The Gate by Hth I try to run through all the possibilities in my mind, but they are endless. He'll kill me. He'll fuck me. He'll turn me in to the police. He'll turn me in to my employers. He won't even show up. He'll show up... he'll be disgusted to find me like this. I'm disgusted to find me like this;why shouldn't he be? It seems like I've never been on my knees before,or if I have, I've tried to forget it... and succeeded, as I always do. Usually do. I'm not naked.. that's a little far, that's a place Ican't go yet... but there's leather around my wrists and steel rings that are locked to the back of a collar that keeps me from looking at the floor,where my knees shift nervously back and forth against the cheap carpet. He'll show up, he'll be disgusted,and he'll turn around and walk away. That's the worst thought yet. The truth is that I don't know where we'll both be come morning. But it might just be worth all of this, all the fear and disgust buzzing behind my tongue and making me unbelievably hard, worth it for the possibility... Well. For all those possibilities on the high end of the spectrum. The ones where he understands what I'm doing here, and why it had to be done. The ones where he wants this as badly.. almost as badly... as I do. The carpeting really is uncomfortable,and an ugly shade of green besides. I thought my days of rendezvousin cheap hotels were over. It's the best hotel I could find that'sstill on Angel's turf, and for the first time, I wonder why Angel picked this skanky chunk of slum as his diocese. Because it's all he could afford? Because his self-loathing won't allow him to look out the window and see anything attractive or welcoming? Because it's easier to pretend he's human while surrounded by humans living lives comparably miserable to his? Rich boy slumming. And me. No wonder I could almost hear him laughing when I called with this invitation. //Alone?// I wonder if that humor in his voice was visible in his eyes, if I could've seen it if I'd been there. I've never seen Angel's sense of humor. Only heard it when he speaks, and it's usually at my expense. But it makes him more three-dimensional, more...human. So I let him excoriate me with his amusement. //Alone together.// Rich boy slumming, calling from a payphone on Hollywood Boulevard. Watching the palm trees wave in the night, watching the whores run their patter for the cruising luxury cars. Wearing my sunglasses at night, like the song says, like some affected, pretty-boy movie starlet, or like a man trying to disappear anonymously behind his things, this crowd. //I'm with someone.// Now that was funny, although he didn't seem to appreciate it. When I'm this far past caring about my life and my immortal soul, Angel Almighty, what makes you think I'll give a damn about your boyfriend? //This is about us.// //There is no us, McDonald.// Oh, but the way he kissed me, the way he ran his fingers through my hair. He wanted there to be, and so did I. So do I. //We left...loose ends.// //I'm not your god damn loose end.// All the times Angel has made it clear how he begrudges me my very existence, I don't think I'd ever heard him curse at me, or at anything else. There was a whip in his voice, something sore that I leaned on all unwitting. Something personal. //Angel, it isn't over yet.// //As long as you work for them it is.// Them. Ah, yes, Them. They really are everywhere. Just like they promised me they would be when I signed my contract. //I'm... working on that. It's delicate.// //Fuck you, Lin.// Oh, I still hear that in my head, hour after hour, words circling like raptors in the clouded, stormy sky of my mind. Be careful, my Angel. You're slipping, giving away your secrets. Who knew that I had a nickname, in your head? I wonder, was that the first time he ever said it out loud... or does he whisper it sometimes, when he's all by himself?//I know you're selling me out. I always knew you would. So don't insult me.// Fair enough. Fair enough.//All right. I'm staying.// //You're a whore.// Well, you know, it's been a long ride to get here, Angel Almighty. Pay phones, loose change,hitchhiking. The truck stops, the red lights, the penthouses, the hundred-dollar bills. A lot of cities between Birmingham and Los Angeles, a lot of road, a year of my life spent in that between. All those times on my knees that I can't recall, all those names that slide like water off of me by now, even coming from you. //No charge for you, Angelus.// That just slipped out. I don't know what I could have been thinking, but still it felt good to say. //Meet me. Let me beg for your forgiveness.