It's like something out of a bad dream. It would be more precise to call it an erotic nightmare, but that wouldn't make much sense, especially owing to the fact that rationality seems to have gone on vacation.

But, first and foremost, it's incredibly arousing.

She isn't wearing a stitch of clothing, and the moonlight highlights every curve of her lithe body.

She arches her back as her body changes form. It doesn't look like a particularly painful process - it looks like she enjoys it. If it weren't happening right here in front of him - and if it weren't him, alone in the dark of night - he would suspect he was getting Punk'd.

So he's thinking, desperately, of anything but this. Or he would be. If his mind hadn't packed its bags and left.

When she showed up, he was asleep. Was being the operative word.

He woke up all the way sometime after she had taken his boxers off, while she was adjusting the bond holding his left foot to the bedpost. There wasn't a lot he could do to resist - if he wanted to resist, that is. And he found he rather liked the bondage.

Once she started changing shape, he stopped wondering what was going on. Not because he suddenly realized what was happening, but because rationality decided it couldn't work under these conditions, packed up, and left.

It's really quite embarrassing, being tied up, naked, on his bed, and normally (if that's a word that can be applied here) he'd be thinking the most unsexy thoughts possible. But he's completely at her mercy here, so... why resist when he could be having fun?

She settles, finally, on a lean form, human, light-haired.

"Oh God," he says.

"I'm not religious," she says, grinning. Her teeth shine, reflecting the light streaming through the window. "But thanks anyway."

She's been thinking about what she's going to do to him for a while. Not really long - this was kind of an impulse decision - but a while.

In a way, she wants to play with him. Toy with him a little.

She wants to be in control. To make him beg her to do things to him.

She always wants to be in control. She always has. And now, tonight, she finally can be. Tied to the bed, there's nothing he can do to resist. And he knows that.

It's exciting. Power is the best drug, and tonight she's practically mainlining it.

She wants to own him, to make him hers.

She's going to own him, all of him.

Max told her to go amuse herself - like she was still six - and damn it, she's determined to.

Of course, she's going to let him have fun, too. No fair playing selfish.

She grins. Wait until Max hears about this.

"Who are you?" he rasps, staring resolutely at the insides of his eyelids. His throat has gone dry for some reason.

"Who do you want me to be?" she purrs. If he keeps his eyes closed she's not Angel, and this isn't happening.

He can't find an answer.

She strokes his side with one hand, her skin hot against his, and he shivers, because this shouldn't feel as good as it does. This is wrong.

"Ssh," she says, brushing her nails over the skin of his stomach, and he realizes he's making tiny whimpering noises in the back of his throat as her fingers skitter closer to his cock.

What he's not sure of is their meaning, what he's trying to say: he's begging for something, but he doesn't know if it's for her to stop or not to stop.

She presses the edge of her palm against him harshly, and even though it hurts he finds himself arching his hips, trying to get closer to her - and even though it's wrong and sick and God this shouldn't be happening, he hears himself moaning shamelessly, because if there's one secret he's kept all these years from almost everyone, it's that Jeb Batchelder gets off on pain.

"Shut up," she hisses, "or I will gag you."

She must take his silence for assent, because she drags her hand down the full length of his cock in one smooth stroke, lingering just a moment to tease at the head. Oh, God, he remembers - this is Angel.

But despite that - despite his scattered memories of the little girl she was - he still can't stop himself from rocking his hips upward into her touch, straining against his bonds, needing to feel her hands hot on his skin.

She's holding back, though, leaning backwards away from him, withholding what she must know he wants, not touching him.

"Please," he whispers, and if she'd left his hands untied he'd be doing the job himself, so to speak, because it's been so long since he's had anyone, and even having an audience wouldn't stop him from getting what he needs. Not now.

That's probably why she's tied him up like this, he thinks, as she sits still and only watches him, pale eyes reflecting faint light - so she's in control, not him, and all he can do is beg.

So he does beg, and God - he hates it, hates her for making him debase himself like this. (And yet at the same time he likes it - relying on her for his release feels so dirty, so sick, that it turns him on.)

"Please," he says, and at last she's touching him again, her hot fingers trailing over his cock, making him shudder.

"Have you always been this cheap?" she wonders as she strokes him, achingly slow. She rakes her fingernails over the sensitive skin there and he cries out, hips jerking helplessly into her touch. "If this is all it takes... I'm surprised, Jeb," she continues, saying his name sharply, like it's a curse. "I never knew you were such a slut."

