legs severed from a torso. Angel’s hands looked more dead than ever by his sides. “The truth,” he said. At last Angel looked up, his eyes darkening the way Connor had seen blood blackening an innocent girl’s dress, once, when Connor had had to decide the lines he would cross for love. “The truth is I love you, Connor.” Angel’s voice was heavy with the choice. “I’ll show you any way you need me to.”
Connor wet his lips, pulling the lower one into his mouth and releasing it with a huff of breath. Looked around, saw the bed, took Angel’s hand. Connor pulled and Angel followed. As Connor sat down on the edge, Angel’s hand went hard, and he didn’t move.
Connor waited a long time. “Do you think it’s worth it? To do something terrible, to give peace,” he clarified.
Angel’s eyes were still very close to black, like burned wood, as if black charred crib bars had had risen between his vision and the bed. “You’re worth everything,” he whispered.
“Good,” Connor said, knowing it was wrong to force a gift, a difference, his approval. But Connor was impatient, and chewing on his lip again, reached for Angel’s belt.
“Don’t,” Angel said, and took his hands away. “Lay out.”
Connor moved up, pulling himself along the bed until his naked backside was strewn along the sheets like a still river of pink and pale flesh. After a moment of fabric sounds, Angel’s heavy hand settled on his neck, playing with the silken web of hair. He began to pet him there, drawing the easeful strands through his fingers, some of them catching they were so fine. His thumb circled the shell-shape of Connor’s nape, so gentle, Angel’s hands caressing against sensitive scalp, drawing the strands through again and again.
“Are you going to-” Connor began, but Angel cut him off.
“Don’t talk.” His mouth was right by Connor’s ear. “It’s my turn, now.”
The lips pressed in against Connor’s hair, and then on Connor’s back. Angel moved down the vertebrae one by one, like a string of beads, circling each with thumb and forefinger, wetting them with whispers before he kissed them. Then his hands were on Connor’s bottom with that same careful studying, so that when the fingers pried his cheeks apart, Connor felt like a book, like there was something important and precious inside that only he could impart, and he pushed up into the touch until Angel said, “Good.”
Connor shut his eyes, smooshed his face against the pillow, and thought of the way Angel had said the same thing in the same way, when he was teaching Connor how to fight, before Connor tricked him into a box at the bottom of the sea. Connor thought of pretending to accept Angel before hand, and how it had been worth the lies to do what needed to be done. But for the first time, there wasn’t the twist in Connor’s belly, the feeling he thought of as sea-sickness, whenever he thought of calling himself Connor, not Steven.
He focused on the feel of Angel’s finger, on the feel of it down his crack, and then the wet of Angel’s tongue, nudging the opening nestled between Connor’s buttocks, easing up the snug little muscle of it. Connor bit down hard on his tongue. He’d thought of many things when his father explained perversion to him, far more things, he thought, than his human father in Quor’toth could even begin to imagine. The thoughts thrust into his mind, Connor had thought, as a result of his demon heritage; they were intrusions, things he didn’t want to think or be.
But this didn’t feel like that. The warm sweep of Angel’s tongue distinctly tingled, the way drinking something good titillated your tongue, but the feeling kept going all the way inside, and that was untraceable except for the way it filled you up. Warmed you, the way his father had said wine would, which Holtz had had but rarely back on earth, except for each Communion.
“Good,” Angel said again, speaking against Connor’s hole. “You’re doing really good for me. See, this is how it can be.” Connor looked back over the pale angle of his shoulder blade. Meeting his eyes, Angel pulled back, kissed Connor what would’ve been chastely, if not on a dimple above his ass. “Up now,” he said, tugging back on Connor’s thighs. “On your knees, baby. So you can push back on me.”
“Don’t call me that. I said, I’m not your little boy any more.” Connor got on his knees, his arms folded under the pillow, his face still pressed into it.
“And I said don’t talk.” Angel leaned over Connor’s back, so that Connor noted for the first time Angel must be shirtless, reaching for something beside the bed. “Make all the sounds you need to,” Angel said, “but I don’t want to argue with you. I want to make you feel good. Make you feel loved.” He had shifted again on the bed, was touching between Connor’s buttocks again, but his fingers were more slippery than they had been, and greasier than his tongue. “I want to make you feel the hope Jasmine’s brought us.” Angel’s voice frayed. “Make you hope for better things.”
Connor felt buttery now, loose where Angel was touching him, pressing gently again and again against his hole; he felt almost obedient. But as Angel’s first finger began to push deeper, and the burn started, he suddenly panted, “Would you really make me?” Connor instinctively tightened as the finger pushed deeper, cheeks clenching, his mouth screwing tight in echo as his breath caught inside of him. “Would you make me feel good,” he panted again, “if I didn’t want to? Or what if I didn’t know how to be happy? Would you give it to me-hope-for my own good?”
