Feedback: `Course, much appreciated, send to maybeshedoes@yahoo.com
Rating: NC-17, just in case. No actual sex, but lots and lots of disturbing thoughts. (Hey Mom, I rhymed!)
Improv: Beattles Song Title Challenge
Spoilers: References to Blood Money, Sleep Tight, Five by Five, Becoming, Darla. Takes place just before Sleep Tight.
Pairing: Angel-- sort of A/OC, A/Connor, but not really. Vague reference to A/Darla, Boone/OC.
Summary: Why wouldn't you think to mention something when your son starts to look like food?
Distribution: Take it, but tell me where so I can visit.
Disclaimer: In my dreams I'm Joss... but during the day I have to face the cold hard truth-- I'm a hack who steals characters. But I'm not giving them back! Or I am, just don't sue me, all I have are speeding tickets and student loans.
Author's Note: I know why Angel's so tempted, and you know why (I hope), and Lilah would know why, if you asked her, but Angel doesn't know why. Just so you know that I know...
More Author's Notes: I've actually been working on this fic since Couplet, before Sleep Tight even happened. I kinda got Jossed with Orpheus, but I didn't really like that ep anyway, so let's just pretend it was all a big, ugly hallucination-- which, conveniently, it was.
Dedication: A few fabulous betas and friends-- Liz, Kermey, Alex, and Robin.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Connor was not the first child Darla gave to Angel.
The first one was a missionary's daughter-- ripe-skinned and sweet- smelling with wide, happy eyes. If Angel had found her a few years earlier, she would have been a satisfying snack, an act of defiance against any lingering human instincts he retained. There had been hundreds of babies before the curse-- screaming, squealing, squirming, wretched children. Darla liked to give them to him as gifts, but she gave him many trinkets-- a sword, a whip, a knife, and some more subtle toys, for more subtle games. But a child is always an unsubtle thing, and Angel knew just what Darla wanted in return for her gift.
He ran away, taking the infant with him as he escaped China, Asia, the East, and every piece of land he'd ever seen or touched. Angel had planned to leave the baby girl at an orphanage in Hong Kong or Tokyo, but their conditions were appalling. When he arrived in America, he stopped at a dozen different doorsteps, almost leaving the child behind, but none of the homes seemed quite sweet enough, quite right enough for his Shannon.
He'd named her on the boat that brought them to their New World. She'd been a soft pet to him, a distraction on the slow journey, troublesome to feed, to clean, to quiet, and so she had kept his time full, and his mind occupied.
Finding no comfortable home in the human world, Angel eventually settled in San Tuario, a muddy village in central Mexico populated mostly by peaceful demons. They watched him clumsily build a small clay home, their eyes full of distrust; they knew his reputation. Angel half expected, half hoped he would be murdered in his sleep by his neighbors, but they never came near him.
They watched him play with the little girl he'd adopted, and slowly they began to trust him. He never befriended the locals, but they eventually stopped waiting for him to rise up in violence. Angel and Shannon stayed in San Tuario, away from any humans, away from change and temptation.
But change comes, as does temptation. Most of the demons of San Tuario were unaging, like Angel, but Shannon was human, and she grew. A happy child, she lived for years as Angel taught her to, without knowledge of the outside world, and without ever knowing another human being.
The spent nearly every waking moment together, Shannon choosing to sleep during the day in Angel's arms. They didn't talk much. Angel was too reticent, and because Shannon idolized him, she learned to adopt his ways, his mannerisms, as she adopted his vampiric hours. Still, they made good company for each other and shared many a quietly tender moment.
Once she was old enough, Angel allowed Shannon to spend her days tending the meager garden that supplied most of her food. She took advantage of this small freedom to socialize with the offspring of the local demons. They whispered to her of war, love, and truth. They taught her about everything that Angel wanted to shield her from, and she grew apart from him, wily and alive, and beyond controlling.
Angel had always assumed that by the time Shannon was twelve, he would have to take her to a human village to be educated in the ways of her own people, but he couldn't do it, couldn't share her. They always slept side by side on a bare straw mat, Angel watching Shannon's eyelids twitch while she slept, her blood pumping warmly through her childish body. She usually provided for him a small temptation-- she was, of course, the only human in the area. But the longing for blood had become an old ache in Angel even before he met Shannon, so he watched her, and he hungered, but he got used to the feeling. He got so used to the feeling that he barely noticed the shift, so subtle, so dangerous.
Shannon was just a child, but he was just a man. He'd spent a century and a half abusing the bodies of boys and girls her age, teaching children lust and corruption for the sake of his own enjoyment. Even with his soul, part of Angel still craved the bodies of innocents as he craved their blood.
The vampire watched his daughter as he had spent most of his life watching humans. He had always studied them as they played, dreamed, and worked, trying to discover the best ways to destroy them. Angel no longer wanted to wreak destruction on the innocent, but he feared it was his only destiny.
