Old Fic: Shelter (AtS, Angel/Wesley)
This is the one I'm most dubious about posting, because it has "CAUTION: N00B" stamped all over it in big red letters. But people seem to like it; it deserves to live. It's from 2001.
TITLE: Shelter
FANDOM: Angel: The Series
PAIRING: Angel/Wesley
RATING: NC-17 for porn
SPOILERS: S2 of Angel.
SUMMARY: Variations on a Bob Dylan song.
WORD COUNT: 6,721
DISCLAIMERS: Angel: The Series is held under copyright by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions, among others. This original work of fan fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License; attribution should include a link to this Livejournal post. This story is a labor of love, not money, so it's protected in the USA by the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976. Play ball!
NOTES: Many, many thanks to ashfae and callmesandy for the betas. I have not mentioned recently enough that you guys rock. Additional thanks go to thsfuhqinsux for the inspiring conversations, and to allmusic.com for doing just what it says on the tin.
*
"There are those who worship loneliness, I'm not one of them,
In this age of fiberglass I'm searching for a gem.
The crystal ball up on the wall hasn't shown me nothing yet,
I've paid the price of solitude, but at least I'm out of debt."
-- Bob Dylan, "Dirge"
*
The window shade was up. Wesley was snogging Angel, and he should have been appreciating it, but no, the shade was up, and it was all he could think about. It felt like Angel's tongue could reach all the way down into his throat, kiss his larynx, his esophagus, his carotid arteries. And all of L. A. could watch if it wanted. Watch him kiss Angel. Angel who smelled mostly of cologne but slightly of blood, who raised the window shades at night because if he couldn't have sunlight, he would at least let the moonlight in. Angel, who was afraid of the dark, and who was kissing him.
Angel pulled back with a smack of released suction. "What?"
"It's. . . it's nothing." Wesley was gasping for breath, which Angel was, of course, not.
"It's something."
"The window. The window shade."
"I'll close it. It's all right."
"No, it doesn't matter, it's-- who would be watching? And if they're watching, you know, it would be a compliment. To be worth watching."
"Spoken like a true Watcher."
"Tell it to the Watchers' Council."
"No." Angel grinned.
"No?"
"No, I want you all to myself."
Wesley looked down and away, feeling his cheeks redden.
"No, I want--" Angel ran his hand down Wesley's face.
Wesley leaned forward and kissed Angel's mouth gently. "That?"
"Something like that."
They resumed in shallow, loose kisses. Wesley started unbuttoning Angel's shirt, a task made doubly difficult by the fact that his glasses were over on the nightstand. Not that Angel would let him look down even if he could see. Wesley pushed Angel's arms away to pull the shirt off of him, and Angel let the momentum push him back against the bed. Wesley dragged his own shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor. He bellyflopped onto the bed and he and Angel were wrestling, kissing deep, sliding out of their undershirts and unzipping each other's jeans. Angel's shoulders tasted like warm salt, which Wesley supposed was good to know.
"Wait a minute," said Angel, retreating again. "Sorry." He sat up and began pulling off his socks. "I can't have sex with socks on. It's too silly." Wesley nodded and removed his own socks. This was a good moment for it, at least.
This whole business was silly. It was ridiculous. Any moment now, Angel would notice this and call the whole thing off. He would remember how it started, on the sofa in Wesley's apartment a week earlier, the night after they returned from Pylea. Angel was sulking, staring out at the moonlight, ignoring his coffee. "Sometimes, I wish I never saw the sunshine."
"Phil Spector wrote it... recorded by, um, The Crystals. No, the Ronettes."
"Please, let's not play this now." The Host had started them on this game, trying to get their minds off waiting. One player says the title of a song; someone else has to name the artist. Mind-numbing, damned difficult, makes you want to kill everyone else playing. In other words, it was a perfect distraction.
"You started it."
"Sorry, I. . . I miss it."
"I know."
"I'd forgotten. Things smell different in sunlight. It's like I'd been living in a room with a funny smell, and I finally left it and thought, 'Wow! That's what the world is supposed to smell like!' And the light. The sheer brightness. The way it makes your eyes ache. . . I'd forgotten I even missed that. That white light--"
All Wesley could think at this point was, "Please don't say 'White heat,'" because then he was going to have to say "Velvet Underground" back, and all semblance of seriousness would be lost. And he wanted to be sympathetic. He was starting to care about Angel's morose bullshit for the first time in a long time, and he wanted to keep caring.
"I know what you're thinking," said Angel.
"What-- what am I thinking?"
"Velvet Underground."
"But you didn't say it. You didn't finish."
"But we were both thinking it."
"I thought we weren't playing this game."
"I think," Angel said, "we're playing the game, even if we decide we're not playing the game."
"All right, then. 'Walk Away Renee.'"
"I didn't mean we were actually playing."
"Oh."
"The Four Tops."
"What?"
"The Four Tops recorded 'Walk Away Renee.'"
"No they didn't. It was Left Banke. They're not even the same genre."
"Yes they did. Vastly superior to the Left Banke version, too. I know these things. I celebrated my 240th birthday the year it was released. You, on the other hand, were a toddler in 1967."
"Infant."
"Further strengthening my point."
"Well, if you're going to play rough..."
"I want you."
"Oh, for goodness' sake, that's every band on the planet. Let's see-- Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Marvin Gaye, Elvis Costello..."
"Barry White."
"Animotion."
"LL Cool J. I meant that."
"You--"
"Al Jarreau and R.E.M. Listen. I'm probably going to spend all morning lying awake, thinking that I'm only saying this because I'm lonely. Since the whole business with Darla, I feel like I've been running around in circles. . . And I keep thinking that I'm only thinking this because you're convenient. Because you're here, and for some reason I can't begin to understand you don't resent me. You take my mind off things. And it would be so easy--"
Wesley stood up sharply. "Well, it's nice to know that I'm wanted. If only as a convenience." He turned to walk out, then realized that this was his own apartment. "I--"
"I should leave now, shouldn't I?"
"Probably."
Angel rose and started making his way around the sofa towards the door. And they were accidentally facing each other. Wesley grabbed Angel's wrist, stopping him. "What was it-- what was it you wanted me for?"
"I don't know."
"'"Come in," she said,'" said Wesley, pulling Angel in by the wrist, throwing him off balance. "'"I'll give you shelter from the storm."'"
"Dylan again."
And they kissed. The kisses didn't start like kissing started, with those soft testing brushes of the lips. They were consumptive kisses, the kind that left you dry, with no skin left on the roof of your mouth. They were kisses the way kisses were when you were twelve years old and didn't know how to do anything but kiss. And now Wesley was kissing Angel that way again, now that Angel had taken his socks off, kissing him like he had every night for the past week. They had slid into the habit as if they'd been lovers forever. Like a pair of old socks. Wesley slid a hand down Angel's thigh; Angel was halfway to bursting out of his boxer briefs. Wesley slipped his fingers under the waistband and began rolling the briefs slowly off Angel, who was sucking on his neck hard enough to leave marks. Angel wriggled the rest of the way out of his underwear. "Hang on," he said.
"What's wrong?"
"You're going to go down on me. I don't want you to go down on me."
"Am I-- am I really that bad?"
"No, you're wonderful, it's-- I want you-- There's not a good way to phrase this. There isn't." He sighed. "I want you to fuck me."
"You want me to. . .?"
"To. Um. Penetrate me."
"Oh. Ohhhh."
Angel was rummaging in the drawer of his nightstand. Wesley dropped his own briefs on the growing pile of discarded clothing, which crouched on the floor like a dark, embarrassed dog. Angel tossed a mostly-full squeezebottle of Astroglide in Wesley's general direction. "I'm sorry," Angel said. "I haven't got any condoms. It's. . . not something a vampire normally needs. If you don't feel comfortable--"
Wesley was still getting his head around the whole idea. The question of latex had perhaps entered Wesley's mind, but it was waiting in the customer service line somewhere behind, "He wants me to fuck him? He wants me to fuck him. He wants me to fuck him. Fuck." This was not what was bothering him. Besides, vampires couldn't carry diseases. It would be clean enough. Safe. "That's--" Wesley said-- "it should be all right."
Angel banged the drawer shut and turned to face Wesley. "If you don't want to do this, we don't have to."
"I-- I do," Wesley heard himself say. "It's just-- you know I've been with men before-- I messed around at university, but I've never done-- I've never trusted anyone enough. I've never done this before."
