Title: Strange
Author: Moonloon
Email: maryavatar@gmail.com
Website: Amused and Abused
Feedback: maryavatar Rating: NC17
Warnings: Dark themes, mention of child abuse
Pairing: Wesley/Connor, (mention of Connor/Holtz)
Note 1: Written for moonlettuce in the Connor ficathon
Note 2: Thanks to rivier and Emony for beta services.

Connor sits on the rooftops and watches.  Usually he watches for demons, but tonight he's watching Wesley.  His fath… Holtz didn't talk about many people.  Didn't talk much at all really, except to give instructions or another lecture on the evils of Angelus.  Wesley was one of the few, along with Caroline and their dead children.  Strange how Holtz had mentioned Wesley, and not Justine.  That strangeness makes Wesley interesting.

Wesley fights demons too.  He hasn't Connor's strength, and he can be hurt so easily, but still he does it.  He has strange and ingenious weapons, and people who do his bidding.  He can move with grace and utter brutality.  And tonight he smells like that woman.  That impossibly smooth and clean woman from Wolfram and Hart.  The one that makes Connor's skin prickle.

Connor jumps down and moves closer, yet hidden still, in an alley.  Down here it's easier to smell that mingling of perfume and sweat and the Other.  The mess that Holtz called shame, yet spilled himself on occasion.  He'd been beaten for calling it forth on purpose, but he'd been old enough then for the pain to last only a moment.  Wesley doesn't seem shamed, standing triumphant over the corpse of something red and scaled, with the scent of not-shame and woman still on his skin.  Perhaps it was all right to spill it with a woman.  Perhaps what was why Holtz had called the name of his long-dead wife in the dark.

He's been lost in his thoughts and that's unwise, he realises a second too late.  He's against the wall with Wesley's body pressing onto him and Wesley's cold eyes glaring down at his face.

"Hello Connor - or is it Stephen?"

Stephen, he wants to say, he's Stephen in his thoughts still, but here he has to be Connor.  "Connor."  Stephen died with Holtz.  Wesley's body is warm against his, and it feels strange and dangerous.  Connor isn't used to people touching him.  Holtz only touched him in the dark, when he called him Caroline.  The memory is uncomfortable: he liked and didn't like it, and it made him feel loved and hated.  Even in a place where everything was unclean it had been possible to feel dirtier.

"Well Connor, since you're here I might as well ask.  Do you know where Angel is?"

Distracted by the feel of Wesley's body, and the sudden realisation that the livid red scar on Wesley's neck was made by Justine, Connor flinches at the question.  Another mistake.  Far too many mistakes tonight, Connor is beginning to think he should have stayed in his bed.

"Where is Angel?"  Wesley says, a hint of menace in his tone, and Connor shrugs him off, one arm carelessly shoving Wesley to the alley's opposite wall.  So easy to do, why hadn't he done it earlier?  Perhaps because Wesley's touch isn't like Holtz's; it's… interesting.

"I don't know where he is.  Maybe someone killed him."  He's sullen, and he knows he doesn't sound believable.  

"Maybe someone thought he'd suffer more alive."

Connor has had enough, and bolts.  He knows Wesley isn't following him, but he feels the need to run as if a dozen demons are pursuing him.  He runs until the air burns in his lungs and he can't remember Angel's face as he closed the lid of the box.  Strangely, he can still remember the feel of Wesley's hands, pressing his shoulders back against the bricks, and the smell of whisky and lipstick on Wesley's breath.

Strange how he's hard.  It hurts to run, but he does it anyway.

Connor stops and looks up, and he's… home.  Strange to call a place of bricks and permanence home.  Home used to be a hole in ground, a cave, or a lean-to made from the woven rib-bones of smaller demons.  Not this huge empty place, which still smells like Angel and has lingering sparks of dark magics flickering in the corners.  But it is home now, and he doesn't hate it.  It's hard to hate in this realm; people smile and share things, and Connor can see the love, even if he can't feel it, or completely understand it.

Connor can feel this realm changing him.  It started the night Cordelia burned the darkness out of him, and he feels more and more of himself draining away every day.

He's not entirely sure this is a bad thing.

Fred is waiting for him when he walks through the door.  There are questions and offers of food, but he doesn't want to listen.  He doesn't want to hear Fred's voice, and smell her strange woman scent.  He doesn't know what he wants, so he runs up the stairs to his room, slams the door and throws himself down on the bed.

One part of him at least knows what it wants.  Connor glares down at the front of his jeans, then sighs and pops open the top button.  He hurts down there now, maybe because he's been hard for so long, maybe because of the running.  He just wants it to go away and the fastest way he knows to do that is to give it what it wants.

Another sigh and he tugs everything down.  He wonders what Wesley and that woman did together.  Did she hold him in her hand?  Did she squeeze him?  Like that?  Connor tries to picture them together, but only succeeds in imagining Wesley.  Wesley's warm hands on his arms.  What if those hands hadn't stayed there?  What if they'd moved further down, touching him, feeling how hard he was?

Would Wesley have been disgusted?  Or would he have touched some more?

Connor shudders and his hand speeds up, the motion eased by the sweat from his palm.

A knock at the door.  "Connor?  Can I come in?"

It's Fred; Connor can smell cheese and toasted bread.  He almost tells her to fuck off, a wonderful expression he heard a vampire say, just before he was staked, but then he remembers that this is home, and Fred is not an enemy.  He stands up and puts everything the way it was, hiding his arousal under his untucked shirt.