She really is surprised - she'd expected this to be more difficult, had thought it would be harder to get him to come around to the idea. Instead all it's taken is a little touching, a willingness to give him pain, and knowing just when to stop - and here he is writhing and moaning under her, and she knows that if she tried she could get him to call her name.

"I never thought you'd be so easy," she tells him. She really didn't. She'd thought she'd at least have to put effort into seducing him, but... apparently that's not the case. (She wonders if maybe that's the result of being almost married to his work for so long - maybe Jeb's an easy lay for want of experience, not because he's just a total whore.)

Just for the fun of it she draws back for a moment - so she can take a better look at this man, this whitecoat, sprawled panting and naked on his own bed, undone by desire, begging her to touch him.

It's not all that bad of a picture. It's good to see someone else like this because of her - and it's especially satisfying for it to be Jeb, a man she's used to seeing in a neatly ironed white shirt, tie, and lab coat. He just looks incredible like this, whimpering and grinding his hips upward, desperate for more contact with her.

"But you need this, don't you?" she says, making her voice, her touch, go from rough to gentle, almost angry to tender, almost loving. She almost kind of regrets it, because looking at him now she's thinking: how long has it been since he's gotten laid? He arches his back, and she wonders: does he even jerk off? Or is he too busy with his work?

She strokes his stomach with one hand, running her fingers over the skin, and murmurs, "It's been too long, hasn't it?"

His eyes open, and in a quiet voice, shaky with need, he whispers, "Yes."

And maybe her resolve is breaking, because under the raw animal need she can hear that there are strong currents of despair in his voice - he sounds as if, if she weren't here, he'd be thinking of the many virtues of chemicals, wondering lazily about lethal doses and side effects. Or if he owned a gun, lying paralyzed in bed thinking of it, of putting the muzzle in his mouth and carefully, steadily squeezing the trigger - or maybe he'd be thinking of a hot bath and a sharp razor...

She moves her hand up to rest by his hip, puts her weight on it, and leans up to kiss him, because as much as Angel came here intending to own this man beneath her, she's finding it difficult to be possessive, knowing now that he's just on the edge of suicide.

He returns her kiss with an eagerness that surprises her, and she finds it half-sweet, half-sad: doesn't Jeb have anyone to go to?

She nips gently at his lip, and he makes a suppressed little whimpering sound as she runs a hand through his hair. All of a sudden she doesn't want to claim him, doesn't want to make him hers. Angel came here to fuck Jeb until he was sore, but now she's finding it hard not to untie him and just... be gentle with him.

But the way he's shaking makes her realize: maybe Jeb doesn't want her to be tender, soft, and loving. Maybe he wants her to fuck him sore, to leave him gasping and aching and then ashamed of himself in the morning - maybe what Jeb wants isn't sweet, slow lovemaking, but a hard, no-strings fuck.

She strokes the side of his face, and this time the noise he makes isn't a please-fuck-me-harder moan - it's a sigh.

It's entirely possible, she realizes with a smile, that he wants both. That there's a side of Jeb that wants what she came here to give, and a side that wants love, not a cheap fuck.

And the same contradiction is part of her, too. She came here looking to torment the scientist she remembers, to make him suffer and ache, to claim him and make him hers, utterly. What she's finding here is something different: she's found Jeb the scientist, yes, and she's having fun with him. But she's also found Jeb the man, and she's starting to have her doubts about torturing him like this.

She's afraid she might break him, and she's no Max - she couldn't take having someone's death on her hands.

"Who do you want me to be?" she repeats, and he opens his eyes, looking up at her.

"Doesn't matter," he says, and for some reason that hurts.

"There must be someone." She kisses the side of his neck, nuzzling against him. She can feel his heartbeat against her cheek.

"I don't have anyone," he says simply, and somehow that kind of makes her want to cry. She used to think, when she was about twelve, that Max was wrong, and that even mad scientists could find people to love.

Now she's thinking that maybe in this case Max was right - maybe Jeb can't find anyone who would want him, because of who and what he is.

Angel's still as much of a sap now as she was at twelve, and it hurts her heart a little, yeah, to think that someone in the world has no one to love. No friends, no family, no lovers. Only his work.