"I trust you," Angel said.
Wesley didn't know what to say. There was nothing to say to that, or at least nothing that he was sure was true.
"We'll go slow," Angel continued. "We'll have to. I haven't done this in. . . oh, a hundred and twenty years."
"That's a long time," said Wesley.
"Yeah. I think I might be a little tight."
Wesley let himself laugh, and they were both laughing, twined naked on the dark sheets in the moonlight. Angel rolled over the lube, which made an impatient blooping sound and made them laugh harder. Wesley realized that he was calm. Calm and aroused. He could do this.
He reached under Angel for the lube, which had popped open and left a damp, gooey spot on the sheet. "Fingers first?" he asked Angel, who was lying patiently, propped on one elbow.
"Probably a good idea."
Wesley squeezed himself a handful of lube and coated his hands with it. He felt like he was preparing to fingerpaint. "Ready?"
Angel pulled himself up onto his hands and knees. "This'll probably be easier." He looked silly, and the position made it difficult for Wesley to reach anything but his ass. Wesley couldn't come up with a better idea, though, so he moved towards Angel, careful not to touch anything with his lube-soaked hands. He began kissing and nipping at Angel's back, trying to prepare himself as much as Angel. He counted the constellations of brown birthmarks, just visible in the blend of moonlight and myopia. Focused, the air chilling the goo on his fingers, Wesley ran his tongue slowly down Angel's spine, sliding, as he did so, the fingers of one hand between the cheeks of Angel's ass. Angel shuddered and made what sounded like a pleased noise. Wesley teased Angel's asshole with his fingers. Tired of trying to hold his lube-soaked left hand out of the way, Wesley reached underneath and started playing with Angel's cock and balls, coating them with lube. Cautiously, he slid his index finger into Angel's ass. Angel's knees buckled.
"Let me know if I should--" said Wesley.
"No, it's good. It's good."
Wesley moved his finger slowly in and out against the tight muscles of Angel's asshole, feeling them release slightly more each time he crossed them. He found the round bead of Angel's prostate and brushed against it tentatively; Angel responded with a soft moan. He was relaxing, letting Wesley in. Wesley realized he was neglecting Angel's cock, and that Angel did not seem to mind this; he gave up on trying to do more than one thing at once and rested his left hand against Angel's thigh for leverage. He inhaled deeply and slid his middle finger inside to join the first. Wesley could move his fingers in smoother strokes now, and thrust more deeply. He found an angle at which he could rub firmly against Angel's prostate with every inward push, a discovery which Angel rewarded with an accompaniment of rhythmic happy grunts. Angel was an inarticulate lover, but not a quiet one, and he seemed to answer each of Wesley's new movements with some matching animal noise. Wesley mused that it was really no more difficult to interpret than some of the more obscure demon languages. He almost stifled a laugh.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"No. What?"
"Stray thought. Never mind." Feeling brave, Wesley added a third finger.
"Ow! Kee-rist!"
"Sorry," Wesley said tinily.
"No. Okay. Keep going."
Wesley kept up the back-and-forth motion, although it was tighter and more difficult now. He groped for the bottle of lube with his free hand. He popped it open with his teeth and squeezed a bit onto the rim of Angel's asshole so that his own fingers would pick it up. Angel was bucking against him now, moaning louder. This seemed to be a good time for Wesley to replace fingers with cock, but he had lost too much of his erection, and besides, Angel was moaning like the secret basso profundo language of elephants, jerking back and upwards, either very close or doing an Oscar-worthy job of faking it. Angel came moving hard backward, and if Wesley hadn't known better, he would have thought that was it for Angel's soul.
***
Three days earlier, he'd gone to Caritas for its grand re-opening. Cordelia was bristling with cabin fever, and she wanted to see how the Host was doing. Somehow, as usual, it was Wesley whom she persuaded to take her there. He didn't mind, really. It was a clear, warm night, suffused with breeze, and it had been too long since he'd had a chance to take the bike out. He'd learned that owning a motorcycle was much like owning a dog: it needed regular exercise or it started to misbehave. He began a maintenance check outside the building where she lived, squinting in the streetlamp light at the various gears and mechanisms to make sure nothing was obviously awry, killing time until Cordelia weaned herself from the mirror.
Cordelia hated the bike. She took every opportunity to complain about it. The helmet flattened her hair. Straddling the bike to sit hurt her legs, and she always felt like her shoes were going to fall off. All the people they passed on the road looked at her like some biker chick. Worst of all, the helmets and the noise of the wind made it impossible for her to criticize his driving. He was checking the tires when she marched out of her building in a short skirt, a halter top, and a foul look. "I'm not riding on that," she said.
"Enjoy your walk, then."
"You know, civilized people have another form of transportation. We call it a car. It has four wheels, and seats that don't give you a wedgie."
"All right, then. Why don't you go find Angel and ask him for the car keys. Last I saw him, he was alone in his room. With a headache. Be sure to mention that we're going to Caritas, and you're planning on getting smashed."
"I'll. . . go put on a pair of jeans."
"Better get a jacket, too. It's a bit windy."
She skulked back into the building and returned a few minutes later in a gray zip-up sweatshirt and blue jeans tight enough that they quite possibly left less to the imagination than the miniskirt. "Better?"
In reply, he started the engine. She climbed on, arranged her helmet, and wrapped her arms ruefully around his waist. It was late, but not late enough for the L.A. streets to have died. There was vampire fodder everywhere, drunk and careless, walking alone along the rows of darkened storefronts or loitering defenselessly, to be whisked away so fast their friends would never miss them. Men sat at red lights with the windows of their cars rolled down, smoking into the night air, begging to be yanked out soundlessly. Wesley carried a stake in an inner pocket of his leather jacket and a small steel knife in his boot; he knew that Cordy, at the very least, had a stake in her purse. It was all force of habit. Wesley tried to concentrate on the smell of the warm air, the slap of the wind against his face, the hum of the engine under his legs. But all he could see were demons and victims.
At the bar, Wesley managed to relax a bit. It had been cleaned up nicely, considering the time frame: the bar seemed to be about fifty per cent plywood, but the Host had bought new tables and chairs and replaced the skid-marked floor tiles. Wesley nursed a pint of Bass, keeping himself sober enough for the trip home. He was happy to let Cordy get herself bombed on Long Island Iced Teas; she needed it more than he did. They were actually having fun, cheering on the patrons who got up to sing even though the Host was nowhere to be seen. In between acts, they tried to one-up each other with demon-hunting stories. Cordy was in the middle of some fish story about a mummy that tried to suck the life out of Xander Harris when the Host emerged from the Staff Only door to talk to one of the bartenders. He looked pale and heavy-eyed, and he wore a cravat around his neck that had slipped to reveal a bandage. Wesley decided to leave the ailing demon in peace for now; he'd see if he could get back into the staff area once things died down.
A pair of Kreklar demons, their blue-silver skin shimmering in the stage lights, started to perform "Don't Go Breaking My Heart"; Cordelia weaved off in the direction of the bathroom. They weren't bad (the Kreklars, although the bathrooms were pretty nice, too) although Wesley felt that some Elton John songs were best forgotten. In any case, he was paying more attention to the music than to the rest of the bar, because he was startled to see the Host standing next to him.
"Mind if I sit down?" the Host asked.
"Of course. . . I mean, no, go ahead."
The Host pulled up a chair from a neighboring empty table.
"H-- how are you feeling?" said Wesley.
"Oh, it's good to be back in one piece again, believe me. It should only be a few more days before I'm in front of a crowd, where I belong."
"That's-- that's good to know." Wesley squinted through his empty glass. "Bar looks good. Considering."
"The bar looks like someone tried to drive a car through it, but it's getting there. Wesley, would you do me a favor?"
"Uh-- yes."
"After Mk'thaltha gets her not-so-latent desire to be Kiki Dee out of her system, would you sing a song for me?"
"Uh. . . I-- I--"
"Listen, there's something I want to know, something that I'm picking up halfway, and you're not going to tell me if I ask you. I tried to read you cold, but you're suppressing it, as usual."
"And this is supposed to make me *want* to humiliate myself in front of a full bar?"
"I put in a whole bunch of Bob Dylan songs just for you. It would be a shame not to put them to use."
"I thought you hated Bob Dylan. In fact, I seem to recall a rather long rant in which you referred to him as a whinging wannabe blues singer with unfortunate hair."
