Black Hole.
It's there, in the back of his head- the something, the thing he can't quite find. The black hole of knowledge, and it is slowly eating him up, and he can't figure out quite how to fix it. How to fix what is wrong in his head.
He tried every spell he knew, but nothing worked, and as the months wore on he finally gave up. Considered briefly asking Angel for help, but some nagging itch that lived in the same place as the black hole told him that it wouldn't be the wisest course of action, and so when he exhausted all of the magical options he could feasibly use on his own, he just... gave up.
But the black hole was still there, and the pain it caused wouldn't go away. So he distracted himself- first with alcohol, then with prescription sedatives, and finally with illegal drugs, both human and demonic, that could make him feel like the king of the world and like nothing could ever touch him or harm him. But they wore off, as they inevitably did, and then the crash was so much worse for the return of the pain from the black hole.
Finally he turned to the oldest method in the book- sex. Losing himself in a warm body, or occasionally a cold one, no matter how many scales or horns or tentacles it had, gave him a brief respite from the pain, and when it was over, there was no hangover like there was from the alcohol, and no crash like there was with the drugs. Just a sweet ache in his muscles and sharp sting of bruises and cuts and bites scattered across his body, marks that took time to fade, and while he could feel them he was able to push away the greater pain in his head.
The glamour that he bought was beyond expensive, but he could afford it, and any spell that not only visibly hid the marks, many of which were obviously made by less than human hands or what have you, but also hid them from a vampire's sense of smell, was more than worth the price he paid.
He'd lost so much. He doesn't know what he has lost, because it was all in the black hole in his mind, but somehow he knew that at some point he had lost everything that was dear to him. Now all he has is his life, his beautifully detailed mockery of an existence, and Angel. The life he doesn't care about- it is nothing but surface shine- but Angel he could not bear to lose. Not now, not like this.
He clings to the thought in his head- Angel doesn't know- but when he notices Angel, watching him very carefully out of opaque eyes, he realizes that Angel knows, and that soon his carefully constructed life will come crashing down around him, and he can't even remember why.
