*****
I`m not sleepin. But he thinks I am, and it gives him a happy to stare at me, and how often does the Great Pouff actually get happy? Besides which, it shuts him up, and I need some time to recuperate before playing Twenty Questions. Damn Chinese Demons. Do I *look* like Lo Mein to you?
Come to think of it, he stares alot. Always has, at least at me. Even when we hated eachother he looked at me like...like game, like a feast, like a demon lover...like he`s lookin at me now. I can see it even with my eyes closed and my head turned away. I`ve been seein that look for a couple of centuries on and off, and there are some things that time just doesn`t dim.
Sire`s big with the visuals, souled or no. I would imagine if he and the Slayer had stayed an item she`d have more lingerie by now than any woman has a right to. Lord knows Darla had quite the collection, and that was well before the days of Victoria`s Secret. Ya know, Soul boy has a stash of those catalogues under his bathroom sink. Ponce. Like he`s never heard of Penthouse?
He`s big with the looking, and the talking. Too bloody much of both. Actually, Angel has alot of really annoying habits.
I swear to gods, he never got off the effin boat. If it`s related to this century, he hasn`t got the first clue what to do with it. Cell phones? Pfft. Tip of the iceberg. He don`t have a VCR, his TV gets three channels, all of `em fuzzy, and he about had a heart attack when I suggested he actually get a cable box. He doesn`t even own a digital fucking clock.
Maybe it`s more of his `cut off from humanity` crap. You know what`s in his fridge? Fuzzy olives, several bags of blood, and beer which *I* have to supply. When I ask him why, he just shrugs at me, and says, ``I don`t eat.`` I think that`s the shortest sentence he`s ever uttered in my presence. He may be Stoic Vamp around everyone else but around me he always has to have the last word. Then he`ll grin at me, and bugger all, I forget what we`re arguing about. I fucking hate that shit.
Course, there are things we don`t talk about, even in our most intimate moments. Like the ancient box of ice cream in his freezer. He never eats it, he never even opens it. But I don`t ask why he keeps it, `cause I know. It`s the same reason I keep those tattered pages in my wallet, torn from an old porcelain doll catalogue. What`s there to say? Our ghosts are sleeping most of the time, and neither of us is too eager to wake `em up.
Not that that stops him from being all kinds of pensive about this shit. I wish he`d find a new hobby, but he has that cross reserved for all time, apparantly.
Some days I have no idea why I haven`t strangled the martyred pillock in his sleep. Well, all right. I have *some* ideas.
He smells so god damn good. And all the time; so really, those four showers he takes a day are a moot point. It`s a scent humans could never catch, and I can`t really name, but it puts me in mind of the whiskey he used to drink....it ain`t subtle, but it`s kind of sweet, and hot going down. It starts this slow kind of burn ...and it never fails to get my horns up.
Alot of him is like that.
For a bloke with no body heat his mouth is always warm. And his kisses always taste like tears. Salty and hot and filled with the burdens of some ten score years....I wonder sometimes if he knows I can taste all that on him, and I wonder if he tasted so sad even when he was a man.
Which is strange, really, `cause these days, he`s pretty happy. It ain`t that perfect happy bullshit, but he`s content. I can tell. I`ve known him long enough.
I can tell when he looks at me that way that makes me shiver despite the Big Bad resolve, and when he grabs for me in the night, always sighing with relief when he finds me there, like he`s worried it was all a dream, and when he spends more than two nights in a row actually resting on the couch instead of brooding up on the stinkin` roof. For the Pouff, hey, that`s happy.
Besides, I`ve gathered some handy tricks in the last couple of centuries of on and off layin` him. I can get him *really* fucking happy.
He likes to have his back scratched, and his belly rubbed, like some sort of insanely huge cat. All that foreplay shit, he shoulda been a woman. And he`s orally fixated beyond the realm of normalcy even for vampires. Freud would have had a field day studying my Sire`s mouth fetish. He chews on his own bottom lip, he`s forever working the muscles in his jaw, and sometimes he even swallows his words. Most humans take the last as part of his soft spoken, reticent routine. It`s not. It`s his way of clinging to things, even words..like he`s afraid once something is gone, he can never call it back. Ya don`t have to be a shrink to get the significance of that.
He licks in bed. He nibbles, and he bites, and he runs his tongue over every part of me, until I am wet and trembling. I could probably tie his hands behind his back and still...well, OK, sometimes I do...but I hardly notice the difference. He does most of his best work with his mouth. It`s also the only time he shuts the hell up.
Although..no, that`s not entirely true. The man can have an entire conversation while fucking, and it don`t matter whether he`s the fuck-er, or the fuck-ee. It`s right annoying. He carries on this teasing banter while my eyes are crossing and I can`t find the breath to speak. No idea how he does that shit. If I want him quiet I have to do one of two things. Laugh at him or return his oral fixation favor.
He might have iron control when it comes to sex, but when his cock is in my mouth, he`s lucky if he can strangle out a moan. It`s kind of funny, really...those noises he makes in the back of his throat, the growls in his chest that don`t quite make it past his lips. He can`t even scream when he comes that way, he just grabs the back of my head and inhales...
Though I wouldn`t admit it out loud, hearing him talk in bed isn`t always so bad. There`s nothing quite like the sound of a half-swallowed, ``Oh..god...oh..Will...`` He never invoked the name of Jesus that much when he was unsouled, I can tell ya that. Course he never said please then either...Christ..the sound of him saying ``please..William..now...``, yeah, *that`s* enough to make my toes curl into the sheets without fail.
The way he looks when I give it to him, hard, and fast, the way I like it; taking him from behind, so I can watch all the muscles tense in his back, and see the sweat pool by his hairline, that stupid tattoo all shining and covered in a thin film of his salt. When I can reach around underneath him, and take his cock in my hand, and set the rythym. Gods, there`s power. He doesn`t know which way to arch first, where to move to heighten the pleasure most, so he lets me do it..all of it...I control it all...so rare, that. He relinquishes dominion to me, and I take it and I take him...
And when he cries out, my fangs sink into the hollow of his shoulder and his cries are stilled and quiet as I drink my fill. His blood is rich and alive, and I don`t give a damn what anyone says about us being dead things...there is a world in that blood. I can see myself as he once saw me, young and mortal and not quite ever innocent. I can see the years we spent together, and everyone we spent them with. I can see everyone he has ever loved and hated, fought and fucked. And I can see him the way he is now, and the way I suppose he wishes he was. He`s so friggin clueless, even after all this time. He has no idea how other people see him. Least of all me.
It`s all gotta be complicated to him, some big ridiculous production; it`s all gotta be about humanity, and souls and hair gel. Unimportant shit that in the end just don`t fucking matter.
What matters is that I can read him, his fleeting facial expressions that noone else can catch, his subtle body language that conveys everything his half-choked words never do. What matters is that he curls around me in his sleep, and sometimes even sighs my name when he dreams. What matters is that he knows every bloody way to make me crazy, in all the good and not-so-good ways, and he does `em all every chance he gets.
What matters is that he knows I love him, even though I can count on one hand the times I`ve actually been able to say it.
What matters is that I know even in half-sleep that he`s watching me, so I open my eyes slowly, to catch him at it. Then he grins at me, and I give him that look which tells him yea, he`s a buggerin` nonce, but I suppose I`ll keep him.
It`s always been those stupid little things that matter. Those things that make him.....
well, *mine*.
~Fins