He can feel it, sitting there in his veins. It should be pooling without a heartbeat to move it, should be settling and congealing in his veins. Somehow the demon that animates his flesh makes it move. He's never tried to find out how it works, how the demon can heal his flesh and make his hair grow and have blood seep from wounds when he's supposed to be dead.
Dead doesn't mean what it used to, these days.
Wesley could probably tell him how it works, how the demon does what it does. He's never asked. Finding out how something works inevitably leads to knowing how to make it stop working, and that's a subject he doesn't allow himself to consider anymore. He has work to do, a mission. A challenge from a golden-haired girl with his soul in her eyes, a challenge to go on no matter how much he wants to lay his burdens down and fall to dust.
A champion's life is full of sharp edges. Sometimes he presses them against his skin, breaks the surface, watches the blood well up and flow. He marvels at it, in a distant way, feeling no pain even as he bleeds. It isn't even his blood, after all.
It just amazes him, fills him with wonder, that it's there. That the blood he drinks flows through his body. That this simple red fluid and a demon's will can animate the corpse of a man who died ages ago.
Somehow it's always Wes who finds him. Part of him suspects he plans it that way, that he only allows himself the indulgence when no one but Wes will be around. It would frighten Cordelia and Fred too much, to find their big strong hero sitting alone in the darkness watching himself bleed. Lorne would be concerned but mystified. He suspects that Gunn would understand, but knows with certainty that Wesley does.
And so it's Wesley that he allows to find him, sitting in his office or a corner of the lobby, blade loose in his hand, watching in awe and wonder as his latest meal flows out of his flesh and onto the floor. He has to reopen the wound again and again as the demon heals him, trying to keep its strength from bleeding away. Only Wesley sees the light in his eyes as he draws steel over skin, sees that it isn't pain but a sacrament. Hurting himself is holiness. Proves he's real, alive in whatever twisted sense the demon imparts.
It's Wesley that gently takes the blade from his fingers, that brings out Cordy's first-aid kit, that wraps the cuts in bandages that they don't need, because they're healing even as the adhesive dries. It's Wesley that murmurs words of gentle understanding in his ears as he guides him up the stairs to his room and sees him safely to bed.
Wesley's the only one to see him that way, because Wesley is the only one he knows will understand. He's seen the marks that Wesley bears, seen the faint traces of the desperate need to know that you're real written on pale skin.
His own skin keeps no records. It heals as smooth and flawless as if the pain and doubt had never been.
Feedback is like oxygen.
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