"Yes, but for some reason I cannot claim to comprehend, his so-called music moves you. I've spent a long time in your world, and I've found that most people here take music for granted. It plays in the background when you go shopping, or under the dialogue in films. But then, once in a while, I meet someone who lets it take hold of them, really get into their souls so it's part of them. I believe you're one of those people, and while I can neither account for nor agree with your taste, I know that I will be moved to hear you sing a song that has touched you in that way. I don't want to hear a Dylan song. I want to hear you sing one."
"All right," Wesley said softly, getting up to tell the bartender acting as temporary emcee that he would be next.
He recognized the selection of Dylan songs as the tracklist of the new greatest hits compilation. Thirty tracks were more than a kind gesture, but, naturally, the song that he would have wanted to sing wasn't there. Since Angel had first come on to him, he'd been humming "You're Going to Make Me Lonesome When You Go," as if the Powers That Be were trying to send him a message by planting a song in his head and hitting repeat. But that had never been a single, so it wasn't Essential Bob Dylan in the eyes of Sony Music Entertainment. There were two songs from Blood on the Tracks that were available, but "Tangled Up in Blue" seemed too painful, and "Shelter From the Storm" too bitter. He stewed over the remaining twenty-eight possibilities until the Kreklars finished their number and the emcee looked at him impatiently.
He blurted out a track number, not feeling it was at all the right one. The emcee punched the codes into the karaoke machine, and it groaned softly, its internal mechanisms exchanging discs within. "'Just Like a Woman'?" the emcee verified.
"Yes-- that's-- that's right."
"Okaaay," said the emcee.
The song's soft wheeze of harmonica and guitar began. The monitor read "INTRO," and the first line of the lyrics waited below, in gray letters. Wesley didn't need them; he knew the song by heart. Its words were like platitudes. He'd known them for so long that thinking about their meaning would be like analyzing the grammatical structure of "Thank you."
Cordelia made her way back to their table halfway through the first verse. The Host whispered something to her as she sat down. Wesley found himself singing the song to her, at first because it was easiest to look at someone who already found him so completely ridiculous that he couldn't lose any face. But somewhere in the first chorus, it hit. The whole song opened up. Whatever the song had been about in the first place, whatever girl had got so on Dylan's nerves that he'd needed to immortalize her in a four-and-a-half- minute sneer, it was now irreversibly about Cordelia Chase. Perhaps not about the current Cordy, mellowed by visions and an empty bank account, but certainly the Cordy he'd first met, the one who patrolled for vampires twice a week yet managed to believe that she was somehow above the world she'd stumbled into. She seemed to catch on, too, towards the end of the second verse. It started with a grin at "Everybody's guessed/ that baby can't be blessed" and had grown to all-out laughter by the end of "till she sees that she's like all the rest." As he watched her, Wesley returned to the original plan of singing on autopilot. She seemed after that to just be listening, but it was enough to get him through the rest of the song.
He was surprised by how loud the audience clapped. It was nothing more than courtesy, he told himself as he returned to his seat.
"That was really good," Cordelia hiccuped.
The Host patted him on the back. "You're not bad up there when you like the song enough to forget to be mortified."
"Thank you," muttered Wesley. He wished that he hadn't emptied his pint. "Did you find out what you wanted to know?"
"If you'll excuse us," the Host said to Cordelia. He took Wesley by the wrist and led him to a corner of the bar. "First of all," he said, "I want you to know that I'm jealous as all hell."
"Well. . ."
"Oh, don't worry about it. It's not as if I thought I really had a chance with Tall, Dark, and Brooding."
"You-- you don't know that."
"Honey, I do know that. I checked. But that's not the point. The point is that you're worried that you're going to hurt him, and that that's not a problem."
"It's. . . that's-- quite a relief, actually. If you mean. . ."
"Go ahead and fuck him blind. His soul's staying right where it is."
"But I thought--"
"The incident with the Slayer had nothing to do with sex, or at least nothing to do with the sexual act in and of itself. Anyone who thinks that an orgasm brings that kind of perfect happiness has some serious misconceptions about sex."
"I *had* always wondered about the timing," Wesley said. "The texts indicate that the spell should have been broken almost instantaneously, but Angel told me he spent at least an hour lying awake before anything happened."
"Besides, you've already made him come at least four times, and he hasn't started snapping the necks of small children yet."
"How did you--"
"It's a long song, sweetheart. And there's twenty-nine more where that came from-- no, twenty-eight, there's no way I'd get you to do 'Silvio.' I'm planning to live as vicariously as possible."
Wesley vowed silently that he would never sing in Caritas again. He had only become more resolute in this vow in the ensuing days, and now he was absolutely sure that he would not be gracing that stage except in case of an emergency so dire that the Host would be paying no attention to his sex life.
"Sorry," Angel said now, snapping Wesley back into the present. "I tried my best to wait, but-- that was good. Whatever you did, it was good."
"I, um, it's all right. I-- I mean, I was starting to-- to lose--"
Angel ran an unexpected and uncharacteristically warm hand up Wesley's thigh. He made a fist around Wesley's cock, which had faded to semierection, and slid his hand downwards like a jerk-off in slow motion. "I think," Angel said, teasing Wesley's foreskin with his thumb, "we're going to have to do something about that."
Before Wesley could respond, Angel filled his mouth with tongue. This distracted Wesley enough that the touch of Angel's freshly lube-soaked fingers on the inside of his thigh made him jerk backwards in surprise. Angel caught Wesley with his other hand and laid Wesley down gently on the increasingly damp bed. Angel began sucking on Wesley's neck, pulling at the tendons with his teeth; Wesley tried to put out of his mind the fact that he was lying pinned to a bed while a vampire bit his neck. It was getting hard to keep anything in his mind, really. Angel was caressing Wesley's nipples with one lubed hand and stroking his cock with the other, roaming a bit from time to time so Wesley felt like there were hands all over him. There was definitely lube all over him, from his sternum to the middle of his thighs. Wesley couldn't do much but lie there getting sticky and aroused, letting Angel go to work. He got dizzy, let himself moan and writhe at Angel's touch until it was more than enough and he gasped, "I'm really close-- maybe you should stop--"
Angel pulled back. "I don't have to."
"No, I want to-- you said that was what you wanted. I thought." Wesley sat up and pulled Angel toward him. "Now put your knees up like *that* and lie back a little-- yes. That ought to work."
"I thought you hadn't done this before."
"I've watched porn."
"Oh."
"So, if it's all right-- if you're comfortable--"
"I like this," Angel said. "I like looking at you."
"I like not having your ass in the air."
"That too."
Wesley pulled Angel's head down towards him for a kiss, and the kiss turned into more kisses. Wesley groped for the lube, and, finding it, quickly prepared a hand. He ran that hand up Angel's thigh to his ass and teased the opening for a while before slipping his index finger in. The first attempt had stretched Angel out a little, and relaxed his muscles, and Angel barely reacted even when Wesley added a second finger. Wesley moved his fingers around inside Angel, trying to loosen him up. He pulled his lips away from Angel's and inhaled deeply, steeling himself. "Are you-- are you ready?" he said softly.
"If you are," said Angel.
"I'm going to have to slide under you a bit. . ." He found a good angle and withdrew his preparatory fingers from Angel's ass. He used that hand to guide his cock into Angel's asshole. The sudden hot friction against the tip of his cock made him gasp with pleasure, but he felt Angel tense against him and stop pushing inward. Instead, he pulled back a bit and tried another gentle thrust. He got a little farther in this time. This seemed to be the way to go about things. Gradually. He pulled back and thrust in again, and repeated, trying to get a rhythm going, but slower than his body wanted. He had been close to orgasm when he'd started, and by now it was taking some self-control to keep himself from coming. He concentrated on his lover, on not moving so fast as to hurt Angel, and this kept him focused enough to buy him time. Angel grunted in time with each inward thrust, like a metronome for the perverse. He was more relaxed now, and Wesley found it easier to enter him more and more deeply. This was a good thing, as it was getting harder for him to hold back. His cock felt like it was on fire; all of him felt like it was on fire. Wait for it, he told himself. Wait for it. He made a mantra of that. WAIT for it. WAIT for it. WAIT for it. He was most of the way in now, and Angel started bucking and moaning again. Time to let it go. He put his hands on Angel's hips and thrust his cock in to the base. He let instinct take over, pull him back and forth fast and hard, and he was fucking Angel that way, and Angel was riding him and moaning, and the orgasm gathered in his chest, and he saw colors on the insides of his eyelids, and he came, and he came, hard and quiet, and he came. And there was definitely something to be said for letting it build up. And when it subsided, it was just in time to see Angel, Angel yelling with his head thrown back, sending a load of semen onto Wesley's stomach. Wesley withdrew his cock gently and let Angel recover.