Shannon was twelve, and lovely in her purity. She would dance naked in the rain, red hair clumped and wet down her back, lithe body, pale and slim, rolling to the music in her head-- the wet beats the locals created on their exotic instruments, borne from distant eras and dimensions.
Angel liked to stand in the doorway of their hut and watch her slide through the mud, dancing back to back with blue-skinned children, albino fire demons, sharp-toothed elves, and pudding-like freckle fairies who bestowed kisses up and down Shannon's cheeks and arms until she was a two-toned mess of a girl.
On sunny days, Shannon worked in the garden while Angel slept or read in the shade of their home. He would listen to her heartbeat, her soft voice trading jokes with the other villagers in lilting Spanish. Sometimes she would laugh, and he knew, *knew* he was no kind of real father. He never made her laugh like that: loud and open, soul laid bare and vulnerable. Angel had never grown fully comfortable with himself after he was cursed, had always feared being too close to Shannon. He knew what he was capable of. But the result was that as she grew older, she seemed to slip farther and farther away from him.
All her life, Angel would meet Shannon just beyond the doorway when she came inside for siesta after a long day working in the garden. He would wipe the sweat from her forehead and hand-feed her strawberries, allowing the red juice to coat her lips temptingly. He wanted her, and she was his, but he never touched, never tasted-- just walked the line of decency. Angel never thought that Shannon might guess his weakness, might know a right and wrong other than what he'd taught her.
She was fourteen the first time she refused to bite into the juicy fruit he held out for her. Instead, she took the strawberry from his hand, eyes locked on his in defiance, and fed herself.
As she aged, her defiance grew and she pushed him further and further away.
She strayed from their home, testing him. When she was fifteen, she went down to a nearby river with some friends. Angel was frantic with worry-- she'd never gone so far away that he couldn't hear her, smell her. He paced the hut restlessly until dusk, when Shannon returned, wet and happy. She bucked all his attempts to punish her-- but then, he knew if he raised a hand to her, that would be the end of his control. He would have her, but she wasn't ready yet. So his punishments were lenient and ineffective.
Soon, Shannon was often too far away for him to sense her; she went out into the sun and there was nothing he could do to hold her back, to keep her to himself. But she always returned before dusk, and Angel clung to that, clung to every scrap of her he could get.
The idea of bringing her to a human village was totally discarded by the time she was sixteen.
He had never touched her, not the way he wanted to, but he did want to, and that was what bothered him so much. How long could he hold himself back? Just until she was old enough. She never seemed to be old enough, radiating childish purity from every pore.
When Shannon was seventeen, Angel borrowed a whip from their neighbor, a tentacled hope demon, and flagellated himself desperately for about two minutes before he broke down in unmasculine giggles. He'd always thought the practice ridiculous before his soul was restored, and even when he was human. He could never do a proper job of it, could never punish himself for something that seemed less and less wrong.
Shannon was almost a woman at eighteen, but still clean in soul and body. Angel longed for her painfully, denying himself six months at a time. He promised, "In half a year, she'll be old enough; she'll be ready." She never was.
By the time she was nineteen, she'd taken to sleeping completely at night. When she took up human hours, Angel had been perplexed, then distraught, as they now no longer shared the pallet for any length of time at all. Angel's dismay eventually evolved to relief-- their daylight hours on the bed had been restless for him. Her warmth was always so nearby, though she had stopped snuggling into him when she was eleven, and had begun to move away from him every time he moved to hold her by the time she was thirteen. Now Angel slept better, and when he was alone in his hut, he indulged in his fantasies; stroking himself brutally, surrounded by the scent of his adopted daughter.
Twenty years old. Twenty-one. Angel was in despair. The farther time took him from his soulless age, the more impossible this immoral longing became. He knew Shannon would be ready for him eventually. He wasn't sure he'd ever be ready for her.
She was twenty-two, and Angel realized he should take her to a human village, arrange a marriage for her, and disappear from her life forever.
He wanted so much to feel her, to know her, but she called him Pa-pi every night when she snuggled into the small bed they once shared, and he knew his desire was wrong, always would be.
He'd raised Shannon and taught her and loved her her whole life, but he'd never really known her, never understood her. He thought it was because she was a human and he was a vampire. Or maybe just because she was stubbornly quiet about everything, never revealing her thoughts to him when he asked.
One night, Angel came home early from the hunt, his belly full with some kind of enormous Mexican rat. He was cross, and went to lie down on the mat where he knew Shannon would be sleeping. But she wasn't there.
He'd always assumed she would one day grow old enough to take a lover, always assumed that when the time came, he would be her only choice. He was shocked that night when he followed her scent and found her out at the edge of the desert, embracing a hunger demon.
Stunned and unable to move, Angel watched as they made love in the tall grass, unworried about snakes or wild animals. His daughter-- his potential lover, his... *his girl* was passionate and uninhibited with the mysterious, ageless demon. Angel's rage swept him off his feet, so he was kneeling and hidden when Shannon kissed her demon goodnight and ran home.
