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Title: I'm Not One
Author: Kita (Donna M.)
Rating: NC-17
Summary: These are Angel's thoughts shortly after meeting up with Doyle in LA. There are no real spoilers, but it assumes the following: 1. The proposed canon that Angel spent the equivalent of 500 years in Hell. 2. Angel spent a good bit of time alone in LA before meeting Doyle.
Disclaimer: I don't own him or any of the others, in any of their characterizations or incarnations. What an effin bummer. I make no profit off these stories. I also don't own the poem by Meat Loaf, which is contained in its entirety inside the (( )) in various places throughout the fic. But man, it hollered slashyfanfic action.
Special Thanks: As always to my groovin' beta reader. Her darkness inspires my own.

I'm Not One

((~On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?))

I once bought Drusilla a glass snow globe. It was a lovely, shimmering, fragile thing, filled with miniature Carolers bundled against the frost of a Yuletide village. Tiny reindeer hovered in the sky, suspended by invisible strings, floating in the majical solution of sugarwater and illusory snowflakes. I showed her to shake it, so the tiny bits of soap fell across the stiff humans and their glowing houses, creating ivory drifts in the clean, dark streets.

I had hoped she'd be mesmerized by it, and thus afford me one evening's peace and quiet. But the thing just made her cross. She demanded to know why she couldn't touch the people, why the damnable glass was in the way. She insisted that if I'd let them out, she would be able to hear them singing. It tried my patience, so Spike... William then, attempted to explain to her that they weren't real people; they were sculptures, like the art I had shown her in London's museums. Their mouths were frozen open that way, they weren't really singing at all. And the bits of snow were really just soap flakes. They wouldn't be even a bit cold on her tongue like she had hoped.

She was perfectly horrified. The people looked like they were screaming, she said. She had to take them all out so they could sing to her. She wanted to touch them. Wanted to touch the snow. And I warned her that to take the people out, she would have to break the globe, and then it would be ruined, and she could never have it back the way it was.

She would not be swayed. She shook it fiercely, so that the flakes fell in torrents against the sides of the glass ball, and then hurled the thing to the ceiling above her head. It shattered in a million shards of crystal, raining splinters of color and pale flakes down into her dark hair. She crawled across the carpet to gather the tiny figurines, then held them close to her breast. She laughed, a childish giggle of pure delight. The figures were mangled from the impact of her preternatural temper tantrum, but she could still see their faces, could still hear them singing to her she said; and so she was happy. She never noticed the rivulets of blood streaming down her face, the cuts on her small hands, bruised knees, and pale breasts, or the shards of glass sticking into her feet. She held the miniature dolls to close to her unbeating heart, and she cooed. She slept with them, covered as they were in bits of crystal and her own blood, for almost a century.

They never seemed to mind.

((**Will he offer me his mouth?
~Yes ))

I don't harbor much enthusiasm for auto-eroticism. I consider it akin to non-alcoholic beer. Sugar-free chocolate. Or, to use an analogy more appropriate for one of my kind, animal's blood. Admittedly, they all get the job done. But they are such a faint mirroring of the original, that it's hardly worth the effort.

Unless one is really desperate.

Admittedly, I am really desperate.

When I was a mortal man, back in Galway, I had a lover. One of many, to be honest, but she had more insight than most. Unfortunately for her, she met Darla before I did. Darla asked her about me, and later, recounted her answer to me. This girl told my Sire that I was no good layabout, that my family was utterly disappointed in me. That I was fond mainly of whoring and drinking, and the only good end I could come to, would be if I was lucky enough to die *before* contracting syphilis.

Of course, I did.

There is some grand cosmic irony here, of that at least I am certain. Is there a finer, more fitting punishment for such a man than eternal celibacy? Short of neutering, I haven't been able to come up with one. Most days, I lean toward neutering as the kinder option. Instead, I spend every day with my parts intact, and desire raging through a body that hasn't been held in lifetimes, harboring a starving demon whose sole means of survival comes from contact of the most intimate sort.

It is the consummate penalty for my existence, this eternal solitude. ((Water, water everywhere...))

I have not been touched amorously by another living creature in, what is for me, five centuries.

FIVE HUNDRED years. I don't think human beings have a clear concept of that kind of span of time. In terms of chastity, it's a whole lot longer than the most devoted of monks sign on for. And personally, I like to believe that even men of the cloth get some in the Hereafter. Having been to Hell, I can tell you that the afterlife is very much about sex. Most of it extremely uncomfortable. Then again, it was Hell; I suppose that was entirely the point.

So if my right hand and I have become rather better acquainted lately than I'd prefer, I think it's forgivable.

Actually, I think it's probably for the best. It's been so damned long now, I couldn't be satisfied until my partner was broken in half. Funny thing about people, they tend to be put off by death in the name of vampire sex.

