On the second day of Christmas...
Whee! I did it! I'm keeping on-schedule!
This one's 1,790 words long, and was written under the influence of a semi-high fever (which, I feel, explains the surprisingly sappy ending, given the subject matter).
For ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
ros_fod, who wanted Angel/Connor. Spoilers for "Not Fade Away" and one reference to "Benediction." Cut for incest, slash and sex.
"I know you're my father."
An entire world turned inside out with those words. Angel had known, somewhere deep down, that of course Connor knew, Connor must have known, magic is never dysfunctional in ways that make him lucky and mystical accidents never end well.
But he had said it, had given him that…gift. Or curse.
In stretching shadows and broken silence, these words haunt him in bed behind the sweat-slicked boy who said them. They are the only ones alive.
((Dragonflame reduced Spike to ashes, only seconds before Illyria tried to avenge him and was torn in half for her trouble, little pieces of Fred flying everywhere and Angel was baptized in her blood. Gunn was already gone.))
Angel buries horrible thoughts and blood-soaked memories in the back of his mind with a kiss between Connor’s shoulder blades. He buries his face in the boy’s hair, breathing in the scents of recent battle and recent sex.
((The dragon was falling down when Connor came—tore his way through demons and monsters, just like he’d been born to do, and in one second before Angel lost consciousness, he actually thought to himself, “I’m saved.”)
He owes Connor his life. He draws the slim body into his arms and thinks, as Connor flashes a weak smile and kisses his lips, I owe him this, too.
--
“They’ll destroy you.”
“As long as you’re okay, they can’t.”
Connor had done as he was bid. What else could he do, in the face of something like that? Angel had looked at him with such love and sincerity, spoken words both his broken-boy-self and his mystically-adopted-self had longed to hear. He had looked into the face of the man who’d begotten him—unintentionally, maybe, and later on, forgotten—and known that, on some level, Angel had done all this for him.
He was halfway out of Los Angeles when something inside of him went snap, and he had been forced to turn around. Running and hiding may have been what Angel wanted him to do—needed him to do—but there was a reason he’d been bent and broken into a well-adjusted young man, and he couldn’t just leave them there.
((The army was huge—huger than any Connor had ever seen, and that was by no means a small number. It looked like infinity, and dragon breath—Spike was now dead—made it look like Hell. Connor had grinned then, and known he was home.))
Angel was wounded when Connor had found him, wounded and passing out. Connor had managed to kill enough to clear a space, then had run like hell with the bigger man out cold in his arms.
Doing ninety down the I-280, Angel had groaned a little, coming momentarily back into consciousness.
Connor looked at him—the bruised face, the bloody lip, the torn shirt with torn muscle hanging from it—and said, in a worried tone he didn’t know he could use, “That was really fucking stupid, you know that?”
Angel smiled and passed back out.
--
It was very near dawn when they found sanctuary at a small motel in Palo Alto. Angel was conscious again—woken by an tingling sensation, an internal warning that the sun was rising—and had insisted on trying to walk. Connor had half-carried him anyway, Angel’s arm slung over his shoulder as he limped, first to the lobby, then later to their room.
((“I need a room for me and my father,” he’d told the desk clerk as he handed her a credit card. Memory struck him then, and Connor had looked at Angel, slumped in a chair by a candy machine, and wished suddenly that he was able to get why that was funny.))
Connor dumps Angel on the bed as they get into the room, heading back out to the car to get a first aid kit and a travel sewing kit he’d picked up at a gas station on the way. When he comes back in, Angel is propped against the headboard, coughing blood and looking at him grimly.
“You shouldn’t have come back.” Angel says softly.
Connor snorts and goes to sit by Angel, unbuttoning his shirt perfunctorily as he opens the kit with his other hand. “Yeah, I know, you’re the big hero and everything. I just didn’t think I could go to school tomorrow as usual if I knew you were in an alley somewhere, looking like the inside of my dad’s grill.”
“I told you—“ Angel says, coughing some more.
“I know what you told me.” Connor interrupts, threading a needle and beginning the tedious process of putting Angel’s torso back together. Through, across and back again; he remembers how from Quor Toth. This was hardly any different from giving stitches to Holtz, and less awkward than doing his own. At least it didn’t require any unnatural bending.
Angel’s hand, trembling and weak, comes up and touches Connor’s hair. “Thank you.” He says quietly, looking at his son not unlike the way he looked at him when they parted ways—presumably for the very last time—in the crumbling remains of Wolfram and Hart.
((Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. But Connor had never sung that as a child with his little sister, and this was no game. Rocks fell and everyone died.))
“That was really, really stupid.” Connor says again, weaker this time, and for some reason, he feels like he might cry. He bends and cuts the thread in Angel’s belly with his teeth to hide burgeoning tears, but that same hand comes up and cups Connor’s chin, turning him up to look in Angel’s face.
“It’s okay, Connor.” He says, his thumb tracing the line of Connor’s jaw. “I’m okay.”
“That’s crap.” Connor replies, but he forgets anything else he might’ve been planning to say when their mouths meet in a kiss.
--
They bend and twist and writhe across the mattress, hand and face and teeth and tongue locked in frantic battle, as if this is war, as if their lives depend on it. It feels as though there should be something stopping them here, a voice that cries out that this is wrong, but if such voices exist within them, they’re mercifully silent.
Clothes seem to melt away, rapidly accumulating in a pile on the floor. Sheets and blankets join those as well as careless feet become entangled in them and kick them away.
Angel is pressed down and back as Connor climbs over him and he manages a moment to really see the man he’s growing into. In the year and change it’s been since Angel’s seen him shirtless, Connor has indeed grown; his shoulders are broader and he’s filled out some—not bulked up, really, but thankfully gained some weight—and there’s now a small patch of fine, nearly-invisible chest hair that makes Angel wonder, when did his boy become so much older?
Their mouths meet again in a crushing kiss, teeth colliding for a moment in what should have been painful, but after a dragon claw in one’s gut it was hardly anything to write home about.
They compromise lube with an impossibly small bottle of motel hand lotion and Angel groans and hisses as Connor teases him, taking a few minutes of care before he enters, not wanting to hurt Angel more. Angel briefly manages to wonder if Connor’s done this some other time before his mind becomes blissfully empty and his body becomes blissfully full.
They move together in easy rhythm, Angel’s hands biting into Connor’s hips as their ankles twine around each other and Angel arches his back and neck with a choking groan. Connor holds himself above Angel’s body, hands curled into fists and his wrists aching as they support his full weight while he drives and pushes, further and further forward. Some part of him distantly thinks, No, this is wrong, we shouldn’t—but the rest of him knows only want, need, must, God, please, now. He bends and he pushes and bites clean through his lip, tastes blood and knows satisfaction.
Angel drinks straight from Connor’s mouth and feels it burn through him at the same time that the sensation of Connor in and around him everywhere—fingers and cock and teeth and tongue and God, blood, just a little blood—and suddenly they are screaming in unison, bathed completely in one another’s sweat and seed, and Angel’s holding Connor in his arms, holding him tightly as there are salt tears on his neck and some pain in his belly. He’s distantly aware that his stitches have popped. But Connor is in his arms, broken and tired and God, so beautiful, and all Angel knows is that nothing will ever be the same again.
--
Neither of them knew later precisely how long they slept, but it’s dark when they wake again, and they are both still naked and still sticky. Connor’s lip has already healed. He does not move when he comes fully awake, and his only awareness is Angel’s lips upon his back.
He turns his head to look at Angel and waits, waits for reality to come crashing in, for guilt or disgust to come rising to the surface, but his stomach stays rock steady and Connor is not ashamed. Reality is that people are dead, Los Angeles is likely destroyed, and fucking one’s father probably shouldn’t feel this way. But everything in him is quiet, and he realizes that now, there is only a strange sort of peace. Because the world outside is bloody and terrible, and here, for perhaps one of the first and last moments of his life, he is safe.
He smiles then, leans forward and kisses Angel, and thinks, I am grateful.
Soon they’ll go outside, and there’ll be more war and violence awaiting them. In fact, even as he thinks it, Angel is saying as much out loud and Connor has to repress a terrible, giddy, near-hysterical urge to grin.
“They’re not gonna stop just ‘cause you pulled me out.” Angel tells him. “There’s gonna be more. They won’t want to stop until they’ve killed me.”
“I’m game.” Connor says, answering the question before it’s even asked. Because it was a thoughtful gift, this normal life, and it was nice while it lasted, but deep inside, he will always be Connor the Destroyer. He will always be Angel’s son.
Now it’s Angel’s turn to inappropriately smile and he touches Connor’s shoulder as he does. Wonders briefly what he’s getting them into. But there is only one thing he can say for this moment, one thing he can say to characterize the long road ahead of them.
“Let’s get to work.”
sick