There was a silence from behind that made Connor look over his shoulder again. The way Angel knelt, shirtless, still in pants, made the broad expanse of exposed chest look like an unmarked gravestone. One hand still at Connor’s ass, Angel’s other swept up firmly, circling Connor’s cock, and Connor found it all appropriate because for one fleeting moment, he thought he might be dying. “Yes,” Angel said, finally, and Connor couldn’t read his tone. “Yes. I would. I would do anything.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was by Connor’s ear again, so soft. “Is that what you want? Do you need me to force you, Connor?”
Connor squinched his eyes shut very tight. “More,” he whispered, and that was all.
“Okay,” Angel said, and Connor could recognize the tone now as relieved. The hand loosened at his cock, stroking more gently now, and the finger inside him moved. When the second one began to push in, Connor cried out. “How’s that feel?” Angel asked.
“Don’t stop,” Connor panted, and tilting his hips back, thrust his ass back onto Angel’s fingers, knowing it was wrong to be eager for the burn of it, the pain, but replaying the part where Angel said he’d hurt him if he had to over again in his mind anyway. “Please.”
“That’s good. Beg me. Better to know you want it,” Angel said. He placed a kiss in the middle to Connor’s back, between the straining shoulder blades. Laying the side of his face against one of the sharp protrusions of scapula, he whispered, “You do sound sweet to me.”
Connor released a gulp of air in an audible pant. “Do another,” he said. “Put another one in.”
“Also better to go slow.” As the two fingers scissored inside, Angel’s other hand left Connor’s cock to cups his balls, squeezing gently. “Don’t want to hurt you.”
“I want you to,” Connor said, squirming under Angel’s touch. “I want you to do another. Right now.”
Angel’s brow pressed into Connor’s back, as hard as Connor’s forehead to the pillow. Connor’s back arched under the weight, pushing against Angel’s hand as Angel worked another finger in, the pressure working all the way up through Connor and out his mouth in a tight, sharp cry. “Really sweet,” Angel murmured into Connor’s spine.
The hand on his balls moved back to his cock again, stroking almost absently. The fingers inside of him sawed gently, stretching Connor out, twisting and curling and finding places inside him that made him call out. “Good,” Angel told him all the while. “Relax. You’re doing great. Relax, remember I love you, want you to feel happy, want you to feel happy as me.” Angel sounded horribly sad.
As Angel’s fingers slid out, Connor couldn’t feel his muscles contract in the instinctive way they would have earlier. He felt limp and wet and utterly open; he doubted death felt this warm, but he felt like someone could open up his veins right now and he would barely feel the penetration, like the blood that would seep out wouldn’t feel like loss but like self-extension, an offering. It felt incredible, and he wondered if people felt like this when they looked at Jasmine.
Angel’s belt clinked behind him. The sound of the teeth on his zipper separating was audible, more so than Angel taking out his own cock and rubbing the slippery stuff over it, which Connor never heard, but Angel must have done. Presently the head was pressed at Connor’s hole, wet as the blood Connor had been imagining. A firm, clean hand closed on Connor’s hip, the other, slick, again around his cock.
“I know you grew up,” Angel said suddenly, still just poised there at Connor’s entrance, his chest pressed to Connor’s back, voice at Connor’s neck. “Don’t think I don’t know. I know you’re Jasmine’s father. You’re partly responsible she’s in this world. And I’m proud of you, so proud.” His thumb circled soothingly over Connor’s hip bone. “You did the right thing. Against all odds.”
Then Angel was pushing into him, filling him up, until the empty places in him didn’t feel loose at all but clenching and unwelcoming in a way that made it so Connor felt like he couldn’t catch his breath, like there were hiccups being pushed up inside. Angel went slowly, but he didn’t relent, pushing and splitting and opening until Connor could feel his father’s thighs lined up behind him, Angel’s face near his. Angel kissed away where the sweat was starting at Connor’s temple, and said softly, “But you’re still my boy. Nothing’s ever going to change that.”
The hand at Connor’s hip came up; that arm wrapped under Connor’s chest and pressed them closer together as Angel whispered. “A part of you is mine. Always will be. My beautiful baby boy, needs his Daddy. And I’ll always be there to take care of you, Connor.”
A shudder wracked down Connor’s body, pressing in on his lower back, out into his hips until they snapped against his father’s, and Connor whimpered, “Please.”
“Yes,” Angel said again, and pulled out until Connor almost sobbed, then Angel began again until he did sob, muffling the sound in the pillow. “Like this,” Angel instructed.
Connor bucked under every thrust, writhing under every touch. “Tell me,” he begged. “Tell me it again.”
“Which part?” Angel said, squeezing Connor’s cock lightly in his hand. “How I’d cheat the world for you,” he guessed, his voice the sound of a heavy breath. “How I’d fuck it all over, fuck everyone in it. I’ll fuck you, too, just to make it a better place for you.”
