Last seen in this 'verse:
There's a hunger now, woken inside, and you have to taste him again. He helps you, peeling away clothes and stripping away layer after layer until you're naked body and soul alike before his mocking gaze. But while his skin is bare, his soul is still tucked away under that layer he's grown like a callus. Sneering at you.
He lets you take him. Bends his legs back pretty as a whore, rubbing your back and calling you "Daddy", filth that pushes you on, pushes you in deep, until you're spent and you feel his juices soaking at your skin, a salt-sugary acid. Wine gone bad.
Then - and you do, and you don't know why - you're sobbing between his thighs, crying as if you'll never stop.
He touches you once, just once, gently, carding his fingers through your hair. So this is what happens when the heart over-rules the mind. You don't know what happens next. It's not supposed to be like this.
But you're about to find out...
*
And all of this is really happening because of what you do when you are young and very stupid and think that passion is everything:
You fall in love. Foolishly and headlong, with all that you have in you. Too besotted to see anything else, even the danger you tumble heedlessly towards.
Seventeen years old, small and thin, all blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses and hair that will not stay in order, it's been decided that you are too fragile to go to Oxford just yet. Not this year, dear, perhaps the next, if you're well enough.
So instead of going away like other boys of your age and station, you're pent-up at home again - still - in the old nursery that still smells of pap but also of chalk dust and ink, for it's served you as a classroom since you could lisp the alphabet. And you're working with a new tutor, one that came quite highly recommended by your mother's small, shabby-genteel circle of friends.
In later years, you won't remember his real name - and that'll strike you as damned funny - but at the time, it's the only thing on your lips from the moment you see him. And because you're so bookish, the tales of Arthur and Lancelot, Jonathan and King David flowing through your veins instead of blood, you fall for him quick and easy and breathing, without realizing or understanding it.
He's a handsome man, and he knows it, this - call him Ian, for it's as good a name as any and you remember that he had the faintest Irish lilt to his voice. He's tall and lean, compact and well-kept, with glossy blue-black hair trimmed into respectable style and a smooth-shaven face. It's a face that painters should cry for, had they any sense - mobile and sensual, with the slightest edge of a panther's predatory grace in the way that it moves when he speaks, whispers, looks at you over the top of a book.
How old is he? Perhaps not quite thirty. There's no gray in his hair, nor lines beside his deep brown eyes. His hands are smooth and supple as they handle the birch pointer, slapping it gently into one palm while he looks and looks at you as if you were something to eat and he, very hungry indeed. And you don't understand, you see, because you know nothing of earthier things. You think your prick is merely a method of eliminating waste, and that the odd stirrings you get from time to time a flash of nervous hysteria.
It's a good thing you didn't go to Oxford, for they'd have eaten you alive. Much as Ian did, much as, later, another -
But no, remember the why before you remember the what next, because it's like building a tower from small wooden blocks, isn't it? You need the cornerstones and the foundation before you can begin on the walls, building yourself a prison to live in.
So first, think first of Ian, and how he called you "Master William" in front of your mother, but winked at you and called you "Will" when the two of you were alone. The way he lay in wait for you not to grasp a concept right away, so that he might come and stand close behind you, reading over your shoulder, and pointing out what it is that you've missed. Laying his hand on your arm, pulling you back against the angles of his body in congratulations when you get it right.
Or better, how it is when you're short and snappish, the weak eyes that cause your need for glasses giving you a headache that makes your temper quick. Then, he can punish you with the slim birch-rod pointer. Make you stand upright, head flung back, and arm outstretched with palm up for the lashes. How you would pridefully not say a word, nor make a sound, but listen in wonder as Ian's breathing grew a trifle heavy.
Curiosity bade you stare as a bulge grew beneath the buttons of Ian's breeches every time the birch made contact with your flesh - jumping, like a live thing, when he might miss and lash your shoulder - or perhaps, the softness of your upper thigh. The sight of him, growing warm in the face and heated of eye, did strange things to you that entirely outweighed the sting of punishment. So strange, how it made your belly warm and your legs tingle. These are the things you think about when Ian excuses himself after a punishment, instead of contemplating "the wrongs you have done". All of it leaving you more puzzled still.
And how it is that one day, returning to your seat, you accidentally brush your hand over your crotch and realized that you too have swelled and grown hard there. That the slightest touch sets you gasping and shivering, not knowing that anything that seems so peculiar could feel so good. How you touch yourself again, tentatively but a little more firmly, struggling on instinct against the overwhelming wave of bliss that shocks through your system.
Fascinated, you touch yourself again and again, hard and soft, first petting it as you might a kitten and then rubbing as you would oil into leather, until your stomach coiled in knots and you shake fiercely and your trousers turn wet, as if you've soiled yourself but you know you haven't done that, you've not done that since you were a mite. Puzzled and ashamed, you run from the room to change your pants before Ian can return.
And you continue on, learning your lessons. Pushing hair back from your eyes and noticing how Ian watches you, devouring your every move. How he begins to volunteer to help clean the ink from your slim fingers before you return to the house for dinner, so that Mother will not protest uncleanliness, "For it's next to godliness, you know," he'll say, with a wink and a caress of your hand.
