Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and no profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through the writing of this.
A/N: Inspired by the following songs, stars * in front of speech indicate lines that are taken directly from these songs: "Let's Talk about Sex" - Salt 'N Peppa; "It's Tricky" - Run DMC; "Devil's Tears" - Angus & Julia Stone; "Air Conditioned Love" - Ludo; "Warning" - Incubus; "Love Hurts" - Incubus; "In a Week" - Hozier; "All of Me" - John Legend; "Since I Woke Up" - Common Kings
At first, I thought this was going to be a crack fic, but then plotting started to happen, and I guess the rest is history. Please review. Thank you.
It was all because of Dru that Angel found himself patrolling with Xander on a night when the moon was just starting to wane. According to the mad vampire, it was very important that he do what he was about to do when the moon was in this particular phase, and not any other. Angel wondered if Giles would uncover the obscure prophecy that Spike had managed to find at some point in time, or if he'd simply have to do what he needed to do and leave Sunnydale for good, lest he, and Xander, find themselves on the pointy end of a wooden stake.
Angel felt more than a little...twitchy, which was atypical, and yet completely understandable given the circumstances. He'd never really enjoyed talking about sex, and, up until a few weeks ago, he would never have considered talking to Xander about anything, let alone sex.
Still, it had to be done. Dru had been very specific, if not completely sane, in her ramblings about the moon, and white knights, and the repression of memories.
*"Let's talk about sex," Angel said, and internally winced at the bluntness of his phrasing.
This was not working out according to plan, he'd rehearsed and everything. Angel dug his hands into his pockets and waited for the boy to scream and run. He'd chase him down if it came to that.
Dru had been adamant that tonight was the night. If he didn't do this now, then the world as they knew it would end. Normally he would have dismissed her ramblings about the stars as the mutterings of an insane vampire, but after she'd spoken, lightning had struck the ground where they stood, there'd been a minor earthquake, and smoke had come up from the crack that had been rent in the earth at their feet. The vampire's eyes had glowed, and her skin had taken on some kind of otherworldly sheen.
Like it or not, Angel had to get the boy to remember whatever it was that Xander needed to remember, and it had something to do with sex. Dru had been very insistent that he speak with Xander about it, jog his memory. It was awkward, and Angel did not want to do this.
Xander blinked. "Sex?" he mouthed, and searched the dark cemetery for anyone else that Angel might be talking to besides him, because sex and Angel and Xander was a big...not happening.
It was just him and Angel, walking side by side. Xander took a step away from Angel, only to have the vampire take a step closer to him.
*"It's not a curse, you know?" Angel said, a single eyebrow raising at the look that Xander cast in his direction. This was not going well. Maybe Spike would be a better candidate for this, in spite of all of the groundwork that had already been laid.
Xander shook his head. "Let's not."
"C'mon, Xander, you're a teenager with raging hormones and -"
"You're a dead guy," Xander said, shuddering. "I -"
Angel sighed and draped an arm across Xander's shoulders, pulling him into a one-armed hug. "You could learn a lot from me, you know."
And the boy could, though Angel doubted that Xander would be receptive to learning about sex from him. This was not what he'd rehearsed. He was way off script and in danger of losing the boy.
"Uh-huh," Xander said, trying, in vain, to extricate himself from Angel's hold.
*"Sometimes it's tricky," Angel continued as though Xander hadn't expressed any disinterest in the topic at all. Sometimes it's tricky? Where the fuck had that come from? Where is a wooden stake when I need one?
He was fumbling for words now, and trying to remember what it is that he had wanted to say in the first place. The words he'd practiced were gone, however, and now he was stuck having a very uncomfortable conversation with a squirmy teenager, and feeling like a complete idiot. Not that Xander thought he was anything other than an idiot.
"Sure," Xander muttered, hunching his shoulders in the hope that maybe he could slide out from beneath Angel's arm. The vamp merely tightened his hold, and squeezed Xander hard enough to make him squeak.
"There's a lot that I can teach you," Angel said, voice lower than Xander had ever heard it before.