// His silences are always so powerful. He'll never forgive me... but he's drawn in by the thought of being begged. He's fragile in a hundred different ways. As long as you're not afraid of what you're left with when Angel breaks. And I'm not. I wait and wait, expecting it to happen at any second, but it never does. I'm not afraid of Angel. Of course, I acknowledge the danger he presents...physically, professionally, and even, although it sticks to admit, emotionally. I respect his power. But the fear I have in all this doesn't come from him. It's been in me since long before Angel, will be with me after he ejects me from his life, one way or another. It's my demon. I fear my own constant, gnawing taste for weakness, this too-easy ability to put myself to the side and submit. I fear this thing I become when I hear his key turn in the lock, when the door swings open wide enough to accommodate Angel's immensity. A thing that welcomes him completely and ends this siege on my sanity and my strength by throwing its gates wide open to let him in. The door closes with a bang. My eyes close with a prayer brazen in its insincerity; if there's anything I still expect from God, it is in no way His help in winning this man over. "You're crazier than I realized,"he says. He moves closer; I can hear it. Not Angel, because his movements are always ghost-stealthy. But I seem to be able to hear everything else, the air, the room, shifting to make room for Angel. He holds sway over this city in a way that I can't define, but that grows louder the closer I come to the center of his power. Maybe it's nothing more than the sound of my own power giving way. "Well?" Do you really expect me to explain myself, Angel? Do you think I can speak, alone with you like this, at this crossroads? My presence here, bound for him, bound to him, should be all the eloquence I need. This is no courtroom,after all. This is life. This counts for something, and so it cuts closer to the bone. "*Well?*" I shake when he touches me, his thumb on my chin, his fingertips on my cheekbone, an inflexible touch, but sensual, too. "Care to tell me what's going through that twisted mind of yours?" I didn't expect that, andI find it strangely sweet. The possibility that he would... wonder. Angel has never before indicated that he ever asked or cared what I was thinking. It makes me tremble even more fiercely, this surprisingly intimate question. I'd tell him if I could. If I knew. If my mouth weren't so damn dry. He waits for it, waits until it becomes clear I won't answer him. Then he hits me, quick and sharp across the mouth. I taste my teeth on the inside of my lip, and then iron tang. I swallow the blood to hide it. "It's more than money, isn't it, Lindsey? Is this your pet perversion? Do you get off on playing demon-bait... want to be meat for the beast? Is that it?" I hate the sound of his voice...taunting me, accusing me, draining me of the strength to talk back to him. No, no, no. It's not that. It's just that you woke me up...just you... and now I have insomnia of the soul. I can't close the door again. Even when I can't speak,his name can somehow get out from inside of me, like it's a separate thing that's taken up residence in my chest. "Angel...." His hand slips down my face,curls into the collar of my suit. Wrenches it snugly around my throat;I can feel the pressure, though not the texture, through this collar. "You want me?" he growls. I have to. I never saw a threshold without wanting to walk across it, a door without wanting whatever was beyond it. He's not a loose end. He's a gate I want to go through. *In my Father's mansion,* I hear in my memory, *there are many rooms.* As in Heaven, so in Hell. And I have to see them all. Always have. "Do. You. Want. Me?" "Yes." He lets me go. So this must be Angel's revenge... taking me to the entryway and leaving me there to die alone. Very neat. Very apropos. I die, as instructed. I would beg, if it weren't for the blood and dirt filling up my mouth. This won't ever end. This won't ever end. I smell his leather before I hear him move. Right by the tip of my nose. And the long,creaking sound of the zipper. Traitor, ex-whore, rich boy finding his true level once again, I move so easily forward, even before he can get a hand on my head to guide me. I part my lips for him, feel each inch of him as he presses through them to settle not-quite-comfortably in my mouth. He's big, but I can open up so wide when I have to. That, at least, I know for sure.