A/N: Just a quick peek at Angel's perspective.
Asphyxia
Chapter Four
"You drank it all," Angel murmured, gazing with awestruck eyes at the drained whiskey bottle resting on the floor against his dresser. "There was so much of it left and you drank it all." Sharp brown eyes flashed to the form of his sleeping son. His son, The Destroyer. The Miracle Child. "You really do take after your old dad, don't you, son?" he whispered, taking soft steps toward his bed. "You'd never want to admit it, but you're just like me."
His son. His beautiful, bright-eyed son who stared up at him, and giggled and waggled his chubby, little fingers from that basinet. His baby. His Connor.
"My boy," the vampire said in that quiet voice, thinking of his queen and how she had writhed beneath him, succumbing to ecstasy not once, but thrice. "My darling boy." How cold he had been inside, how warm he had wanted to be...the night that this boy was conceived. "My miracle."
He watched the boy shift, watched the delicate face snuggle into the pillow. His son.
Gently, he lowered his hulking form down onto the bed, careful not to disturb the mattress too much. Connor's rest was well-deserved and well-needed and it was nice to see his kid sleep.
His kid. He had always liked the sound of that. He'd imagined what Connor would become. At five, at fifteen.
Yeah, my kid got into the gifted class.
That's right. My kid. The captain of the hockey team.
"The Destroyer." Said under his breath, it didn't sound so bad. That's what his kid was at seventeen. His kid was the Destroyer.
"What's wrong with you, kiddo?" he asked the ceiling, resting his gelled head on a pillow. "What am I going to do with you?"
He waited for an answer, because that's what he knew how to do. Angel knew how to wait for things, and wait...and wait. He'd waited about a dozen lifetimes for love, and even more for a son. His inconceivable child.
He knew he'd have these problems eventually. Every parent had these problems. Teenagers were known for being unruly and hostile, quiet and moody, dark-gazed and cynical. They were known for making their hard-working parents' lives a living hell. It's what they were known for.
But you never knew what they were thinking and that's why it was okay for Connor to be his inconceivable child, his sad-eyed boy. Because Connor was a teenager now.
And teenagers were inconceivable in themselves. Teenagers made you rethink what you had thought that night, in that alley, when his mother shoved that stake through her heart. Teenagers made you remember the smell of urine and the rain and how it poured, and how when you held him for the first time and looked down at that screaming little face, even though you weren't thinking about it then, there had been a dumpster five feet away.
"Dad?"
Angel fought the urge to smile at that sleepy voice, because in the sandman's epilogue his son almost sounded hopeful. And that's all Angel ever really wanted to hear out of his boy's mouth: hope. Hope for something real, something better. Something normal.
"Dad, I'm going to be sick."
But that's all it ever really was. Connor and the sickness.
Is that what love is, Dad?
He moved fast, but not fast enough. Soon, his favorite sheets were covered in his son's vomit, but he didn't mind. Angel loved his son, and because of this, loved the inconceivable and the ill. Loved the pain and the confusion, loved what never should have been and never should be.
"It's okay, Connor," he said quietly, watching the tears escape beneath the closed lids. "It happens. I should've been more prepared. It was my fault."
You're the reason my life sucks...
"It hurts, Dad."
"I know, son. I know."
And this time, Angel was quicker, ready with the wastebasket for when it all came up again.
TBC...