Yes, he could teach Xander quite a bit, some of which would make them both blush. Oddly, the more he started to think about it, the more Angel was warming up to the idea of actually teaching Xander about sex. Though not for awhile yet. Dru had warned him about that. Had told him not to rush the boy once he'd turned him. Had even told him that, once he was over his obsession with Buffy, and with trying to be 'normal', he'd see that the mutual animosity he shared with Xander was, in fact, attraction, disguised in that age old way of pulling hair and arguing. Of course, she'd said all of that in a less than coherent fashion that Angel and Spike had spent hours deciphering.
Xander swallowed. His mouth was dry. Palms sweaty. Head spinning. "Uh...I...thank you, but I think," he cleared his throat. "You know I already had the talk about the birds and the bees and all of that with the parentals, and they covered it in health class and -"
Angel chuckled, and Xander shivered. "Xander, books and parents can only teach you so much about sex. There's more to it than the birds and the bees, boys and girls groping in a dark movie theater. There are things that can only be learned through...experience."
Experience. Great. If he'd wanted to terrify the boy, this was definitely the way to go about it. Angel felt Xander stiffen, heard his heart beat like it was trying to escape from his chest. It was a little dizzying, and Angel almost lost himself in the rapid rhythm of the boy's heart. It was good and strong, and soon it would no longer beat. He should feel remorse about that, but, given what he'd learned from Dru and the stars, and the obscure prophecy that Spike had uncovered, there was no time for such petty feelings as remorse.
Xander pushed away from Angel, or tried to, but he was stuck to the vampire like a freaking magnet, and what was worse was that, at Angel's words, his mind had started to go down a long, dark hallway toward an equally dark room that he'd long ago - back in a seventh grade locker room, and at the hands of his father - slammed shut as tightly as he could. No light seeped through. No sirree. It was locked good and tight, and...shit...the door was creaking open, and Xander was walking down that hallway, shaky hand reaching for the handle of the door that would bring him to no good, and only cause trouble, especially with Angel holding him so close.
"You alright, Xander?" Angel asked, and Xander looked up into concerned eyes the color of soft gold. A slight frown marred Angel's face, and Xander took a deep breath. His world tilted.
Opening the door he'd locked so long ago, Xander entered on legs that felt stiff and jittery. He was terrified, wondered if Angel could hear the thundering of his heart, and if he could stomp hard enough on the vampire's foot to make Angel let him go so that he could make a run for it. He did not want to know what was in that room.
*"I could offer you eternal life," the words were so softly spoken that Xander felt he must've imagined them, a hand was running through his hair, and Xander closed his eyes against the memories that Angel's words had caused to rush forth. Memories he'd thought were dreams.
Him and Jesse, kissing, fingering nipples with hands that shook as though palsied, and his father walking in on them, tearing them apart, beating Xander to within an inch of his life.
"Abomination," Xander whispered through lips that had gone numb, and he was shaking, though it wasn't from fear, or revulsion, but from the onslaught of memories, and pain, and the aching loss of Jesse, and of his innocence. His father had said, and done things that Xander and Jesse had never even considered. Things that they weren't ready for. They'd never kissed again, and, after the beating he'd been given, and his father's subsequent talk with him about the birds and the bees - punctuated with the fall of a belt on his back - Xander had pushed all thoughts of what his father had termed, 'deviant sexual practices', from his mind.
"Shh," Angel murmured, planting a chaste kiss on the top of Xander's head, and rubbing a soothing hand along Xander's arm. "It's okay, Xander."
It wasn't okay, though. They were supposed to be patrolling, not talking about sex. Not dredging up painful memories that Xander had kept hidden even from his subconscious.
"Why are you doing this?" Xander asked, once he'd reeled in his memories, and no longer felt as though he needed to double over and barf behind the nearest gravestone.
He hated Angel, more than he'd ever hated the vampire, which was saying something, because he hated Angel with every fiber of his being, and then some, no matter what his subconscious was trying to tell him right now. His subconscious did not deserve to be listened to at the moment, not when it was going haywire, and making him relive things that he'd had a hard time living through in the first place.
"Because," Angel said, sighing, and Xander watched through the fringe of his eyelashes as the vampire raised his eyes, as though looking to the heavens for answers, before returning his gaze to Xander. "No one ever did it for me. My father, he wasn't a gentle man. He believed in the whole, 'spare the rod, spoil the child,' rot, and, when I was a vampire, I emulated his practices on those I sired, trying to beat out of them the very things that I thought my father had beaten out of me," Angel paused, mouth twisting in a bitter smile. "It didn't work."