You remember the day that he takes your hand and lifts it to his lips. Presses a soft kiss to the cleansed palm and to the back. You feel the wet flicker of a tongue over your skin and gasp, not understanding, but knowing that the feeling runs straight through to your most private parts, as it might after you are beaten. Knowing that he knows it, too, for he pulls back your sleeve and lays a line of kisses up your arm, to the elbow and back again.
You think of Caesar and Caligula, your eyes filled with stars, and you say nothing. But you know that this is the great love that the classics speak of. But in truth you know nothing yet, stupid little innocent. You have dreamed of words and lines in books that adults might find shocking but that has really taught you nothing, and still you do not understand.
You will.
Mother never enters the schoolroom, so you begin to feel freer and more easy around Ian. You allow him to draw you close while you read, to run his fingers through your hair and to kiss the back of your neck. You glory in the friendship that seemed heretofore the property of heroes and giants and thrill to the preciousness of your secret.
When, one glorious day, he asks it of you, you permit that he touch you wherever he pleases. The feel of his hand makes you hard, twitching and leaping skittish as a mouse, while where he guides your fingers makes you feel strong and gives you a rush of power. To realize that this means he, too, takes such pleasure in your company.
For that sort of friendship you would do anything.
And you do.
You allow him to undo your breeches and pull them gently down about your knees; permit him to lay soft kisses along the length of what he calls a prick - which you think is silly, for it isn't sharp; why call it that?
And you nigh scream when he takes it - you - into his mouth, lapping about it like a cat with his nose in the cream. Hands stroking at your hips until you began to move as he wants, gently in and out, and the sensations, oh, they are that much more intense. Learning about sexual intercourse at a set of skilled hands, pig-ignorant of the facts but not caring because it feels so very, very good.
Perhaps Cai comforted Bedwyr so, in the darkened tents of Camelot, you think dizzily as your hands move on their own to grip Ian's hair. You feel that shuddering, juddering outrush of bliss and see what you have expelled fill his tender mouth and drip down his lips.
You reach for him, wishing only to return the favor, but he pushes you away and whispers, "Later," with a kiss. "Tonight, in your bedroom."
He is as good as his word, that very night creeping in without a candle at an hour well past midnight and joining you between the sheets. Teaching you a special lesson, he says, stroking you from head to foot until you are both hard and pressed together. Then he turns you on your stomach, stroking gently down your back, and reaches for a small vial of oil that he has brought along...
In the morning, you are no longer a virgin, and you are unashamed, because you still don't understand that this is supposed to be wrong.
When Mother asks what it is you have been learning of late, in all your ignorance you tell her: "Human anatomy," and expand from there until she is white and pale.
And that is the last that you or anyone else in polite society sees of Ian.
She tries to keep it a secret. Tries to explain to you. But the only things that sink in are that the love which you had thought so perfect and pure, and the knowledge which you had sought most earnestly, is called a sin.
And you lie lonely in your bed at night, and dream of Ian's soft Irish voice and the touch of his fingers.
Time passes, as it must do, fifteen years' worth of it, and though you have done with your schooling you never cease to love your books. And it happens that you fall in love with someone else - or convince yourself you do - this time properly, with a lady of quality. You pursue her with your poetry, the best that you can imitate from the masters of old, and she...
Cecily...
She laughs at you. You can see it in her eyes, that she knows the story, when she turns from you and says you are "beneath" her. And you are crushed, because yet again no one understands. You know the laws of polite society now, but you still believe that love is all and should transcend sin when it is shared between two of the willing.
You know that you are an outcast because of this. So you run away from the party, furious at yourself for wasting your time and for allowing your heart to get caught up in pretty play-acting when none of it is good and true, as once things were with Ian. You bump into a man who might be his twin, but that he is bigger and broader, and the sting of remembrance is so sharp that you are unconscionably rude to him and offer no apologies.
Things grow a bit muddled then; you remember a lovely woman who looks like the devil's own version of Cecily, with long black curls and mad dark eyes, crooning bits of poetry that make no sense save to herself - which makes them beautiful. Caressing you. You remember the touch of her mouth to your neck, and then no more until -
Until you come to yourself, and think for a moment you are back in the schoolroom again, with Ian's hand wrapped around your prick and his lips along your jaw, suckling ever so gently as not to leave a mark. Pain and pleasure rack you alike, and how you have missed them so!
A gentle Irish voice asks you if you like this, if this is the sort of man that you are, and you say yes, you shout it with all the strength that's in you - only you don't seem very loud, do you? - and when he asks if you want more, you tell him yes, oh, yes.
And then you come, with the boneshaking bliss you've not felt since you were young.
And then you fall asleep.
And then, three days later, you wake in your own grave. And everything has changed.
*
And this is what it's like over a hundred years later, knowing from the first bitter moment that it was not Ian come back to you, but a creature who called himself Angelus. Who claimed you time and time again, with cock and arse and blood and seed, never letting you have the upper hand. Knowing your weakness for pain, and using the rod until you're striped red from head to toe and burning to come, but not being permitted to.