The demon, Boone, called out to Angel then, having been aware of his presence throughout the event. Boone scolded Angel infuriatingly gently for trying to keep Shannon to himself. Angel surmised two things very quickly; Shannon had been hiding her affair for some time, and Boone was in love with her.
The blue-skinned demon explained that he wanted to take Shannon away, to show her the world. In the traditional manner, he even asked permission for her hand in marriage. Angel absolutely refused, but in the end, there was very little he could do. She was his daughter, his love, she was *his*, and he would not allow some over-ripe, three- tongued, empathetic demon to carry her away. He did the only thing left in his power; he attacked.
They were evenly matched, fighting with the ferocity of love for over three hours. The noise attracted attention from the town, and the neighbors who had avoided Angel, or feared him, or hated him all came out of their homes to watch the match.
Eventually Shannon came too, brought by a girl friend who dragged her down to the field to see. The beautiful red-head watched her father and her lover fight to the death. She stayed completely still, her face pale and twisted with worry. She defended neither of them, she rooted for neither of them, just clasped her friend's hand spasmodically whenever one of the demons got the upper hand.
The sun was about to rise, and if Angel could have escaped, he would have, damn Shannon and her tainted honor, lost virginity, total lack of Freudian devotion-- whatever it was Angel was fighting for, he wasn't ready to die. But he couldn't escape, and would have burned in the sun if Boone hadn't stepped back and let him go.
Simultaneously cursing and thanking Boone's sense of fairness, Angel slunk back to his hut and waited for Shannon. She never came home. Angel paced restlessly, not even pretending to sleep, and waited for the sun to go down. Outside, he could hear the normal bustle of the village, though it seemed a little further away than usual.
When that longest day finally passed, he went into the town and asked for his daughter, for her lover, Boone. They were gone. Part of Angel was glad. Getting too close to humans was a dangerous thing. Perhaps this was Shannon's way of saving him from ruining her. Some days he was grateful, others he was bitterly vengeful, but he was mostly just lonely. For twenty-two years he'd enjoyed the human contact she provided, the *humanness* of her. Now she was gone, humanity seemed so damn far away.
After a year of waiting for Shannon to come running home to him, Angel left Mexico. He knew he could never find her, or if he did, could never drag her back; he didn't even think of chasing the lovers. Shannon was lost to him; Boone was too smart or too in love to let her go.
Angel traveled north, into the United States. There, he was surrounded by humans-- all kinds of temptations.
***
This was his failing, or one of them: He'd always liked young teenagers, had never really outgrown them as he became a man, years ago when he was human.
As a vampire, when he was unfettered by magicks, he had found and debauched only the innocent, the virginal, the child-like. Darla had very little patience for his hobbies. When she discovered his latest conquest-- that little gypsy girl-- Darla had bound the child up and carried her home. Angelus had understood he was receiving both a gift and a punishment. There would be fun, but no drawn-out seduction, no long twisting of purity, no more Drusillas. Angelus had made the most of the situation, and there'd been no time for complaints.
The young were his weakness, the lure the Powers had first used to draw him into the good fight.
Buffy.
Well, he'd made them pay for *that* decision, at least.
***
But then there was Connor. Tiny, with enormous blue eyes that gazed at Angel with so much trust. A son. A true child of Angel's own body.
Angel was sure there would be no temptation, not with his own child, the only offspring he would ever have. A baby's skin is soft, like over-ripe fruit, and not really that tempting to a vampire, though the blood underneath is the same. Angel would be safe with Connor, his love for the boy protecting them both.
At night, Angel sat by Connor's crib, watching his son sleep. In that dark room, unbidden and unwanted thoughts still crept into the vampire's mind. Angel wondered-- what would Darla's blood taste like, tied inextricably to his blood, his body? What would their essences combined become in their child's veins? He pushed the thoughts away with varying degrees of ease. Not Connor. He would not look at his son like that.
Connor's fist was curled to his face, and bright pink lips attempted to wrap themselves around the whole hand. Angel watched his child sleep and tried not to be tempted. He had years and years with Shannon before he ever wanted to hurt her, and she wasn't even his true daughter. Surely, Angel's own son would be safer from him, would be precious and unharmed always.
Connor fussed and twisted in his sleep, and Angel stood, ready to pick the boy up if he woke crying. But Connor settled again and Angel stayed on his feet, staring at the scar on Connor's cheek. If only Angel had taken advantage earlier... If only he had tasted...
Angel shook his head. He would never hurt his son. Never touch, forbidden. Never take.
The vampire sat down again, watching Connor sleep, wondering how strong the temptation would get as the years passed, wondering if bloodlust would become bodylust, wondering if he could resist forever.
Angel tried not to think about those eyes, Darla's eyes, peering up at him in adoration from the face of a teenage son, tried to believe that Connor would be nothing like Shannon. Tried to believe that he was a good man, and could be a good father.
But Angel knew: he was never good at resisting temptation, and children grow so fast.
The End