A/N: Sorry it took so long. My Internet hasn't been working and I'm in a computer lab now so life just sucks. Enjoy.

Asphyxia

Chapter Three

Morning came to Los Angeles bearing an overcast sky and spring showers. Dazed blue eyes stared at the ceiling as sharp ears listened to the plentiful drops against the window pane. The sheets were rumpled and tangled around Connor's feet but he didn't move to smooth them out, didn't feel the need to bother. This is what he was.

That's what you are.

His dad's hideous visage; the wrinkles, the fangs. The demon inside the corpse. That's what he was. That was his true father's face.

"This is what I am," he quietly informed the ceiling.

He didn't quite know what this was, just knew that he was this. Just as Dad was a thing, Connor was...this. That's all he really needed to know.

He felt his skin prickle for a moment, and knew instantly that Angel was hovering at the threshold of his bedroom. Silent and stealthy with super hearing and super eyesight and super speed. This is what he was. At a hefty price.

"Hey, pal."

Currency had taken some time to get used to. Connor had known how to kill and Connor had known how to take, but Connor had never learned how to pay until he arrived at this place - this large, overcrowded city that still managed to be so...desolate. It had taken far more time to get used to the realization that currency in this world was not only paper money and copper coins, but pain. Connor paid a lot in pain.

"Dad," he returned softly, knowing that it would appease the vampire if only for a moment. As the bastard son of two vampires, Connor had learned early on that it was best to appease those in charge. Father had been in charge...and Connor had been quick to understand that he had to atone for his roots, that he must learn Father's teachings and the teachings of God, who had given him to Father.

God gave me to you.

Sometimes, in Quortoth, Connor had resented God. In the long nights with his muscles tensed beneath his blanket, nursing his fresh hunting wounds, Connor had closed his eyes and cursed God. His hand wrapped around his hunting knife, ready for an attack, would then slip and skid along the blade because good boys loved and obeyed God, and Connor had so desperately wanted to be Father's good boy.

"How are you feeling?"

Connor tensed as Angel approached the bed, but fought the urge to roll away. Fear was for the weak, and the weak couldn't fight. The weak couldn't kill. The weak couldn't survive. However, Father had always impressed upon his adopted son that sometimes, bravery came at the price of foolhardiness and foolhardiness came at the price of death. Connor knew, had always known deep down, that he could never survive Angel.

And that's why he didn't budge when his dad sat next to him, didn't flinch when the cold fingers ran through his long hair. He knew he couldn't survive.

"Connor?"

"I'm fine,"the boy mumbled, shutting his blue eyes for half a second before returning his gaze to the white ceiling. He shuddered when the thumb stroked his cheek, clenched his fists when his eyes caught sight of Angel's knuckles. Those hands, pale and white, were like blades glinting in the moonlight. He could smell it, the blood; the red, rich blood growing old and stale by the years and decades and centuries. Centuries-old blood still stained those hands. Father's family...their blood, caught beneath those immaculate fingernails.

"Do you feel any better?"

And Connor wondered, not for the first time, if he would have delighted in their screams. Their pleading and their tears - would he smile? Wicked boy, Father called him. Connor was a wicked boy when he was disobedient, the son of Angelus, and the devil's child.

"Yeah, it's better."

Wicked boys were spillers of human blood, the lacerations upon the wrists of the innocent. Wicked boys weren't fed and clothed and loved and hugged.

Most of all, wicked boys weren't kissed. They didn't feel those dead lips pressed upon their foreheads, or the warmth behind the cold; the lies encompassed in their fathers' love and the truth behind it.

You're just like your dad.

And they never meant Holtz, the righteous man. Connor was not a noble, honorable man who sought justice for crimes committed upon his good-hearted family. No, Connor was dead inside, an evil core hidden underneath a soulful mantle...and he never matured. Never grew up.

He could snap at any moment.

"I'm so glad you're alive, Connor."

Connor shook his head. Lies. All lies. Liar liar pants on fire, Fred had said. That's what every kid should say at least once and Connor was a kid, so he should say it. No sense on missing out on what you could still enjoy, after all.

"You're not."

"I am, Connor. I'm so glad you're alive."

But I'm not, Connor thought. I'm not alive. Stop trying to tell me I'm alive. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. I don't want to be alive.

Another kiss upon the wicked boy's forehead; cold, dead lips full of lies and screams and blood.

"I love you. I do. I wish I knew what to say to make you believe that."

If Dad loved him, that meant he was a wicked boy. A wicked, wicked boy. The devil's child. Son of Angelus. But that's not what he was.

As Dad was a thing, Connor was this.

Connor was a pitiful example of failed evil. Couldn't get the match struck. Couldn't take them all down with him. Couldn't smell the blood anymore, the scorched, blackened flesh wafting through the air. Couldn't even pride himself in doing something right, because the sun came up over the hills and Dad was alive and they were all still snug and tight and cozy in their beds.

And once the pins and needles rang clear, so did Connor's mind.