"Thank you," Wesley said when he'd caught his breath. "For convincing me to do this."
"You didn't take much convincing."
Wesley kissed Angel's forehead. "I'll be right back. I need to, um, wash up."
"You're going to leave me all alone on this sticky bed?"
"I-- I need a minute."
"Okay." One of the nice things-- no, one of the wonderful things-- about being with Angel was that Angel understood the concept of needing a minute.
Wesley hopped down from the bed and padded to the bathroom. He shut the door and locked it. And unlocked it. It wasn't worth keeping things locked; anything bad enough to want to get in could break down the door. He washed his hands, humming a tune he couldn't place. He paid extra attention to the fingers of his right hand. Fifteen minutes earlier, he'd had those fingers up someone else's ass. Angel's ass, in fact. What was he humming? Maybe it was a Rolling Stones song. It didn't matter. He turned off the tap and dried his hands.
He got a shower going, but the water was icy. He hoped the water heater was on; he was not in the mood for a cold shower. No, it wasn't a Stones song. Too spare. Something from the seventies. The running water alerted his bladder, and having a piss seemed more useful than staring impatiently at the shower spray. He remembered not to flush. Flushing confused the hotel's old pipes. Christ, it was like some microscopic song demon had invaded his brain.
The water was hot now, and he stepped into the shower. The shower head had long since ceased to offer much water pressure, and the spray fell laconically. A pillow of pale green soap sat in a soap-shaped recess in the wall, and there was a bottle of shampoo on the triangle of ledge at one corner of the tub. This momentarily surprised Wesley, but he supposed that vampires attracted dirt like anyone else. The shampoo smelled musky and expensive. When Wesley used it, he would smell like Angel. And he could expect to smell like Angel frequently, if not permanently. He would have "vampire boyfriend" tattooed in his hair.
He squeezed a dollop of shampoo into his hand. It was a deep amber color that seemed inappropriate for a hair care product. He scrubbed it into his hair. The song in his head was something about ice cream. It was a song Cordelia liked, some woman with a breathy voice singing. He rinsed his hair and grabbed the soap to work on the rest of himself. Arms, shoulders, neck-- there was a tender spot that had to be purple by now. Armpits. Back. Chest, stomach, and the stickiness ran down him like he was being unwrapped. Thighs, knees, calves, feet. Ass. Cock last, because he knew he would spend more time on it. Not because it was, in reality, particularly in need of cleaning-- there had been nothing in or out of Angel's ass in over a hundred years-- but because, for reasons he couldn't put his finger on, it felt dirty. Enough that he had a serious thought about buying condoms, just to circumvent the squirmy feeling in his stomach implanted by years of informational flyers telling him to use protection or risk painful and premature death. And it stuck despite the myriad of ways that this was so not the issue anymore. He scrubbed hard, hard enough to give himself a little rise. Just a little one; Angel had tired him out. "Your love is better than ice cream," he half-hummed. Those were the only lyrics he knew.
He was about to turn off the water when Angel peered around the shower curtain.
Wesley startled. "I didn't hear the door," he said.
"I thought you might want some help," grinned Angel.
"I've-- I've already washed."
"Well-- how 'bout some company?"
"That would be. . . that would be nice."
Angel stepped into the shower and pulled Wesley toward him. The water ran over them and between them in the places where they didn't quite fit together. And Wesley realized that he had never before been with someone so close to his own height. There had always been some stooping over or standing on tiptoes, some uncomfortable sacrifice at the altar of kissing. A basic design flaw in every relationship he'd had, one only noticeable while flat on his feet, wet and pressed against the shower tile, seeing how comfortable and natural it felt to be able to look his lover in the eyes without contorting his neck.
Angel was starting to learn where Wesley liked to be touched. He was holding Wesley's waist with this hands as if trying to hold him in place, rubbing Wesley's belly in thumb- circles. Wesley had one hand on Angel's thigh, and the other, mostly for balance, at the back of Angel's neck. Angel widened the circles, roaming Wesley's stomach and thighs as they kissed. Wesley could feel himself getting aroused again, his cock just a bit harder, his heart just a bit fast. Angel dropped to his knees, suddenly enough that Wesley had to keep him from sliding across the tub. Wesley found himself automatically pushing Angel's head lower. He considered pushing Angel away, saying he was too tired and now might be a good time to change the sheets, but really, he decided, there weren't many better things than getting unexpectedly but consensually blown in the shower. And there was nothing to do but ride this for all it was worth.
Angel acquiesced to Wesley's hands and lowered his head slowly, trailing kisses down from Wesley's navel towards his cock. He drew his broad tongue along Wesley's erection and caressed the tip with his lips; then, he turned his attention to Wesley's balls, sucking at them, rolling them around with his tongue. Wesley could feel his arousal spreading-- blushing and tingling even in his feet-- but he was relaxed and sated, and the pleasure grew gently, without urgency. He could press his shoulders back against the tiles and memorize the warmth of Angel's mouth around his cock. And remind himself of one of the other benefits of having Angel as a lover: no gag reflex. Wesley wasn't sure if this was a vampire thing or something peculiar to Angel, but Angel could take Wesley's cock in so easily, without flinching, without worrying about remembering to breathe through his nose. So Wesley could push his cock against the smooth tissue of Angel's throat and hardly think about it-- instead concentrate on what Angel was doing. He had little tricks with his tongue and lips and teeth, little ways of waking up a small section of Wesley's cock at a time. Of making the geared-in parts of a blow job more than the repetitive act of fucking. And tonight (this morning) went slow enough that Wesley could pay attention. He could let it be like kissing. The synesthesia of close-to-coming took over slowly, and the smell of the water was so strong and he shut his eyes so tight and the orgasm ripped, ripped violetly and whitely between his shoulders, and he slipped in the tub, and Angel caught him. And Wesley pulled back from Angel, and he breathed, and he breathed.
"Are you all right?" Angel asked, rising from his knees.
"Mmm-hmm."
"Should I shut off the water?"
"Mmm-hmm."
They dried off, and went to change the now-crusty sheets in what narrowly avoided becoming a round of naked bed wrestling. Wesley glanced at the clock by the bed; it would be dawn soon. He padded over to the window to close the shade. He stood for a moment, sleepy, daydreaming. "Here you go, L.A.," he said to himself. "Full frontal nudity." On a slow day at the office, soon after Angel had returned from what Cordy had been referring to lately as his Rambo Phase, Wesley and Gunn had rigged the shade with magnets, so that Angel could sleep through the morning without cowering under a thick blanket. With the city lights blocked out, Wesley had to feel his way back to the bed. He slid between the fresh, cool sheets and curled up, more than ready to drift off.
"Wesley."
"Mmm?"
"Don't go to sleep."
"I'm too tired to do it again."
"No, I just don't want you to go to sleep."
"Oh?"
"Because I've been thinking a lot. About what happened with Darla and about you and me now. And I think I've got it figured out."
"Got what figured out?"
"How I lost my soul."
"Oh. That." Wesley restrained himself from asking whether they could postpone this conversation until he was less than half asleep, or perhaps indefinitely.
"She was asleep. She looked beautiful like that, innocent. I was lying there listening to her breathe. And she had me, and she wasn't afraid to be with me. And it seemed like nothing in the world could get in the way of that. It was like nothing existed but her. And she made me completely happy. So. Bam. Perfect happiness."
"So I'm not allowed to go to sleep because it'll make you too happy?"
"I honestly doubt that, but I'm not willing to take the chance."
"Oh, well, thanks."
"No-- no, the whole point is that you're different. You keep my feet on the ground. I want you to keep me there."
Wesley smiled. He could be that: feet on the ground. "I promise that if I see you getting the least bit moony-eyed, I'll remind you of exactly how much debt we're in."
They talked for about an hour, about the agency, about nothing. Finally, as fingers of dawn didn't penetrate Angel's bedroom window, Angel kissed Wesley good morning and rolled over to sleep. Wesley watched him for a while, listening to him not breathe, feeling the blood not pulse under his cool skin. He could have this, he told himself, and be happy, but not perfectly happy. And he could sleep well, that way.