"Yes."

It's a grilled cheese sandwich, and he eats it obediently, as Fred's chatter washes over him.  It's almost relaxing, and soon Fred notices his slow blinking and blank stare, and tells him to get some sleep.  Oddly enough, sleep comes fast; he sinks into the soft mattress and drifts away.

The dream is familiar in parts: the damp breath on the back of his neck, the hands touching him in ways that he's grown used to, even to like in some shameful twisted way.  The scene is unfamiliar though, he's not lying on stone, or a rough bed of matted rushes, he's leaning against a wall.  It's the wall from the alley, and it's not Holtz behind him.

"Connor, Connor, Connor."

It's not his name, his name is Stephen.  But Holtz never called him by his name either.  Always 'Caroline' or 'My Sweet' or 'Lovely Girl'.  Connor's an improvement.

Wesley slides into him, and it doesn't hurt.  It's a dream and things don't hurt in dreams.  Not in his body anyway.  Connor starts to feel that tight, heavy want building and tries not to move.  He's not supposed to move.  He's not supposed to make any noise, or move or do anything but lie there and wait for it to be finished.

Only… he's not lying down, and it's not Holtz, so how many other things are different here?  He pushes back and feels Wesley's hands tighten on his hips.

"Yessss, Connor."

So he does it again, and it feels so good.  He's almost there, almost ready to let it all go, when Wesley speaks again.

"Where's Angel?"

And Connor wakes up gasping and sweating and coming.

~

It's days before Connor hunts down Wesley again.  He's confused and angry, and he's dusted fifteen vampires before he feels calm enough to go looking.  Wesley smells like a different woman this time, but he doesn't smell like shame.  Like sex.  Like fucking.  The scent is familiar, but he can't quite remember where he's smelled her before.

He lets Wesley catch him again.  Or really, he steps out of the dark and lets Wesley see him.  Wesley waves back his minions and walks over.

"Connor."

"Wesley."

"Come to tell me about Angel?"  Wesley asks, and Connor is suddenly furious.  Why does everyone care so much about Angelus?  Can't they just forget him?

"I don't know anything about Angel."  Connor wonders why it's so easy to lie to Fred and Gunn, yet his lies to Wesley sound forced and obvious.

"Yes you do.  But you're not going to tell me, and I doubt I could force the answer out of you."  Wesley steps forward, and Connor backs up, then shakes himself and steps forward again.  He doesn't want to back down, he wants to get closer, to feel Wesley's muscles shifting under warm skin.

There's a sudden flash of understanding in Wesley's eyes and Connor realises that everything he wants is written on his face.  There's a second where he might reach out and ask for it, but one of Wesley's minions shouts over and the moment is lost.

Connor doesn't remember running home, and this time Fred interrupts him with chicken soup as he's picturing how things might have been different.

~

It's three days later before he remembers the new woman smell on Wesley, and flashes back to a field full of wild flowers and the stench of burning flesh.  The woman on Wesley was Justine, and Justine knows where Angel is.  Which must be why Wesley didn't try very hard to get information out of him.  Connor wonders if he could kill Wesley, and then decides that he could.  Easily.

But he's too late.  

Too late.  Angel is back and Connor is cast out.  Alone.  Strange how much it hurts to be alone.  Strange how he misses Fred's voice and Gunn's jokes.  Strange how he's still alive, when Angelus should have killed him.

It hurts too much, so he gets angry.  Angry is easier, it's cleansing and invigorating.  And he has the perfect target to aim it at: Wesley.  Connor saw Wesley's face after he rescued Angelus.  Even tired and bloodless Wesley shines in Angel's presence.  There are already so many reasons to hate Angelus, he doesn't need or want another one, but there it is.

Wesley's apartment is easy to break into, and Wesley is lying in bed, not quite asleep.  It would be so easy to just lean over and snap his neck.  He probably would, if Wesley looked scared or defensive.  He doesn't though; he just looks tired and sad.

"Are you going to kill me?"  Wesley asks.

Connor thinks about it.  He stays silent for a little longer than necessary, because he's still angry, and part of him wants Wesley to be afraid, but Wesley's face never changes.  "No."

"Good, I can put this away then."  Wesley says, dropping a gun onto the bedside table.  "Is this a social call?  At almost midnight?"

"I was going to kill you, but I changed my mind."  Why did he say that?  He has no control over what he says when he talks to Wesley.  He should keep him mouth shut.  The anger is suddenly redirected at himself.

"Connor…" Wesley sighs, "I didn't do it to hurt you.  No one wants to hurt you.  It's just the way things have to be.  I'm sorry for everything that's happened to you, and God knows, I'm to blame for some of it, but Angel is not your enemy, and he is needed."

"Needed more than me."  It's a statement, not a question, and Wesley looks away as he nods.  "I hate him."

"Sons and fathers.  It's always complicated."  Wesley murmurs, and Connor can see the shadows under his eyes.  "You should stay tonight, it's late."

"What?"

"Stay, or not.  It's up to you, but I'm going to sleep.  Good night, Connor."  And Wesley rolls over and closes his eyes.

Connor stands in the bedroom and watches.  He watches Wesley sleep.  And later, when the sun is almost up, he crawls into the bed and breathes against the back of Wesley's neck.

The End