((**Will he offer me his teeth?
~Yes.))

So you're wondering about my stint as gentleman Vampire in Sunnydale? My
relationship with Buffy?

That was different.

My time with her was an altered universe, a funhouse mirror where I could skew and twist the image of myself to her command. Fighting alongside her, sharing her nights, loving her, was a stolen, step out of time for me. It was shining and precious, and...alive. Vitality and creation coursed through her, poured forth from her very essence, and I drank it, and it fed me deeper than the blood.

When we were together, it was never about conquest, as all of my unlife had been. It was about confirmation. It was hope. I foolishly believed, when she looked at me in love, that I could be other than what I was. That I could recreate myself.

And when we were *together*, it wasn't about sex, as so much in my living life had been. I didn't fuck Buffy. I made love to her. It is yet another testament to my pathetic existence that it took me over two hundred years to find out there was even a difference between the two.

But I learned that lesson with her. In her bed. When she made love to me, for one, brief, cherished, priceless moment, I was forgiven all trespasses. In that blinding flash of light, I was Liam again.

Of course, the problem was, Liam was never a very nice guy.

And in the end, neither am I.

Oh I had all the best intentions. But who knew that proverb's truth would arise so literally in my unlife?

In the moments I should have held her limp, sated form in my arms and whispered those inane sweet nothings mortal lovers so long for during afterglow, I was in wrenching agony in an alleyway losing my soul.

In the days I should have spent feeling humbled and grateful for the gift she gave me, which she has neither the option to take back, nor the ability to ever give to another again, I was wearing leather pants and twisting the heads off young girls like so many bottlecaps.

I know it wasn't the orgasm that did it to me. The Gypsies weren't quite so vulgar as to hinge my immortal soul on the spilling of my seed.

What did it was the fact that I forgot my essential truth. That I can walk like a man. But I am not one.

She knew who I was. What I was. And still, she gave me her trust. Her innocence. Her virginity. Her love.

To save my life, she even gave me her throat.

And what did she get in return? A bloodied fistful of promises that shattered like glass and my brand on her neck for all time.

Happiness can never be mine. That way be dragons.

((**Will he offer me his jaws?
~Yes.))

So I left. I spent three months alone in Los Angeles, playing Batman by night, sleeping by day, and telling myself I was working to tip the balance in my favor. Trying desperately to ignore the dark fantasies that returned full force now that there were no small, soft, mortal hands to hold them at bay. Saving the hapless tide of humanity who were rapidly becoming little more to my wearied and desperate mind than walking rivers of singing blood.

And crawling into the shower at dawn, trying frantically and in vain to remove the smell of life and blood that clung to me, clawing its way into my dead and unbeating heart. Scrubbing myself with lye soap until my skin bled, the powerful scent only further inflaming the seductive insanity which held me like a child's toy, and thrashed me around the shower stall until I sat in a bruised heap, hands wound around my knees, crying and screaming, and alone.

Most mornings I wouldn't even remember climbing out of the shower. I would just wake up on the floor, in a pool of blood, and cum and agony. My skin would be sliced open as if my demon had tried to tear his way out of the flesh and bone prison which bound him eternally to a living soul. I couldn't blame him. I didn't want to live in here either.

And every day when I would crawl back into bed, and sleep to heal the wounds, the only thing that kept me from opening my window and greeting the sunrise was the rapidly fading memory of snow.

((**Will he offer me his hunger?
~Yes.))

I am more than certain now that Those Who hold the Power in this universe find my entire life an amusing bit of pastime. After three months of what was really, the pinnacle of a century of brooding, they found me.

And I was told by the one with the dark curls and the ridiculously shiny emerald eyes, and a fashion sense worse than my alter ego's, that I was supposed to 'get back in touch with humanity'.

Or some nonsense similar to that.

He's little more than a silly child, that Doyle. A beautiful, strong willed, lightly muscled.... and yea, I noticed. Of course I noticed. He's the type I've found attractive in any incarnation. He's cocky and smart aleck-y, with just enough humility to suggest a preference for submission. He's intelligent and quick witted, but rarely engages those traits before acting. And he's young, and strong, and very, very pretty. Who the hell wouldn't notice all that?

Besides, no matter what else I am, or become, I have a long held predatorial instinct. It would be folly not to pay careful attention to someone like him. After all, he holds my life in his hands; he is my connection to 'Them'.

I have known him less than a month, but I know that he wants me as well. His desire clings to him like those horrible white undershirts he wears. He knows what I am, who I was, and still, it doesn't deter him from wanting me.

He reeks of wanting me.

I would wager he could never know what I need of him. That he has no inkling what the cost of having me is. That he could not imagine how often I have prayed to anyThing that may listen to the prayers of creatures such as myself to *keep him away*.