TITLE: Shelter
FANDOM: Angel: The Series
PAIRING: Angel/Wesley
RATING: NC-17 for porn
SPOILERS: S2 of Angel.
SUMMARY: Variations on a Bob Dylan song.
WORD COUNT: 6,721
DISCLAIMERS: Angel: The Series is held under copyright by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions, among others. This original work of fan fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License; attribution should include a link to this Livejournal post. This story is a labor of love, not money, so it's protected in the USA by the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976. Play ball!
NOTES: Many, many thanks to ashfae and callmesandy for the betas. I have not mentioned recently enough that you guys rock. Additional thanks go to thsfuhqinsux for the inspiring conversations, and to allmusic.com for doing just what it says on the tin.
*
"There are those who worship loneliness, I'm not one of them,
In this age of fiberglass I'm searching for a gem.
The crystal ball up on the wall hasn't shown me nothing yet,
I've paid the price of solitude, but at least I'm out of debt."
-- Bob Dylan, "Dirge"
*
The window shade was up. Wesley was snogging Angel, and he should have been appreciating it, but no, the shade was up, and it was all he could think about. It felt like Angel's tongue could reach all the way down into his throat, kiss his larynx, his esophagus, his carotid arteries. And all of L. A. could watch if it wanted. Watch him kiss Angel. Angel who smelled mostly of cologne but slightly of blood, who raised the window shades at night because if he couldn't have sunlight, he would at least let the moonlight in. Angel, who was afraid of the dark, and who was kissing him.
Angel pulled back with a smack of released suction. "What?"
"It's. . . it's nothing." Wesley was gasping for breath, which Angel was, of course, not.
"It's something."
"The window. The window shade."
"I'll close it. It's all right."
"No, it doesn't matter, it's-- who would be watching? And if they're watching, you know, it would be a compliment. To be worth watching."
"Spoken like a true Watcher."
"Tell it to the Watchers' Council."
"No." Angel grinned.
"No?"
"No, I want you all to myself."
Wesley looked down and away, feeling his cheeks redden.
"No, I want--" Angel ran his hand down Wesley's face.
Wesley leaned forward and kissed Angel's mouth gently. "That?"
"Something like that."
They resumed in shallow, loose kisses. Wesley started unbuttoning Angel's shirt, a task made doubly difficult by the fact that his glasses were over on the nightstand. Not that Angel would let him look down even if he could see. Wesley pushed Angel's arms away to pull the shirt off of him, and Angel let the momentum push him back against the bed. Wesley dragged his own shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor. He bellyflopped onto the bed and he and Angel were wrestling, kissing deep, sliding out of their undershirts and unzipping each other's jeans. Angel's shoulders tasted like warm salt, which Wesley supposed was good to know.
"Wait a minute," said Angel, retreating again. "Sorry." He sat up and began pulling off his socks. "I can't have sex with socks on. It's too silly." Wesley nodded and removed his own socks. This was a good moment for it, at least.
This whole business was silly. It was ridiculous. Any moment now, Angel would notice this and call the whole thing off. He would remember how it started, on the sofa in Wesley's apartment a week earlier, the night after they returned from Pylea. Angel was sulking, staring out at the moonlight, ignoring his coffee. "Sometimes, I wish I never saw the sunshine."
"Phil Spector wrote it... recorded by, um, The Crystals. No, the Ronettes."
"Please, let's not play this now." The Host had started them on this game, trying to get their minds off waiting. One player says the title of a song; someone else has to name the artist. Mind-numbing, damned difficult, makes you want to kill everyone else playing. In other words, it was a perfect distraction.
"You started it."
"Sorry, I. . . I miss it."
"I know."
"I'd forgotten. Things smell different in sunlight. It's like I'd been living in a room with a funny smell, and I finally left it and thought, 'Wow! That's what the world is supposed to smell like!' And the light. The sheer brightness. The way it makes your eyes ache. . . I'd forgotten I even missed that. That white light--"
All Wesley could think at this point was, "Please don't say 'White heat,'" because then he was going to have to say "Velvet Underground" back, and all semblance of seriousness would be lost. And he wanted to be sympathetic. He was starting to care about Angel's morose bullshit for the first time in a long time, and he wanted to keep caring.
"I know what you're thinking," said Angel.
"What-- what am I thinking?"
"Velvet Underground."
"But you didn't say it. You didn't finish."
"But we were both thinking it."
"I thought we weren't playing this game."
"I think," Angel said, "we're playing the game, even if we decide we're not playing the game."
"All right, then. 'Walk Away Renee.'"
"I didn't mean we were actually playing."
"Oh."
"The Four Tops."
"What?"
"The Four Tops recorded 'Walk Away Renee.'"
"No they didn't. It was Left Banke. They're not even the same genre."
"Yes they did. Vastly superior to the Left Banke version, too. I know these things. I celebrated my 240th birthday the year it was released. You, on the other hand, were a toddler in 1967."
"Infant."
"Further strengthening my point."
"Well, if you're going to play rough..."
"I want you."
"Oh, for goodness' sake, that's every band on the planet. Let's see-- Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Marvin Gaye, Elvis Costello..."
"Barry White."
"Animotion."
"LL Cool J. I meant that."
"You--"
"Al Jarreau and R.E.M. Listen. I'm probably going to spend all morning lying awake, thinking that I'm only saying this because I'm lonely. Since the whole business with Darla, I feel like I've been running around in circles. . . And I keep thinking that I'm only thinking this because you're convenient. Because you're here, and for some reason I can't begin to understand you don't resent me. You take my mind off things. And it would be so easy--"
Wesley stood up sharply. "Well, it's nice to know that I'm wanted. If only as a convenience." He turned to walk out, then realized that this was his own apartment. "I--"
"I should leave now, shouldn't I?"
"Probably."
Angel rose and started making his way around the sofa towards the door. And they were accidentally facing each other. Wesley grabbed Angel's wrist, stopping him. "What was it-- what was it you wanted me for?"
"I don't know."
"'"Come in," she said,'" said Wesley, pulling Angel in by the wrist, throwing him off balance. "'"I'll give you shelter from the storm."'"
"Dylan again."
And they kissed. The kisses didn't start like kissing started, with those soft testing brushes of the lips. They were consumptive kisses, the kind that left you dry, with no skin left on the roof of your mouth. They were kisses the way kisses were when you were twelve years old and didn't know how to do anything but kiss. And now Wesley was kissing Angel that way again, now that Angel had taken his socks off, kissing him like he had every night for the past week. They had slid into the habit as if they'd been lovers forever. Like a pair of old socks. Wesley slid a hand down Angel's thigh; Angel was halfway to bursting out of his boxer briefs. Wesley slipped his fingers under the waistband and began rolling the briefs slowly off Angel, who was sucking on his neck hard enough to leave marks. Angel wriggled the rest of the way out of his underwear. "Hang on," he said.
"What's wrong?"
"You're going to go down on me. I don't want you to go down on me."
"Am I-- am I really that bad?"
"No, you're wonderful, it's-- I want you-- There's not a good way to phrase this. There isn't." He sighed. "I want you to fuck me."
"You want me to. . .?"
"To. Um. Penetrate me."
"Oh. Ohhhh."
Angel was rummaging in the drawer of his nightstand. Wesley dropped his own briefs on the growing pile of discarded clothing, which crouched on the floor like a dark, embarrassed dog. Angel tossed a mostly-full squeezebottle of Astroglide in Wesley's general direction. "I'm sorry," Angel said. "I haven't got any condoms. It's. . . not something a vampire normally needs. If you don't feel comfortable--"
Wesley was still getting his head around the whole idea. The question of latex had perhaps entered Wesley's mind, but it was waiting in the customer service line somewhere behind, "He wants me to fuck him? He wants me to fuck him. He wants me to fuck him. Fuck." This was not what was bothering him. Besides, vampires couldn't carry diseases. It would be clean enough. Safe. "That's--" Wesley said-- "it should be all right."
Angel banged the drawer shut and turned to face Wesley. "If you don't want to do this, we don't have to."
"I-- I do," Wesley heard himself say. "It's just-- you know I've been with men before-- I messed around at university, but I've never done-- I've never trusted anyone enough. I've never done this before."
"I trust you," Angel said.
Wesley didn't know what to say. There was nothing to say to that, or at least nothing that he was sure was true.
