Say of What You See 
by Hth


"This is the first... ohhh...this is the... the first...." 

Impossible. His blunt,strong fingers rubbing like Chinese water torture into my 
nipples, his tongue deep in my ear. Why speak at all? Why not just let Angel 
have me... no language, no answers, no need to understand it in the slightest? 

"The first what?" he prompts,so it's too late now to back out. 

Not too late to lie, however. "The first time I've ever made love with this many 
painkillers in my bloodstream." 

"Can you feel this?" I think he's teasing me. Surely he doesn't believe there is 
any chance under heaven that I cannot feel his hand on my spine like that, slow 
and so dauntingly confident. 

"Yes...." It's an answer to his question, as well as just a sound, just some way 
to release this breath I've been holding for far too long. 

And I have been taking rather a lot of pain medication, but that wasn't what I 
meant to say. I meant to say, or rather, began to say, before my courage failed 
me, that it is the first time I've ever seen Angel completely naked. 

More than seeing now, of course. I have my legs tangled around his hips and 
through his legs, my penis agonizingly erect and pressed against the smooth 
muscles of his stomach, my palms sweating and slipping back and forth over the 
substantial roundness of his thick shoulders. He gleams in the orange 
lamplight, and the tattoo and the shadows fold across his back, casting the image 
of tenebrous wings that rustle like silvery-grey sheets as he moves. On second 
thought, the sound probably is the rustling of Angel's silvery-grey sheets under 
my back, but it doesn't matter. The sound and smell of Angel so close above me, 
the look and touch of Angel ravishing me with ruthless immortal patience... all 
my senses blend together when we're alone like this, and the feeling is even 
headier now that he's chosen to discard his thin defenses, the half-open shirt, 
the leather pants loosened just enough to allow my hand inside. 

Tonight I can see all of him, and just by stepping out of those rich-textured 
clothes and giving me his own skin and shape to touch, he's released something 
consuming in my head, something that obsesses me. Angel... mine to hold... mine 
to devour with my eyes and my desire, which has only grown sharper and more 
searing in the past weeks, since the first time he kissed me, tentative and 
self-conscious. 

Angel. The vampire, the martyr, the investigator, the avenger, the defender, the 
fate-ridden. Angel. I woke in the intensive care unit and it never occurred to me 
to be anything except grateful that I wasn't dead, that I'd apparently retained 
the decency not to abandon this driven, fearsome, passionate, sorrowful man. 
Grateful for the pain. Grateful for Angel, and for a little bit more of life 
with him. Angel...my peace inside the torment. My companion. 

I hiss, and I don't know which sensation caused my body to convulse that way, his 
fast and precise penetration of me, or the way his nose nudges clumsily into the 
bandaged cut on my cheek, sparking fresh pain that radiates bright and brief 
across half my face. I need him, need any amount of pain or pleasure he can 
wreak on my body, and I hold him as tightly as my merely human strength will 
allow. I was nothing before Angel took me in, a failure, a child. Will he ever 
realize that he redeems everything he touches? 

I am crooning his name into his ear, rocking my hips in the rhythm he sets to 
make his entrance deeper and easier each time he thrusts. This is the first 
time... the first time. It's like the first time. 

Until this very second, I haven't let myself consider how very near I came to 
dying. If hehadn't been there... if my luck with gouts of flame and falling 
roof-beams had been the least bit dodgier. Harder... harder... and I don't know 
if I'm groaning it against the side of his face or if it's locked voiceless 
inside my own head, but his hands clench on my ribs and the back of my skull, 
and he turns his head to catch me in a kiss with none of his usual thorough 
serenity. Just honest, uncomplicated want. 

It's more seductive than I could explain, to be wanted by a man like him. The 
vampire, the avenger, the investigator... no, none of that. Just Angel, who 
treats me with such incomparable sweetness, who makes love to me with raw 
purity. 

I wonder how near he is to dying. That damned prophecy won't leave me alone, but 
I can't tell if it haunts him too, or if he's already kicked it back down into 
the brackish swamp where all his other losses and mutilated hopes fester and 
stew. 

He makes me... he makes me...for the first... ohhh... *Angel.* Angel. 

When he's finished, he rolls away from me in that shy-lonely way he always does, 
and as always, I comfort him in the only way I can. I cover the back of his 
nearest hand with my own, lace my fingers between his, squeeze gently. Angel, 
it's all right. If I can live with the fact that this is my true happiness, surely 
you can live with the fact that it isn't yours. We'll make it through. 

He turns back toward me,his fingers unexpectedly light and warm as he brushes 
over my bandage, then the hair at my temple. "I'd like for you to sleep here," 
he says in that breathy, reluctant voice he always uses when he's not sure if 
he's overstepped the boundaries he believes reality imposes on him. 

Another first. I can only nod. 

He raises up on his elbow and reaches across me for the lamp, and it takes my 
breath away; I wouldn't be surprised to die like this, from being this close to 
the twist and stretch of the interwoven muscles through Angel's arm and 
shoulder, equal parts animal and poem. I can smell him through the subtle but 
distinctive scent of the lubricant we use. 

And then there's darkness,and I can only smell him, and see the shadow-wings 
fold in and subsume him. I move naturally against his chest, nestle there under 
his chin. I think I like not seeing Angel almost as much as I liked seeing him 
for the first time tonight. I like being here in the dead of the night,not for 
any business purpose, but simply because my presence comforts him after so much 
bloodshed and prophecy and flirting with death. I like the way he folds his arms 
around me, and I can see the subtle outlines of his pale skin catching the 
ambient light in the room. It lets me see Angel, just the suggestion of him, 
without being bound to all the ideas, all the things I know he is. 

Disaster, as usual, has strengthened us. We've never been this close. My eyes 
have never been this wide open. 

Angel. We'll cast off everything but this... maybe not tonight, maybe not until 
you and I are both in our many-times-cheated graves. But how could we ever think 
we'll escape it? No one ever saw you as clearly as I do. Noone ever fought for 
me the way I know you would. 

You're the first. 


"Throw away the lights, the definitions 
And say of what you see in the dark" 
-Wallace Stevens