A/N: Hey, guys. Thanks for the reviews, they were most encouraging. Here's a little angst-ridden present for you. :)
Asphyxia
Chapter Eleven
Connor moved silently through the alley, quick and lithe like a young tomcat. He held his breath between the urine-soaked brick, kicked the empty beer cans and wine bottles to the side, wincing when they clinked and clanked. It was important to be silent when you were Connor Angel. Important to have stealth, and grace. Most of all, it was important to be able to lie well, lie often, and lie in various ways.
Dad knew when he lied, so Connor changed the way that he lied. He kept his passages clear now, and he didn't falsify the love in his eyes - just rested into his father that gleam of affection the thing had earned over the past weeks.
"Hey, kid. Spare an old man some change?" a gruff old bum with a grisly beard asked. Connor jumped and stared, taking in the cardboard box on which this unfortunate human was perched. Connor fished through his pockets but came up with nothing.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't have anything."
"Nothin', huh?" the old man chuckled. "Yup. Know how that is."
Connor fidgeted for a moment, uncomfortable with the fact that he was wearing $110 worth of clothes and it was obvious that he did have something, while this old man clearly had nothing.
"Is this where you live?" the boy asked.
"For tonight," the bum replied.
"How come?"
"Hard luck, kid. Hard luck." The dirty head was cocked to the side and the dulled, sleep-encrusted eyes studied Connor with an almost disconcerting knowledge. "Isn't it a little late for a kid your age to be out?"
"I'm old enough," Connor sniffed indignantly.
"How old?"
"Seventeen."
"Almost a man, aren't ya?" the old man laughed this time, and Connor shuddered at how manic it sounded.
"Well...yeah."
After collecting himself, the bum sighed and looked at Connor with mirthful eyes. "Sorry, kid. You look younger in the dark." Connor remained silent, and he continued, "Does your mother know you're out this late?"
"She's dead."
"How about your old man? Does he know?"
He's dead, too.
"No. He thinks I'm in bed."
"Does he beat you?"
Not recently.
"No."
"Out for a night with friends, then, are ya?"
"No."
Dull eyes, so dull, and they looked at Connor in that sad way that only dull eyes had.
"Then why the hell are you out here, kid?"
Connor started to walk away.
"Couldn't sleep."
And he walked quickly out of the alley, trying to block out the, "Go home!" that was called so desperately after him.
Two sessions with that insufferable Dr. Rob and Connor could only feel himself becoming angrier. And that same old woman, with the walking cane and the strict face, was there again, always there, and she always looked at Connor's dirty shoes with an aristocratic-like disgust. Connor sometimes wondered if she would try to hit them with her cane, and he wondered if she did, what would happen. He wondered if Angel would get angry and yell at her and finally understand that this was not a place where Connor would reach a decent degree of mental health, but a place that would only end with the possession of battered feet and a sullen face.
Connor had remained tight-lipped again. Not a word spilt from his tongue this time.
Because silence was important.
He walked into another alley, a bit less than silent and a bit less than graceful.
"Here, kitty kitty kitty."
Connor shuddered at the feminine voice as he turned around.
"Aren't you a pretty boy?" the vampire crooned and Connor looked her over - at the torn fishnets and the scuffed pumps and the shirt hanging off her slim torso; the bobbed, dirty, tangled brown hair and the messily applied mascara - and he felt disgust.
"I guess," he said softly.
"Does Daddy know you're out playing past your bedtime?"
Connor shook his head, his hand creeping into his pocket for a stake.
"Wouldn't he be mad?" she asked, with a patronizing smile that made Connor's fist clench. "He killed my clan, you know. I believe you were there with him." At the boy's raised eyebrow, she added with a note of exasperation, "The other night, little boy."
"Oh yeah," Connor replied tonelessly. "That was fun."
"Well, wouldn't he be mad?" she asked. "Wouldn't he be mad to know the situation you got yourself into?"
Another vampire dropped from the roof of one of the buildings, followed by another, and another. One, filthy and reeking of garbage, climbed out of a dumpster, his face smeared with dirt and a mixture of old, molding food.
Connor's hand tightened around his stake and his muscles tensed with anticipation. After all, his old man didn't beat him and he had no friends and his mother was dead.
And he couldn't sleep.