Xander felt a shift in his heart, in spite of himself, and he snorted. "So...you're saying that you're, uh..." Xander waved a hand through the air between them. "And your father wasn't exactly receptive to the fact that you were..." he waved his hand again, unable to say the word, because it was stuck on his tongue, and he couldn't get it to work with his mouth.
He felt himself blushing. Uncomfortable didn't even begin to cover how he was feeling.
Angel shrugged and loosened his hold on Xander, but didn't remove his arm from his shoulders. Xander felt...safe, which was mindboggling. There was a smile playing about the vampire's lips, the bitterness gone. Maybe the vampire was just as uncomfortable about this talk of sex as Xander was.
"Yes, Xander, to put it in simple, human terms, I'm bisexual," Angel said dramatically, and he rolled his eyes.
"Bi...so, but what does, I er, uh, why...why do you want to talk about sex with me? I mean, I'm kind of the hated and weak one, here. There's nothing special about me, and you and I kind of have this hate-hate relationship going on, and you've got Buffy, you remember her, right? She's," Xander gestured toward his chest, miming big breasts, "and blonde, and beautiful, and I'm -"
Angel cut the remainder of Xander's babble off with a kiss that curled Xander's toes, and stole his very breath away. He'd suspected that kissing Angel would feel like kissing a very cold air conditioner, or an immovable statue (not that he'd ever given it that much thought, really, he hadn't, no matter what his subconscious was not so gently pointing out to him), but Angel's lips were warm on his, and the vampire's tongue was cool and smooth, and the vampire didn't taste at all like Xander expected death and blood would taste.
Angel tasted like pennies and some kind of spice that Xander decided he liked, though he didn't know what it was, and had never tasted it before. Maybe it was cloves, or anise, or something even more exotic.
And, though it had been so long since Jesse, and the one time that his father never knew about in the locker room with a boy who'd moved schools halfway through the school year, Xander found that his hands knew what to do, where to go, how to rest on Angel's hips, giving him better leverage to stand up on his tiptoes and deepen the kiss, though Angel was very much in charge of that, and Xander didn't mind. The vampire had a hand on Xander's shoulder, and another was on Xander's lower back, fingers gently massaging, digging in as they kissed.
*"Let me hold you," Angel said when he finally relinquished Xander's mouth, and breathless, Xander nodded, forehead resting against Angel's chest.
Angel wrapped his arms around Xander, and just held him close for what felt like a short eternity to Xander. Eternity. The word woke something inside of him, and suddenly Xander really missed Jesse and wondered what would have happened had he let his undead friend live. Self-consciousness seeped in, though, and Xander cleared his throat, inadvertently digging his fingertips into Angel's hips. He may or may not have imagined the vampire's moan.
"So, what does..." Xander closed his eyes as tears threatened, and he squared his jaw. He was not a crybaby and was definitely not some kind of fainting damsel-not-in-distress. He was old enough to drive, even if he didn't have a car to drive; he shaved (almost on a regular basis);and soon, well, in a year and a half, he'd be able to vote, and maybe move away from home and the parents who had made his childhood miserable. He was more than capable of being 'adult' and rational about this, no matter what Angel had reawakened in him tonight, and no matter that all he wanted right now was to be held by the very being he'd, up until minutes ago, considered an enemy.
"What was this about, Angel?" Xander asked, pushing away from the vampire's chest so that he could look him in the eye. He searched the dark, golden eyes for signs that the vampire had been playing a nasty prank on him, or something equally dastardly, and found nothing but sincerity and something that Xander imagined love might look like. But it was too soon for love, wasn't it?
Xander watched as a variety of emotions passed across the vampire's features, none of which spoke of mockery. Angel searched his face as well. The intensity of the vampire's scrutiny was more than mildly terrifying, but Xander wasn't afraid.
"I don't, that is, Xander, life is too short," Angel trailed a finger down Xander's cheek. His golden eyes held Xander's gaze in a way that made Xander's insides squirm. "Much too short. Life is much too short," Angel whispered, cool lips tracing across Xander's, "to live with regrets."