"How can someone like you not have anyone?" she says, unable to believe it, unable to think that a man like Jeb could somehow have failed to find even a quick one-night stand in so many years alone. God. It just blows her mind.

"Are you joking?" he rasps. "Who in their right mind would want me?"

"You're not a complete monster," she tells him.

"Really?" His voice makes her heart ache, its tone is so full of bitterness - his eyes are so blue in this half-light, she notices. Max looks nothing like him. What is he leaving to be remembered by?

"Almost eight billion people in the world. One of them has to think you're beautiful." Angel, you're horrible.

He laughs, voice raspy and rough-edged, and his eyes slip closed. "You're wrong."

He's shaking, skinny wrists shivering inside the rope holding them to his bedposts. And are those tears creeping from beneath his eyelids?

Yes, she sees with raptor-vision clarity. They are.

Oh, Angel. Which of you is the monster here?

His lips part (she sees in this weird clarifying light that he has almost pretty lips, but too often twisted in a frown or in sadness - he'd look so much better with a smile on his face) and now he's begging her, like she thought she wanted him to do:

"Please."

You have a role to play.

"Please what?" she says, letting her own lips twist into a sneering smile. "Do you want something from me?"

"Finish what you started," Jeb says, voice harsh with what she recognizes, now she's listening, as need, raw want making itself evident in his tone. "Fuck me," he spits, eyes snapping open to stare into hers, suddenly bright and oh so vicious. "And don't be gentle - I don't deserve it. Make me hurt."

"Say my name," she tells him, as she rakes one hand down his chest, his heartbeat feeling almost as fast as hers. She digs her nails into his skin - if it's pain he wants, she'll give it to him.

She traces his hips - he's all bone, and how is it possible for him to be so thin? - with her sharp nails, and he gasps her name, as if he's praying.

"Angel." His neck is arched, the back of his head pressed against the pillow, and it's only his self-restraint keeping his hips from bucking up off the bed - it must be, because her weight holding him down can't count for much. "Oh, please, Angel."

"Good," she hisses.

So often now Jeb is consumed by dark thoughts - it's here he spares a moment to thank this witch for stealing them from him. He's accepted depression before, let it come sweeping over him with its promise of creative mania to follow, but this temporary escape is welcome to him now - arching up wantonly into her hands, he can't find the space to think of death, and calling her name in a low voice, he can't find the will to tell himself he's worthless.

He didn't ask for this, after all - it's not under his control. So how could he be worthy of it in the first place?

He holds back a moan, settling for a low whine, and Angel grins at him, white teeth glinting. He's tried every kind of self-medication there is throughout the years, unwilling to stifle his creativity to banish his depression - every kind but this.

And oh God, for this moment, at least, it's working.

"Hold still," she says, pressing one hand to his pelvis, physically holding him down, and he stills for a moment before something happens - one of her fingers is inside him, and it hurts, but there's something else, something...

He gasps, then makes a deliberately choked half-vocalization, knowing she won't like it if he makes a sound, but... oh God...

"Still," she says, almost snarling at him, and he makes a whimpering noise of assent. "Or I will stop."

And leave him here on the edge? Would she?

Oh yes, he thinks bleakly, finding a recalcitrant core of depression somewhere under the surging tide of endorphins sweeping through his system. She would.

The dichotomy is odd, to say the least: on the surface he's all loose, shuddering, sensual creature... and underneath that is still the chemical darkness he's grown so used to.

"You're so beautiful," she whispers, and it's so sudden he wonders if he's imagining it. He closes his eyes - in the dark behind his eyelids he doesn't have to look at her, doesn't have to see that she means it.

With his eyes shut, it's easier to remember how he got here - betrayal and desperation, making a mess of his life. And here he is, in between jobs (given his history it's unlikely that anyone will hire him, but the gun in the shoebox, the pills in the cabinet, the razor by the sink - they tell him it's all right, that everything will turn out fine), without a friend in the world.

Right here, right now - here he is. And this is all he's good for.

Something's gone wrong.

Don't ask her how she knows - she just does. She's spent most of her life dealing with people even more screwed up than she is, and it's that skill that alerts her to the fact that something is wrong.

He is beautiful this way, shuddering and laid out before her, responding to her every touch. His hair is greying and he's far too thin, his face all angled bones and tired eyes, but the way he quivers when her fingers move against his prostate is still enchanting.