“Yeah, that.” Connor finally freed a hand, found Angel’s head. Tugged hard on the hair, keeping that face there beside him, almost cheek to cheek. “All of it. Dad.” His hand twisted so hard in Angel’s hair his knuckles hurt. “Tell me I’m good.”
“Christ,” Angel muttered, the steady rhythm of his thrust inward stuttering, slamming into Connor harder than he had before. “You’re perfect,” he grunted. “Beautiful. Proud of you, son. And fuck, you’re so good. So warm, so tight for me, honey, you’re doing so good.”
Connor smothered another ripped out sound with the pillow. Angel was saying broken things, now. “Love the way you push back on me,” and “God, the sounds you make,” and “you make Daddy so hard,” and “please, baby, let it out. Let it out.”
And when Connor, under command of those words, began to cry, began to jerk uncontrollably out of rhythm into Angel’s thrusts, Angel slowed and petted his hair, held him still across the chest, connecting two places you touch to cross yourself, and kissing the other in between soft words, like, “Good,” and “yes” and “don’t stop. Don’t stop,” he said. “Cry for me. Good; get it out. I want to hear you.”
Connor remembered how Angel’d said he liked his voice, something about the purity of it, and how the defilement of it, screaming in agony or torment, could make his father come. The intrusion of the nasty thought almost made Connor come as well, but Angel’s hand was tight on his cock, and Connor was not quite done crying.
So instead of about that, Connor thought about the deep place inside him, warm right now, maybe Angel’s place after all, the pure place, the place of the child Angel had never gotten a chance to know. And in that place he thought about how if Jasmine could give them such joy, and if this act of wrongness could bring him such comfort, then maybe it wasn’t the pain in Connor’s tears Angel wanted to hear, but the release.
Kisses could be choirs, he supposed, as he angled his face, placed his lips against Angel’s cheek. Connor reached down and laced his finger’s with his father’s, digging his nails into the backs of Angel’s palms. Hands could be psalms. Crying could be a chorus, he guessed, and lies might be worth it.
“It’s right,” Connor choked. “The truth. We’re right. Aren’t we? Show me.” As Angel pushed inside him, Connor pushed his throat against his father’s mouth, twisting so the veins might touch his teeth. “Show me the truth.”
Instead Angel kissed him there, buried his face in the crook and made tickling, breathing sounds. “Everything’s going to be all right,” Angel said. “Everything.”
“It’s . . .” Hot tears were still streaming down Connor’s cheeks. “It’s the only way. I have to. I have to.”
“Everything.” Angel slid back into him, deeper now. His hand left Connor’s cock to tug back on his hair, to arch him into rearing, crying creature with a pliable spine, blindly scrambling to get into the place where it went so wrong. Angel worked inside the mess of flesh, strong, steady, speaking on every thrust. “Everything, let it go, I’ve got you Connor, I’m here. We’re going to be so happy. I’m your father; I love you.”
“Dad.” There were spots of lights on Connor’s eyes, and then black around the edges of his vision. He shouldn’t long for that darkness, but he did, for its generosity, gentleness. “Daddy?” he asked, and reached for it.
| | |
Steven used to call her Sarah.
Daddy used to call his daughter that. Before Angelus killed her, and she came back from the dead to be like Steven’s demon father.
Before killing her, before hunting her for months, before the beating for letting her go, before his human father told her to kill her, Steven had seen Sarah, child-faced and small, huddled some distance from her mother. The latter was a crab-like, human-sized demon, engaged in a battle with a ridgetail creeper. Knowing that creepers were vicious, and that if the creeper killed the mother it would come for Steven and his human father next, Steven slew it.
Baby Sarah, pincers, clicking, demon eyes and all, came clacking forward after that, and Steven watched its mother scuttle for it, watched them reunite. Then Steven stalked forward and slew the mother too, because it could follow them also. Besides, he had killed his own mother. Perhaps this was his destiny, too. But the baby, shivering and afraid, he picked up around his blades and knives. And he used to love her, around all the sharp places inside.
He knew, even in that moment, that loving her was wrong. You shouldn’t ever think that maybe your father should’ve loved Sarah, demon as she was, instead of throwing her out of her home so the light would burn her up.
| | |
After Angel had been shot with Jasmine’s blood, after Connor had been cut and tried to have a truth forced onto him that he had once offered Angel with his throat, after the door between the truth and lies broke down, when Angel fist was coming down again and again in his own son’s face-then Connor didn’t ask why. No, why are you doing this? or what will it change? No, it’s not going to kill her, not, it won’t bring you back (to us).
It was because of Connor the Beast had blotted out the sun, and no one asked about the color of the sky any more. Connor had seen to that. He’d made it so they couldn’t question, so they could only love.
Love, with everything in them, except the truth.