"What about, Buffy?" Xander asked, his head spinning. He suddenly pinched himself - certain that this was all a dream brought about by too much studying and eating a carton of Twinkies and drinking too many cokes - and winced at the pain.
Angel shook his head and pressed a kiss to Xander's forehead. "This isn't a dream, boy." There was an odd lilt to the vampire's voice. "It's a gift."
"A gift?" Xander asked, brow wrinkling in confusion, and gut twisting in fear at the thought that, once this 'awakening' was over, Angel would dump him for Buffy, and leave Xander to navigate this new-old world on his own. A world that he had navigated with two left feet before. Somehow he doubted that his father would let him resume his exploration of samesex relationships without trying, and succeeding, in beating it out of him again.
Angel nodded, tracing Xander's jawline with his thumb, cupping the back of Xander's head with his large hand. "Yes, a gift."
Angel smiled, and Xander only had a second to register what it was that Angel meant as the vampire placed a finger over his lips, silencing him in spite of the fact that Xander was screaming, no, on the inside and kicking Angel in the shin, fighting him. Tilting Xander's head to the side, Angel bent his head and let his face slip.
Xander felt nothing at first, and then he dug his fingers into the vampire's hips, holding on with all of his might as fangs sank into his neck. It stung and burned at first, and then Xander felt like he was floating.
He watched the rest of what happened as though he was outside of his own body. It was mildly terrifying and sickening and yet there was a peace that he'd never experienced before.
His hands moved from Angel's hips to the vampire's shoulders, as though welcoming the kiss of death by drawing Angel's fangs deeper into his neck. And the look on the vampire's face was enough fodder for nightmares and dreams of a whole different nature for the rest of his life should Angel have mercy and let him live.
Xander lost himself in the watching, growing more and more detached, as though he was watching this happen to someone other than himself. A white light enveloped him, and the Xander that was being drained, and he was filled with the sense that everything would be alright in the end. That this is what needed to happen. It was confusing, but Xander no longer desired to fight any of it. He let himself go, and knew that, even if he woke as a vampire, he would not wake as some mindless, soulless monster, but as a loved and cherished childe.
Xander's blood was rich and dizzying. It was potent, and Angel thrilled at the taste of it. The boy's blood sang to him, and it burned through his veins, and he drank his fill of it, marveling that he could enjoy something so primal, even with his soul intact. That, even more than the lightning, earthquake and smoke, is what had eventually convinced him that Dru's visions and the prophecy that Spike had found were true, because both had insisted that, in order for this to work, Angel's soul had to be secured.
Xander's heartbeat stuttered and stopped and stuttered and stopped and stuttered, the boy's eyelids struggled to remain open, even as his lungs fought to fill with air, and blood bubbled up to his lips, frothing as he neared death. There was a question on the dying boy's lips. There was no sound to give it voice, yet Angel answered it anyway.
*"Without love, I won't survive," Angel murmured, leaving the rest unsaid - that without love, their love, the world would not survive. He'd tell Xander about that later, when the boy was ready.
Lips red with Xander's blood, he tore into his own wrist, and placed it against Xander's lips, willed the boy to drink. It could still fail, and if it did, he would welcome Buffy's stake through his heart, because now that he'd tasted Xander's blood, he knew that he never wanted to be without it. Without Xander.
He brushed his hand through Xander's unruly locks of hair, smiling in encouragement as Xander latched onto his wrist and drank, confusion and fear and the desire to live warring with each other, and underneath it all was hope, and the need for love. Something that Angel had sensed in the boy, only because they were, as it would seem, cut from the same cloth.
Together, they'd make a home. Together, they'd rule the world in the saving of it. Just as soon as the boy woke to death, that is.
Angel had already procured a witch's services to bind Xander's soul to the boy weeks in advance. When Xander woke, he would not be soulless, and would retain everything that made him Xander, minus the beating heart and the typical human weaknesses that made him vulnerable.
Dru had seen this in the stars. She'd come to him, weeping. Talking about the end of the world if he didn't do this. If he didn't make Xander one of them, but maintain his soul. She'd hated the stars for what they'd said, but they'd sung to her, and, this time Angel had listened to her and to Spike, and the prophecy which declared that all of this was necessary. Too much was at stake for him not to believe them. He just hoped that, when Xander woke, he'd see things the same way.