"We'll go slow," Angel continued. "We'll have to. I haven't done this in. . . oh, a hundred and twenty years."
"That's a long time," said Wesley.
"Yeah. I think I might be a little tight."
Wesley let himself laugh, and they were both laughing, twined naked on the dark sheets in the moonlight. Angel rolled over the lube, which made an impatient blooping sound and made them laugh harder. Wesley realized that he was calm. Calm and aroused. He could do this.
He reached under Angel for the lube, which had popped open and left a damp, gooey spot on the sheet. "Fingers first?" he asked Angel, who was lying patiently, propped on one elbow.
"Probably a good idea."
Wesley squeezed himself a handful of lube and coated his hands with it. He felt like he was preparing to fingerpaint. "Ready?"
Angel pulled himself up onto his hands and knees. "This'll probably be easier." He looked silly, and the position made it difficult for Wesley to reach anything but his ass. Wesley couldn't come up with a better idea, though, so he moved towards Angel, careful not to touch anything with his lube-soaked hands. He began kissing and nipping at Angel's back, trying to prepare himself as much as Angel. He counted the constellations of brown birthmarks, just visible in the blend of moonlight and myopia. Focused, the air chilling the goo on his fingers, Wesley ran his tongue slowly down Angel's spine, sliding, as he did so, the fingers of one hand between the cheeks of Angel's ass. Angel shuddered and made what sounded like a pleased noise. Wesley teased Angel's asshole with his fingers. Tired of trying to hold his lube-soaked left hand out of the way, Wesley reached underneath and started playing with Angel's cock and balls, coating them with lube. Cautiously, he slid his index finger into Angel's ass. Angel's knees buckled.
"Let me know if I should--" said Wesley.
"No, it's good. It's good."
Wesley moved his finger slowly in and out against the tight muscles of Angel's asshole, feeling them release slightly more each time he crossed them. He found the round bead of Angel's prostate and brushed against it tentatively; Angel responded with a soft moan. He was relaxing, letting Wesley in. Wesley realized he was neglecting Angel's cock, and that Angel did not seem to mind this; he gave up on trying to do more than one thing at once and rested his left hand against Angel's thigh for leverage. He inhaled deeply and slid his middle finger inside to join the first. Wesley could move his fingers in smoother strokes now, and thrust more deeply. He found an angle at which he could rub firmly against Angel's prostate with every inward push, a discovery which Angel rewarded with an accompaniment of rhythmic happy grunts. Angel was an inarticulate lover, but not a quiet one, and he seemed to answer each of Wesley's new movements with some matching animal noise. Wesley mused that it was really no more difficult to interpret than some of the more obscure demon languages. He almost stifled a laugh.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"No. What?"
"Stray thought. Never mind." Feeling brave, Wesley added a third finger.
"Ow! Kee-rist!"
"Sorry," Wesley said tinily.
"No. Okay. Keep going."
Wesley kept up the back-and-forth motion, although it was tighter and more difficult now. He groped for the bottle of lube with his free hand. He popped it open with his teeth and squeezed a bit onto the rim of Angel's asshole so that his own fingers would pick it up. Angel was bucking against him now, moaning louder. This seemed to be a good time for Wesley to replace fingers with cock, but he had lost too much of his erection, and besides, Angel was moaning like the secret basso profundo language of elephants, jerking back and upwards, either very close or doing an Oscar-worthy job of faking it. Angel came moving hard backward, and if Wesley hadn't known better, he would have thought that was it for Angel's soul.
***
Three days earlier, he'd gone to Caritas for its grand re-opening. Cordelia was bristling with cabin fever, and she wanted to see how the Host was doing. Somehow, as usual, it was Wesley whom she persuaded to take her there. He didn't mind, really. It was a clear, warm night, suffused with breeze, and it had been too long since he'd had a chance to take the bike out. He'd learned that owning a motorcycle was much like owning a dog: it needed regular exercise or it started to misbehave. He began a maintenance check outside the building where she lived, squinting in the streetlamp light at the various gears and mechanisms to make sure nothing was obviously awry, killing time until Cordelia weaned herself from the mirror.
Cordelia hated the bike. She took every opportunity to complain about it. The helmet flattened her hair. Straddling the bike to sit hurt her legs, and she always felt like her shoes were going to fall off. All the people they passed on the road looked at her like some biker chick. Worst of all, the helmets and the noise of the wind made it impossible for her to criticize his driving. He was checking the tires when she marched out of her building in a short skirt, a halter top, and a foul look. "I'm not riding on that," she said.
"Enjoy your walk, then."
"You know, civilized people have another form of transportation. We call it a car. It has four wheels, and seats that don't give you a wedgie."
"All right, then. Why don't you go find Angel and ask him for the car keys. Last I saw him, he was alone in his room. With a headache. Be sure to mention that we're going to Caritas, and you're planning on getting smashed."
"I'll. . . go put on a pair of jeans."
"Better get a jacket, too. It's a bit windy."
She skulked back into the building and returned a few minutes later in a gray zip-up sweatshirt and blue jeans tight enough that they quite possibly left less to the imagination than the miniskirt. "Better?"
In reply, he started the engine. She climbed on, arranged her helmet, and wrapped her arms ruefully around his waist. It was late, but not late enough for the L.A. streets to have died. There was vampire fodder everywhere, drunk and careless, walking alone along the rows of darkened storefronts or loitering defenselessly, to be whisked away so fast their friends would never miss them. Men sat at red lights with the windows of their cars rolled down, smoking into the night air, begging to be yanked out soundlessly. Wesley carried a stake in an inner pocket of his leather jacket and a small steel knife in his boot; he knew that Cordy, at the very least, had a stake in her purse. It was all force of habit. Wesley tried to concentrate on the smell of the warm air, the slap of the wind against his face, the hum of the engine under his legs. But all he could see were demons and victims.
At the bar, Wesley managed to relax a bit. It had been cleaned up nicely, considering the time frame: the bar seemed to be about fifty per cent plywood, but the Host had bought new tables and chairs and replaced the skid-marked floor tiles. Wesley nursed a pint of Bass, keeping himself sober enough for the trip home. He was happy to let Cordy get herself bombed on Long Island Iced Teas; she needed it more than he did. They were actually having fun, cheering on the patrons who got up to sing even though the Host was nowhere to be seen. In between acts, they tried to one-up each other with demon-hunting stories. Cordy was in the middle of some fish story about a mummy that tried to suck the life out of Xander Harris when the Host emerged from the Staff Only door to talk to one of the bartenders. He looked pale and heavy-eyed, and he wore a cravat around his neck that had slipped to reveal a bandage. Wesley decided to leave the ailing demon in peace for now; he'd see if he could get back into the staff area once things died down.
A pair of Kreklar demons, their blue-silver skin shimmering in the stage lights, started to perform "Don't Go Breaking My Heart"; Cordelia weaved off in the direction of the bathroom. They weren't bad (the Kreklars, although the bathrooms were pretty nice, too) although Wesley felt that some Elton John songs were best forgotten. In any case, he was paying more attention to the music than to the rest of the bar, because he was startled to see the Host standing next to him.
"Mind if I sit down?" the Host asked.
"Of course. . . I mean, no, go ahead."
The Host pulled up a chair from a neighboring empty table.
"H-- how are you feeling?" said Wesley.
"Oh, it's good to be back in one piece again, believe me. It should only be a few more days before I'm in front of a crowd, where I belong."
"That's-- that's good to know." Wesley squinted through his empty glass. "Bar looks good. Considering."
"The bar looks like someone tried to drive a car through it, but it's getting there. Wesley, would you do me a favor?"
"Uh-- yes."
"After Mk'thaltha gets her not-so-latent desire to be Kiki Dee out of her system, would you sing a song for me?"
"Uh. . . I-- I--"
"Listen, there's something I want to know, something that I'm picking up halfway, and you're not going to tell me if I ask you. I tried to read you cold, but you're suppressing it, as usual."
"And this is supposed to make me *want* to humiliate myself in front of a full bar?"
"I put in a whole bunch of Bob Dylan songs just for you. It would be a shame not to put them to use."
"I thought you hated Bob Dylan. In fact, I seem to recall a rather long rant in which you referred to him as a whinging wannabe blues singer with unfortunate hair."