You're mine.

But where just a moment ago his mind was mostly white-hot pleasure, now it's coiling darkness - he's fading away from her, no longer really here.

She twists her fingers roughly, and the corners of his lips twitch. She scowls, rakes the nails of her free hand hard over his skin, drawing his blood.

He gasps and his eyes open. "Angel -!"

She moves her hand from his side to his cock, leaving faint streaks of blood behind as she strokes him; she keeps pressure on his prostate all the while. From the way his hips move slightly he enjoys it, but it's so hard to tell when he's so still underneath her.

She drags her nails over the soft skin of his balls a little, moves up to trace patterns on his shaft. His hips shift and he finally makes a little noise; a tiny, choked whimper, but it's better than nothing.

She probes his mind gently, edging around his ancient defenses to get into his thoughts. There's not much there. He might as well be asleep.

He feels so numb - normally the friction of her skin on his cock would feel good, at least, but he feels... nothing. It hurts.

"Stop," he whispers, then draws in a deeper breath. "Angel. Stop."

"Don't say that if you don't mean it," she snarls, wrapping those delicate fingers around him.

"Please-" and a whimper slips from his lips as pain spikes hotly through him. He bites down hard on his lip, drawing blood that tastes like copper, but it's not enough, neurotransmitters racing through his system to inform him of the fact that fuck, that hurts.

There's a hot blue pulse of pain in his head, and she flinches slightly. It's the first sign of activity she's seen in his mind since she started looking, and it comes like a spotlight out of utter darkness.

Not utter, she sees as her eyes adjust; the colors of his emotions are just dim. Very, very dim, and hidden deep.

All of them are washed in blue, the color of his agony, but she spots a brief rise of something that's there and gone too fast for her to see its color.

Other than that it's dark and sad in there, and she feels a brief pity for him before the need sinks its needle teeth into her limbic system again.

I'm sorry, she thinks as she readies herself, I don't really want to do this but I have to -

She paints his mind with color.

He bucks his hips up into her hand, dimly aware of an odd taste in his mouth and sweat drying in the small of his back.

There's a shadow behind his eyelids, something he cannot quite see; as she strokes his cock he gasps for breath, thighs quivering with directionless energy as his eyes shiver behind their tightly-shut lids.

His fingers twitch and clutch at empty air, his back arching, his whole body seemingly alive with pleasure, a wire overloaded with current.

His mind sparks with color now, most of it hers, and she watches it coldly, her hands moving almost on their own. He whimpers and moans under her, and the blue is in the background, covered up by other colors rolling over it like waves, but still there, a grim base to the façade she's painting for him.

All she can do is put new things in; taking things out, whether emotions or specific thoughts, leaves the mind without anchor to itself. It's a great offensive tactic, but not so useful when you're only aiming to distract a man, not leave him brain-dead on the floor.

If all goes well her cover-up, bolting scrap metal over holes leading into the heart of the logical machine of his mind, will work. Keep him from falling apart a little longer.

She hardly knows him, really; based on the stories Max and the others tell, should hate him.

But as he writhes under her, his slim, bony hips pumping desperately, those sharp blue eyes half-lidded and dazed, there is a flare of determination beginning to burn in her own mind, white as magnesium flame.

She scratches the last of her message into his mind, hiding it to make it seem like his own idea, and prays it'll be enough.

He inhales deeply and groans, the bright sun-yellow tinged with red of an orgasm moving through his mind; she meddles again (last time, I swear) and lets it wash away the blue. In the morning he'll wake shaky and uncertain but clear-headed, and hopefully back on the path.

She smiles, leans down, kisses him as he takes shallow breaths, his muscles full of tremors.

The world still needs him. No matter what he thinks.

She stops at a news stand, picks up the paper. The headline's not huge, but it grabs her eye instantly.

please

Ink smears on her fingers and the headline flickers between possibilities.

SCIENTIST FOUND DEAD it says.

And then it doesn't.

Note: This has been languishing unfinished for literally years. I figured it was more than time to finish it and unleash it upon an unsuspecting world.

Many thanks to the multiple people who gave criticism while this was in the writing, and my apologies for mostly ignoring your advice. It was good advice, but badfic doesn't deserve that.

I think I just singlehandedly tripled the kink quotient of the archive. Damn.