You are not allowed to love him, he who laughs all your romantic notions to shame. Mocking, until you become rough and brutish as he - then worse, glorying in the new poetry of blood-laced patterns across white snow and cold dirt, of draining the life from pretty young men and scornful ladies while stroking them to their little and final deaths.
He leaves you, then, and you learn: those you love, or try to love, always walk away.
Perhaps if you can stop this happening someday, you will understand better what loving is about. Amo, amas, amat. Perhaps you'll be worthy of someone who will keep you, then, to please and punish as they will.
So much time passes, and so many things happen, and you try to change. You lose one Lady and think perhaps you have found another in the tiny blonde Slayer, fierce as yourself, who can beat you to such an exquisite agony that it's almost good as your memories of Angelus. Because she prefers it, because you need to be needed, you try, for her sake, to be gentle and kind.
And you do manage to make yourself over again. Become softer, better able to love and to dream, more the boy that Ian enchanted into bed than the one Angelus brutalized outside of it (except during one very drunken night with black-haired, dark-eyed Harris, who after one too many whiskeys reminds you of your lovers of old and is too weak to say no, himself).
You do this for the woman who has captured your heart, hoping for nothing but that she might see you as a man. And while she does - and she doesn't - all the while she is so very cruel to you that you lap it from her hand as milk from a saucer, loving every blow from her hard little hand as if it were an Irishman's caress.
And then, because she asks it of you, you die for her. For love of her. She says she loves you, but you know she doesn't. Not really. But it's good of her to say, isn't it?
And you wink out like a star fallen to earth and you think that finally, you are finished.
And then you find out that after all, you are not.
*
You find yourself once more under Angelus' rule. And you hate him, yes, as much as ever you did, because he is not one thing nor the other - neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring. He changes with the wind - good, bad, souled, not-souled - his decisions are made on a whim, and the heavy branch he lashes himself with brings him no pleasure whatsoever.
Slowly, you begin to see what it is he needs. What he wants. What he burns for.
And it's up to you, isn't it, whether or not he gets it? You are strong enough. You've beaten him more than once.
You spend many a drunken night staring into your whiskey and wondering, though, if he is strong enough. Ready once again to welcome that darker side of his nature, to embrace the fact that bliss and pain are one, that friends and lovers are set to enmity by nature itself. That the greatest passionate flames of all time burn with the most agony, but are purest and best,
And no, you decide, he is not ready yet. But he will be. He only wants a little pushing...
You do what you can. Take your pleasure where you find it. Pretty boys you find on the streets, dark-haired and dark-eyed, who'll use the slim birch twigs to lash your back while they giggle and call you kinky. You grin behind their backs with sharp, sharp teeth that could gobble them up whole because they'll never, ever really get it, will they?
Then you come to Angel, knowing he can smell them on you, and it's still not enough.
So you try again, you try harder. The ex-Watcher isn't much of a challenge, he's so lonely, and in his shape he looks enough like Ian that you find yourself with a hunger to taste and see if he is good. A flurry of leather and a brush to the cheek and he is yours, laid out on the couch on his office with your face between his thighs and his hands tangled deep in your hair. When he comes it's sweet as nectar and bitter-salty as tears, but both of you know this is a "once" thing, and you separate without regrets.
Especially since when Angel scents this, at last you know that it is enough.
So you wait. For him to come to you. And he does not disappoint. Wild-eyed and tousled, he stalks you as he would prey, through the dirty streets of LA to the small squat that you call home.
You lean against the door and mock him as he once mocked you, curling the tip of your tongue over your teeth. Lifting the long, slender neck of a beer to your mouth and giving it head with all the skill that he taught you and all the passion you once felt for Ian. The man you were thinking of, while this creature thought you were responding to him, when he brought you over into this strange existence.
When he lunges for you with a desperate cry, you let him carry you along to the floor. Help him fumble with the snap of your jeans, dragging the zipper down and yanking you out. Him, too. You let him make a tunnel of his hands and grind both your cocks together, more pain than pleasure, and you laugh aloud in triumph.
You open for him like a whore, roaring when he plunges in, and rock your hips hard, hard, hard against him, drawing him deeper, splitting yourself open on his birch rod in delicious agonybliss. The cool wash of his seed is nothing to what spurts over your own belly, pale and sticky, an offering made to Chaos and Love.
Then you laugh some more, because you see that he still doesn't understand, does he? He'll never comprehend the classic moment of beauty tarnished, innocence stained, and purity corrupted by exquisite agony. Not as you understand it. A soul's no matter when it comes to this. Dead and alive, the same parts of you worship that moment.
And you pet him when he cries, so deeply amused at his pitiful shame. Because - you've won at last, you have, won over everyone who ever called you beneath them. The one who is supposedly over all lies crushed beneath your feet. His defeat belongs to you.
Poor fool, you think. Doesn't get it, he doesn't. This is why he's not gotten his reward yet, isn't it?
And what's more, you don't suppose he ever will.
* * * * *
For those interested:
Sonnet #51
Thus can my love excuse the slow offence