Because he is *not* Buffy, and this is *not* about love, and I no longer believe in a redemption bought by the forgiveness of another. I am going to have to walk this earth a long goddamned time to earn my own redemption, and no one is going to love me while I do it.

That's all right. My demon doesn't need love. And I spent long enough as a man without it that I can survive a few more decades abstaining from that. But that does not mean I want to abstain from what it comes along with. Funny thing about the Gypsy curse. I can have sex. I can have really, really incredible sex, the kind where your toes curl and your eyes flip into the back of your head. I just cant feel loved during the act. And They thought it would be a nifty idea to put that conundrum inside of a vampire. A creature whose most basic instinct is to savage something. A creature who equates plunder and domination with...well, with sex.

If I were to fuck anything right now, short of possibly a Bull Elephant, it wouldn't be walking for weeks. If I were to fuck a human......

But desperation does funny things to any creature. Right now, I am finding it quite difficult to care about the inevitable end result of my erotic intentions. And right now, when I stand in my shower, while mortals sleep soundly, all Doyle has done was give my fantasy an Irish name, and a pretty face.

When he talks to me, I hear Galway. I hear sighs and whispers and sobs of pleasure. I smell hearty Irish whiskey on his breath even when he's sober, and autumn haylofts on his clothes in the streets of L.A.

I catch him watching me when he thinks I'm not looking, and I notice him flicking a hesitant tongue over his dry lips.

And I wonder how many times I would have to bite those lips without fangs before I'd draw blood.

((**Again, will he offer me his hunger?
~Yes!))

He smiles at me, sometimes, and I wonder, what does he think it would be like, to lie with the undead? Does he think the pleasure that a body which has had over two centuries of practice can give him would somehow outweigh the pain it would
need to inflict on him in order to feel pleasure in return? Does he think that I could feed from him just a little, just enough, so that he could glimpse Heaven, and I could be sated, but no permanent harm would come? Does he think that when we climax, his own demon visage would give mine a single, fucking moment's hesitation before I rip his throat out in ecstasy?

Is he that foolish?

More importantly, am I?

In the secluded branches of my imagination, my soul holds no purchase. Which means when I toss his body to the floor and rip his clothes off with one hand, while pinning his slender arms over his head with the other, I'm not particularly worried about atonement. All I want to know is how much adrenaline a half-Brachen actually possesses, how strong his muscles are, how hard he'll struggle against me. When I pull his head back by those black curls and force his mouth open with my thumb, I'm not thinking about my soul. All I want to know is if his demon-get allows him to breathe while he sucks. And when I flip him over onto all fours, and hold his arms behind his back, I don't give a damn about Heaven. All I want to know is how far his legs bend back, and whether or not he whimpers when he's fucked.

((**And will he starve without me?
~YES!))

And when I take him, no Christ child saves him. When I rape him, the Morrigan ride with me, and Kali dances unbridled through all the stolen blood in my veins. I am the god of destruction, and he dies so that I may live, and the wheel will continue to spin; and it is the horrible, divine truth which men have worshipped since they invented words for such things.

((**And does he love me?
~Yesssss.))

And when I hear him screaming and begging me to stop...and not to stop...of course I love him. Right then, right there, quashed under me, wrapped around me, quivering and bleeding and calling my name...who wouldn't love him, then?

((**Yes.))

I envy Drusilla sometimes. The uncomplicated bliss of being completely insane. Wholly unaware of morality, a kill can be likened to the shattering of a child's toy.

I don't have that luxury.

If I fuck Doyle in the snow, it will not be cold to my touch. Instead, it will melt like sugar under his heat, his crimson blood fading to pink in the dirty drifts. His screams will not be frozen for all time in hideous tableau. They will ring across rooftops and they will be seared into my brain and I will never be able to forget. I won't be able to free him from the pain by shattering some majic crystal ball. Because he will be laying with the evil that wants to own him, needs to break him, craves to take him apart. His mangled body will not survive to sing to me the next morning, or the next.

So instead of a tight, warm, living mouth around my cock tonight, there is just my cold hand once again.

I will stand in my shower until the water runs so cold even I can no longer feel it.

And he will be safe from me.

For the moment.

Sometimes in those wakeful dreams when I've taken my pleasure from him, I turn him; but most times, I just drink from him, without mercy or pity. He lasts longer than a human, his preternatural blood giving him an edge, stamina, a heartbeat that refuses to slow. Eventually, it will. It will fade into a gentle hum, and then it will be silent. I will hold him then, and cradle him against me.

And we both know he is going to die. But the fantasy still ends the same. Every time. He surrenders to me, as I surrendered to him.

And his last living breath is always a whisper.

`Angel..Angel...yessss.....`

((~On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?
**Yes.
~I bet you say that to all the boys.))

~Finis