Pressing lips red with Xander's blood to the boy's forehead, Angel lifted him into his arms and brought him home. He could already feel an irreversible bond beginning to form between them. One unlike any he'd experienced before, and he attributed it to the fact that both of them had souls, and the ceremony that Dru, the witch, and Spike had helped him to perform before he went out on patrol with Xander tonight.
He bathed the boy whose heart no longer beat, dressed him in a pair of silk pajamas, and then tucked Xander into bed. Sliding in beside him, he held him close, and silently promised to guide, protect and love Xander as he should have done the others that he'd made.
*"I'll give my all to you. You're my end and my beginning," Angel whispered the words that Dru had given him to speak after he'd done everything else. Words that would create a bond that nothing could sunder.
Finalizing the ceremony, Angel placed a jade amulet Dru had given him around Xander's neck, and pain, unlike any he'd ever experienced before, tore through him. He screamed as Xander's blood burned through his body, and his vision whited out. In agony, he lost track of time. It felt like his body was being torn apart molecule by molecule.
Hours, days, years later, the pain finally subsided, and Angel sucked in an unneeded breath. He opened his eyes and was startled to find a pair of chocolate brown eyes, ringed with gold, staring down into his. Xander, though he had a feral air about him, was smiling crookedly. He was straddling Angel, though quickly knelt beside his now awake Sire, and lowered his gaze in submission.
*"I've been wanting you, Sire, since I woke up," Xander said, licking his lips, and biting his cheek. He wasn't in game face, which was unusual.
The new vampire... Xander...was uncertain, and confused, and yet he hadn't left Angel's side, though it was clear that he was hungry. He'd waited for Angel to wake instead of going out to kill someone and satisfy a hunger that had to be gnawing at his gut. It showed an amazing amount of self-control, something that few newborns rarely had. Xander was different than any of Angel's previous childer.
Shaking his head, Angel pulled Xander back against his chest, placed his wrist against Xander's mouth, and let the newly sired vampire drink until he was dizzy, and Xander's thirst had been sated.
"Can we kiss?" Xander asked, biting his lip, voice soft as though he feared rejection, and even feared himself for asking and wanting this kind of intimacy.
Some of the boy's self-consciousness, and inhibitions, human weaknesses, had disappeared in the turning, but not all of it. Angel would have to work on getting rid of the rest of it, and assure the boy that he'd never have to fear rejection from him now or in the future.
"Oh, you liked that, did you, boy?" Angel asked, feeling oddly lighthearted and strangely whole. He turned Xander in his arms, and kissed the new vampire until Xander fell into a light doze.
Something had happened. Not just to Xander, but to him as well. They'd both changed, and, though Angel had the feeling that he'd somehow been tricked into it, looking down at the lightly snoring Xander, he found the he really couldn't find it within himself to care.
"Even if we don't end up saving the world, Xan, I have a feeling that turning you will be the best thing that I've ever done," Angel said, and he closed his eyes, knowing that, when Xander woke, he'd wake as well.
For the next couple of weeks, Angel would act like a nursing mother with a child, and Xander would be completely dependent upon him, like a newborn infant. It was always an empowering, heady experience, but Angel found that, this time, he didn't want to revel in that power, or take advantage of his newest childe.
He wanted to be the loving, caring parent that neither of them had ever had. Of course, the kissing and eventual sex that went along with their unique bond would dispel that aspect of the analogy, but Angel was in no particular rush for any of that to happen. Everything would fall into place as and when it should, and, this time around, Angel was going to enjoy every single moment of it, and not try to break the childe that he'd been given, but rather build him up, and make him into something truly beautiful.
When he'd told Xander that this was a gift, he hadn't been talking about imparting the gift of immortality to Xander, but rather of the gift that the stars, or the Powers that Be, or whomever, had given him in allowing him to claim Xander as his own. A gift that Angel was not about to ruin the way that he'd ruined his other childer. Xander would be different. The stars had foretold it, and Angel knew it with every fiber of his being.
For now, though, Angel was content to sleep with Xander tucked close to his side, and the promise of the stars and a prophecy older than himself, hanging over them.