"Yes, but for some reason I cannot claim to comprehend, his so-called music moves you. I've spent a long time in your world, and I've found that most people here take music for granted. It plays in the background when you go shopping, or under the dialogue in films. But then, once in a while, I meet someone who lets it take hold of them, really get into their souls so it's part of them. I believe you're one of those people, and while I can neither account for nor agree with your taste, I know that I will be moved to hear you sing a song that has touched you in that way. I don't want to hear a Dylan song. I want to hear you sing one."
"All right," Wesley said softly, getting up to tell the bartender acting as temporary emcee that he would be next.
He recognized the selection of Dylan songs as the tracklist of the new greatest hits compilation. Thirty tracks were more than a kind gesture, but, naturally, the song that he would have wanted to sing wasn't there. Since Angel had first come on to him, he'd been humming "You're Going to Make Me Lonesome When You Go," as if the Powers That Be were trying to send him a message by planting a song in his head and hitting repeat. But that had never been a single, so it wasn't Essential Bob Dylan in the eyes of Sony Music Entertainment. There were two songs from Blood on the Tracks that were available, but "Tangled Up in Blue" seemed too painful, and "Shelter From the Storm" too bitter. He stewed over the remaining twenty-eight possibilities until the Kreklars finished their number and the emcee looked at him impatiently.
He blurted out a track number, not feeling it was at all the right one. The emcee punched the codes into the karaoke machine, and it groaned softly, its internal mechanisms exchanging discs within. "'Just Like a Woman'?" the emcee verified.
"Yes-- that's-- that's right."
"Okaaay," said the emcee.
The song's soft wheeze of harmonica and guitar began. The monitor read "INTRO," and the first line of the lyrics waited below, in gray letters. Wesley didn't need them; he knew the song by heart. Its words were like platitudes. He'd known them for so long that thinking about their meaning would be like analyzing the grammatical structure of "Thank you."
Cordelia made her way back to their table halfway through the first verse. The Host whispered something to her as she sat down. Wesley found himself singing the song to her, at first because it was easiest to look at someone who already found him so completely ridiculous that he couldn't lose any face. But somewhere in the first chorus, it hit. The whole song opened up. Whatever the song had been about in the first place, whatever girl had got so on Dylan's nerves that he'd needed to immortalize her in a four-and-a-half- minute sneer, it was now irreversibly about Cordelia Chase. Perhaps not about the current Cordy, mellowed by visions and an empty bank account, but certainly the Cordy he'd first met, the one who patrolled for vampires twice a week yet managed to believe that she was somehow above the world she'd stumbled into. She seemed to catch on, too, towards the end of the second verse. It started with a grin at "Everybody's guessed/ that baby can't be blessed" and had grown to all-out laughter by the end of "till she sees that she's like all the rest." As he watched her, Wesley returned to the original plan of singing on autopilot. She seemed after that to just be listening, but it was enough to get him through the rest of the song.
He was surprised by how loud the audience clapped. It was nothing more than courtesy, he told himself as he returned to his seat.
"That was really good," Cordelia hiccuped.
The Host patted him on the back. "You're not bad up there when you like the song enough to forget to be mortified."
"Thank you," muttered Wesley. He wished that he hadn't emptied his pint. "Did you find out what you wanted to know?"
"If you'll excuse us," the Host said to Cordelia. He took Wesley by the wrist and led him to a corner of the bar. "First of all," he said, "I want you to know that I'm jealous as all hell."
"Well. . ."
"Oh, don't worry about it. It's not as if I thought I really had a chance with Tall, Dark, and Brooding."
"You-- you don't know that."
"Honey, I do know that. I checked. But that's not the point. The point is that you're worried that you're going to hurt him, and that that's not a problem."
"It's. . . that's-- quite a relief, actually. If you mean. . ."
"Go ahead and fuck him blind. His soul's staying right where it is."
"But I thought--"
"The incident with the Slayer had nothing to do with sex, or at least nothing to do with the sexual act in and of itself. Anyone who thinks that an orgasm brings that kind of perfect happiness has some serious misconceptions about sex."
"I *had* always wondered about the timing," Wesley said. "The texts indicate that the spell should have been broken almost instantaneously, but Angel told me he spent at least an hour lying awake before anything happened."
"Besides, you've already made him come at least four times, and he hasn't started snapping the necks of small children yet."
"How did you--"
"It's a long song, sweetheart. And there's twenty-nine more where that came from-- no, twenty-eight, there's no way I'd get you to do 'Silvio.' I'm planning to live as vicariously as possible."
Wesley vowed silently that he would never sing in Caritas again. He had only become more resolute in this vow in the ensuing days, and now he was absolutely sure that he would not be gracing that stage except in case of an emergency so dire that the Host would be paying no attention to his sex life.
"Sorry," Angel said now, snapping Wesley back into the present. "I tried my best to wait, but-- that was good. Whatever you did, it was good."
"I, um, it's all right. I-- I mean, I was starting to-- to lose--"
Angel ran an unexpected and uncharacteristically warm hand up Wesley's thigh. He made a fist around Wesley's cock, which had faded to semierection, and slid his hand downwards like a jerk-off in slow motion. "I think," Angel said, teasing Wesley's foreskin with his thumb, "we're going to have to do something about that."
Before Wesley could respond, Angel filled his mouth with tongue. This distracted Wesley enough that the touch of Angel's freshly lube-soaked fingers on the inside of his thigh made him jerk backwards in surprise. Angel caught Wesley with his other hand and laid Wesley down gently on the increasingly damp bed. Angel began sucking on Wesley's neck, pulling at the tendons with his teeth; Wesley tried to put out of his mind the fact that he was lying pinned to a bed while a vampire bit his neck. It was getting hard to keep anything in his mind, really. Angel was caressing Wesley's nipples with one lubed hand and stroking his cock with the other, roaming a bit from time to time so Wesley felt like there were hands all over him. There was definitely lube all over him, from his sternum to the middle of his thighs. Wesley couldn't do much but lie there getting sticky and aroused, letting Angel go to work. He got dizzy, let himself moan and writhe at Angel's touch until it was more than enough and he gasped, "I'm really close-- maybe you should stop--"
Angel pulled back. "I don't have to."
"No, I want to-- you said that was what you wanted. I thought." Wesley sat up and pulled Angel toward him. "Now put your knees up like *that* and lie back a little-- yes. That ought to work."
"I thought you hadn't done this before."
"I've watched porn."
"Oh."
"So, if it's all right-- if you're comfortable--"
"I like this," Angel said. "I like looking at you."
"I like not having your ass in the air."
"That too."
Wesley pulled Angel's head down towards him for a kiss, and the kiss turned into more kisses. Wesley groped for the lube, and, finding it, quickly prepared a hand. He ran that hand up Angel's thigh to his ass and teased the opening for a while before slipping his index finger in. The first attempt had stretched Angel out a little, and relaxed his muscles, and Angel barely reacted even when Wesley added a second finger. Wesley moved his fingers around inside Angel, trying to loosen him up. He pulled his lips away from Angel's and inhaled deeply, steeling himself. "Are you-- are you ready?" he said softly.
"If you are," said Angel.
"I'm going to have to slide under you a bit. . ." He found a good angle and withdrew his preparatory fingers from Angel's ass. He used that hand to guide his cock into Angel's asshole. The sudden hot friction against the tip of his cock made him gasp with pleasure, but he felt Angel tense against him and stop pushing inward. Instead, he pulled back a bit and tried another gentle thrust. He got a little farther in this time. This seemed to be the way to go about things. Gradually. He pulled back and thrust in again, and repeated, trying to get a rhythm going, but slower than his body wanted. He had been close to orgasm when he'd started, and by now it was taking some self-control to keep himself from coming. He concentrated on his lover, on not moving so fast as to hurt Angel, and this kept him focused enough to buy him time. Angel grunted in time with each inward thrust, like a metronome for the perverse. He was more relaxed now, and Wesley found it easier to enter him more and more deeply. This was a good thing, as it was getting harder for him to hold back. His cock felt like it was on fire; all of him felt like it was on fire. Wait for it, he told himself. Wait for it. He made a mantra of that. WAIT for it. WAIT for it. WAIT for it. He was most of the way in now, and Angel started bucking and moaning again. Time to let it go. He put his hands on Angel's hips and thrust his cock in to the base. He let instinct take over, pull him back and forth fast and hard, and he was fucking Angel that way, and Angel was riding him and moaning, and the orgasm gathered in his chest, and he saw colors on the insides of his eyelids, and he came, and he came, hard and quiet, and he came. And there was definitely something to be said for letting it build up. And when it subsided, it was just in time to see Angel, Angel yelling with his head thrown back, sending a load of semen onto Wesley's stomach. Wesley withdrew his cock gently and let Angel recover.