He could fight, though. He could leap and dodge their blows, and he could kick off of the damp bricks, and connect his foot with their jaws and jab at their hearts with his stake. And he could watch them explode and see their dust scatter and become indecipherable from the dirt and urine and garbage littering the cold concrete of the alley. Just another speck, another particle, like any other. The mundane and the old and the tired falling to the ground after a satisfying exchange of fists and feet.
Connor felt a hand around his throat and others around his arms, and he kicked and he writhed, but deep down he knew he was caught. And he was thrown against the wall, and a flash of fangs glittered before his eyes.
"I bet he tastes magical."
"He is the miracle child, after all."
Connor started to cry and he choked because he couldn't breathe - the fingers were tight and constricting and unrelenting around his throat.
He was so, so close to getting there. So close to sleep, but he smelled Dad and the fingers went away and he gasped and fell to the ground, sobbing.
Moments later, he felt a familiar hand run through his hair and all he could think about was how he had been so close to sleep.
"You were supposed to be in bed," Dad's soft voice whispered, stained with a gentle disapproval Connor had come to know vaguely well.
"Couldn't sleep."
"Doesn't matter. Its dangerous out here."
Connor raised his tear-stained face to look at his father, and his father's worried brown eyes, and tense frown.
"I didn't want to stay in."
"You could have been killed."
"I didn't want to stay in."
Angel sighed and pulled Connor to his feet, hugged his child against his broad chest for a moment before relaxing his hold.
"Your new sweater got torn," he said, fingering the small tear in the shoulder.
"Sorry," Connor apologized, his voice small and weak. "Didn't mean to. I'll pay for it."
"With your nonexistent allowance? I don't care about the sweater, Connor." Angel gently enveloped his son's wrist with his fingers, and led him in the direction of the hotel.
"Are you mad at me?"
"No."
"You're acting mad."
" I'm not acting mad."
"You are."
"I'm not."
Connor remained silent for the rest of the trip home.
Once in the hotel, Connor watched from the top of the entrance steps as Angel took off his leather coat, placing it first on the counter of the reception desk, then on the lobby sofa. He watched his father pace and pick absentmindedly at his nails.
"Dad?"
Angel kept his eyes on the ground as he asked in a hardened tone, "Why did you leave?"
"I couldn't sleep."
"Connor."
"Well, I couldn't."
"What was bothering you?"
"Nothing."
Connor jumped when he heard his father's feral growl reverberating from the back of the creature's throat.
"Something was bothering you. You don't have to tell me what it is, but I know something was. Don't LIE to me, son."
The boy fidgeted for a moment, uncomfortable in his place as the receiving end of the vampire's glare. Then sobered, his own gaze freezing over in defiance.
"Why shouldn't I? It's none of your business if something's bothering me."
"It is when it results in you nearly getting your throat ripped out."
"God! Why can't you just leave me alone!?" Connor yelled, stomping towards the staircase. It was okay to be melodramatic when feeling a surge of hatred for the thing. He often was. He was seventeen years old. He had the right.
Angel was fast, always faster than Connor, and his hand was around boy's upper arm before Connor could even absorb the information that his father had moved.
"Because I love you, damnit. Why can't you understand that?" he asked through clenched teeth.
Connor winced at the tight grasp and tried to pull away, but the thing was relentless.
"Dad, you're hurting me."
"I'm hurting you? You're scaring the hell out of me."
"Dad, let go!"
Angel didn't, pulling his son against his chest once again in a frantic hug, releasing his death grip only to put the pressure on the boy's back.
"You can't do things like this, Connor."
But Connor was born to do things like this. He'd been doing things like this his entire life. He'd done things like this only months ago, when Dad had kicked him out of the hotel.
"Things like what?" he asked, feigning ignorance, his voice muffled against his father's shirt.
"Things like leaving without telling me where you're going."
"Why not?"
"Because it scares me."
"Why?"
"Need I reference the fact that you almost got your throat ripped out again?"
Connor remained silent for what seemed like hours before softly confiding, "I just wanted to sleep."
Angel made a sound, something between a whimper and a cry, and buried his face in his son's hair.
Connor closed his eyes against his dad's shirt, allowing himself to relax into the hug. He thought about the old grisly man with the filthy beard. He thought about how that man had nothing.
Connor had empty pockets and a torn sweater and a dead father's embrace.
TBC...