Connor wasn't Dad's wicked boy, and he wasn't Father's good boy.

Connor wasn't even a boy.

"You're my baby, Connor. My son, my blood...you could take everything I love and throw it away and I'd never stop loving you."

Connor was a disease.

This stumbled down the stairs, foot in front of foot, swaying side to side, clumsy and lacking the necessary grace. His bloodshot eyes drifted upwards, to the balcony where he had attempted to attack his father, only to be thwarted by an anti-demon violence ward.

Connor wasn't human.

Normal teenagers check for pimples...

But his teeth were blunt! They were blunt and human and not sharp and not jagged and not murderous. He couldn't rip anyone apart with these teeth and wouldn't want to.

"Connor?"

"Hi, Dad," Connor greeted as calmly as his voice would allow, gripping the railing with one hand and planting himself firmly on the last step of the staircase.

"You're out of bed." Dad seemed pleased and he even gave his son a rewarding smile. "Are you feeling better?"

"Much."

Connor did feel much better, and the awful taste in his mouth had even gone away. He didn't know why Dad kept alcohol in his closet, because to his knowledge, Dad wasn't much of a drinker. But he remembered the black, silk button-down that felt so good over his back; the handsome garment that smelled distinctly of his biological father, and he'd felt guilty.

He'd felt guilty to take comfort in his father's scent.

"You really like that shirt, don't you?" his father said now and Connor nodded, afraid that he wouldn't be able to control the slur that was bound to lace his words together. The whiskey had been at the top of the closet, above the shirts, in a glass bottle with angry edges that warned him away.

Don't tell me what to do.

"I'm glad you're feeling better, Connor," Angel smiled, taking a step forward. Then he froze and Connor watched as Dad sniffed the air, eyes darting around frantically for another source of the scent.

Connor knew, had known, always would know that he was this.

Small and naive, a little boy dressed in Daddy's big clothes; drunkenly stumbling down these stairs, weighing himself heavily on the creaks and pleading for the wood to give way.

"Whatsamatter, Daddy?" he asked, blinking at Dad's shocked face. He didn't understand what the problem was. He was out of bed and the sun was up and it was the morning after. This is the way Dad had wanted it.

"Connor...you're drunk."

"Maybe," Connor replied thoughtfully, and he took another step and stumbled into his father's quick arms. "I'm up, though. That's good, right?"

"Connor-"

"This is what you wanted, Dad," he laughed. "It's morning and I feel better. I felt better in the morning."

"Not like this."

"It's yours. Does it make you feel better? It makes me feel better. It makes it go away. Makes it all go away," he rambled, ducking his face into Dad's cold neck and breathing in that scent. "My baby blanket smelled like this, didn't it? Smelled like you. I used to smell like you until you let me get away."

"Connor, I didn't-"

"Try hard enough. You didn't try hard enough, I know. And you're sorry. And you love me." The laugh was bitter and sharp now, and Connor thought about Dad and Dad's eyes and Dad's fists and how Dad spoke with that soft voice and how Dad tried.

"Connor, drinking is not-"

"The answer. What's the question?"Connor pulled away and fell to Dad's feet, rested his head against the vampire's thigh. "There are so many questions, Dad, that I always wanted to ask you. I don't remember any of them now."

"Not one?" Angel asked softly, lowering himself to his son's side.

"You can't love me because I hate you." Connor giggled and it sounded manic and he let his legs slip under him, falling harshly into Dad's lap. "I hate you so much, Dad."

"That wasn't a question."

Connor's mind reeled at that. If I hate you isn't a question then what is? I hate you I hate you. It's a question, he wanted to tell his Dad. It is.

"You have the question," he told Angel. "I hate you. Now what's your answer?"

"I love you?"

Connor's heart dropped and his stomach burned, because that was the question and not the answer and how can you have the answer when it was always just question after question left unanswered and unconfirmed. He knew he was this. He knew Dad was a thing. What he didn't know was a how a thing spawned this.

"You don't, Dad," his voice crackled with the accusation. "You don't love me. You can't love something that you contracted. You can't love something that spreads and destroys."

You can't love this.

"You don't-"

"You're sick with me, that's all. You say it's love, but it's the sickness. Is that what love is , Dad?" He didn't resist when Angel enveloped him in his arms. He was a little boy, dressed in Daddy's clothes, drunk on Daddy's whiskey. "What is love, Dad? Tell me what it is."

It was the first time in over a year that Angel rocked his son, back and forth, back and forth, until the boy passed out. Connor let unconsciousness take him down to darkness, his blue eyes shutting against his father's shoulder, as his overworked mind shutdown for the day and his blunt human teeth pinched the sides of his mouth.

Gentle sleep for a violent boy who couldn't decide whether he was wicked or good, just knew he was this: a steady illness, manufactured for decay and ruin.

Connor was an insatiable child, with pretty blue eyes and dirty feet and questions that couldn't be answered.

TBC...

(Reviewing is good for the soul)