"Thank you," Wesley said when he'd caught his breath. "For convincing me to do this."
"You didn't take much convincing."
Wesley kissed Angel's forehead. "I'll be right back. I need to, um, wash up."
"You're going to leave me all alone on this sticky bed?"
"I-- I need a minute."
"Okay." One of the nice things-- no, one of the wonderful things-- about being with Angel was that Angel understood the concept of needing a minute.
Wesley hopped down from the bed and padded to the bathroom. He shut the door and locked it. And unlocked it. It wasn't worth keeping things locked; anything bad enough to want to get in could break down the door. He washed his hands, humming a tune he couldn't place. He paid extra attention to the fingers of his right hand. Fifteen minutes earlier, he'd had those fingers up someone else's ass. Angel's ass, in fact. What was he humming? Maybe it was a Rolling Stones song. It didn't matter. He turned off the tap and dried his hands.
He got a shower going, but the water was icy. He hoped the water heater was on; he was not in the mood for a cold shower. No, it wasn't a Stones song. Too spare. Something from the seventies. The running water alerted his bladder, and having a piss seemed more useful than staring impatiently at the shower spray. He remembered not to flush. Flushing confused the hotel's old pipes. Christ, it was like some microscopic song demon had invaded his brain.
The water was hot now, and he stepped into the shower. The shower head had long since ceased to offer much water pressure, and the spray fell laconically. A pillow of pale green soap sat in a soap-shaped recess in the wall, and there was a bottle of shampoo on the triangle of ledge at one corner of the tub. This momentarily surprised Wesley, but he supposed that vampires attracted dirt like anyone else. The shampoo smelled musky and expensive. When Wesley used it, he would smell like Angel. And he could expect to smell like Angel frequently, if not permanently. He would have "vampire boyfriend" tattooed in his hair.
He squeezed a dollop of shampoo into his hand. It was a deep amber color that seemed inappropriate for a hair care product. He scrubbed it into his hair. The song in his head was something about ice cream. It was a song Cordelia liked, some woman with a breathy voice singing. He rinsed his hair and grabbed the soap to work on the rest of himself. Arms, shoulders, neck-- there was a tender spot that had to be purple by now. Armpits. Back. Chest, stomach, and the stickiness ran down him like he was being unwrapped. Thighs, knees, calves, feet. Ass. Cock last, because he knew he would spend more time on it. Not because it was, in reality, particularly in need of cleaning-- there had been nothing in or out of Angel's ass in over a hundred years-- but because, for reasons he couldn't put his finger on, it felt dirty. Enough that he had a serious thought about buying condoms, just to circumvent the squirmy feeling in his stomach implanted by years of informational flyers telling him to use protection or risk painful and premature death. And it stuck despite the myriad of ways that this was so not the issue anymore. He scrubbed hard, hard enough to give himself a little rise. Just a little one; Angel had tired him out. "Your love is better than ice cream," he half-hummed. Those were the only lyrics he knew.
He was about to turn off the water when Angel peered around the shower curtain.
Wesley startled. "I didn't hear the door," he said.
"I thought you might want some help," grinned Angel.
"I've-- I've already washed."
"Well-- how 'bout some company?"
"That would be. . . that would be nice."
Angel stepped into the shower and pulled Wesley toward him. The water ran over them and between them in the places where they didn't quite fit together. And Wesley realized that he had never before been with someone so close to his own height. There had always been some stooping over or standing on tiptoes, some uncomfortable sacrifice at the altar of kissing. A basic design flaw in every relationship he'd had, one only noticeable while flat on his feet, wet and pressed against the shower tile, seeing how comfortable and natural it felt to be able to look his lover in the eyes without contorting his neck.
Angel was starting to learn where Wesley liked to be touched. He was holding Wesley's waist with this hands as if trying to hold him in place, rubbing Wesley's belly in thumb- circles. Wesley had one hand on Angel's thigh, and the other, mostly for balance, at the back of Angel's neck. Angel widened the circles, roaming Wesley's stomach and thighs as they kissed. Wesley could feel himself getting aroused again, his cock just a bit harder, his heart just a bit fast. Angel dropped to his knees, suddenly enough that Wesley had to keep him from sliding across the tub. Wesley found himself automatically pushing Angel's head lower. He considered pushing Angel away, saying he was too tired and now might be a good time to change the sheets, but really, he decided, there weren't many better things than getting unexpectedly but consensually blown in the shower. And there was nothing to do but ride this for all it was worth.
Angel acquiesced to Wesley's hands and lowered his head slowly, trailing kisses down from Wesley's navel towards his cock. He drew his broad tongue along Wesley's erection and caressed the tip with his lips; then, he turned his attention to Wesley's balls, sucking at them, rolling them around with his tongue. Wesley could feel his arousal spreading-- blushing and tingling even in his feet-- but he was relaxed and sated, and the pleasure grew gently, without urgency. He could press his shoulders back against the tiles and memorize the warmth of Angel's mouth around his cock. And remind himself of one of the other benefits of having Angel as a lover: no gag reflex. Wesley wasn't sure if this was a vampire thing or something peculiar to Angel, but Angel could take Wesley's cock in so easily, without flinching, without worrying about remembering to breathe through his nose. So Wesley could push his cock against the smooth tissue of Angel's throat and hardly think about it-- instead concentrate on what Angel was doing. He had little tricks with his tongue and lips and teeth, little ways of waking up a small section of Wesley's cock at a time. Of making the geared-in parts of a blow job more than the repetitive act of fucking. And tonight (this morning) went slow enough that Wesley could pay attention. He could let it be like kissing. The synesthesia of close-to-coming took over slowly, and the smell of the water was so strong and he shut his eyes so tight and the orgasm ripped, ripped violetly and whitely between his shoulders, and he slipped in the tub, and Angel caught him. And Wesley pulled back from Angel, and he breathed, and he breathed.
"Are you all right?" Angel asked, rising from his knees.
"Mmm-hmm."
"Should I shut off the water?"
"Mmm-hmm."
They dried off, and went to change the now-crusty sheets in what narrowly avoided becoming a round of naked bed wrestling. Wesley glanced at the clock by the bed; it would be dawn soon. He padded over to the window to close the shade. He stood for a moment, sleepy, daydreaming. "Here you go, L.A.," he said to himself. "Full frontal nudity." On a slow day at the office, soon after Angel had returned from what Cordy had been referring to lately as his Rambo Phase, Wesley and Gunn had rigged the shade with magnets, so that Angel could sleep through the morning without cowering under a thick blanket. With the city lights blocked out, Wesley had to feel his way back to the bed. He slid between the fresh, cool sheets and curled up, more than ready to drift off.
"Wesley."
"Mmm?"
"Don't go to sleep."
"I'm too tired to do it again."
"No, I just don't want you to go to sleep."
"Oh?"
"Because I've been thinking a lot. About what happened with Darla and about you and me now. And I think I've got it figured out."
"Got what figured out?"
"How I lost my soul."
"Oh. That." Wesley restrained himself from asking whether they could postpone this conversation until he was less than half asleep, or perhaps indefinitely.
"She was asleep. She looked beautiful like that, innocent. I was lying there listening to her breathe. And she had me, and she wasn't afraid to be with me. And it seemed like nothing in the world could get in the way of that. It was like nothing existed but her. And she made me completely happy. So. Bam. Perfect happiness."
"So I'm not allowed to go to sleep because it'll make you too happy?"
"I honestly doubt that, but I'm not willing to take the chance."
"Oh, well, thanks."
"No-- no, the whole point is that you're different. You keep my feet on the ground. I want you to keep me there."
Wesley smiled. He could be that: feet on the ground. "I promise that if I see you getting the least bit moony-eyed, I'll remind you of exactly how much debt we're in."
They talked for about an hour, about the agency, about nothing. Finally, as fingers of dawn didn't penetrate Angel's bedroom window, Angel kissed Wesley good morning and rolled over to sleep. Wesley watched him for a while, listening to him not breathe, feeling the blood not pulse under his cool skin. He could have this, he told himself, and be happy, but not perfectly happy. And he could sleep well, that way.