Prompt 97 - Playing the fool - BtVS

[thismaz]

 Title: Playing the fool
 Fandom: BtVS
 Prompt: 97 - delirious
 At: tamingthemuse
 Rating: Older Teen/Adult
 Summary: Part 36. Set during the summer before season 1, Xander's life is changed radically when vampires invade it. In the meantime Angel and Spike have their own, separate agendas.
 Word Count: 1,840
 Comments: Are greatly appreciated, loved and cherished.
 Previous parts: In reverse order, in tags here In my memories.
 Or, starting here with links to the next, at the end of each chapter.
 Disclaimer: here.
Now beta'd by the wonderful laazikaat

Warning (highlight the white area to see the warning text):

Vamp Xander story

dark_amia made a wall paper and she turned it into a banner for me. Lookee here -

Isn't it pretty?

36. Playing the fool

Tuesday 6 August

Angel wandered listlessly around the living room, picked up his book, put it down, sat on the sofa, but stood up again when he realised he couldn't settle. Without conscious thought he found himself in the kitchen with the fridge door open, gazing blankly at the pile of blood bags that were its only contents. He wasn't hungry and after a moment he closed it and returned to the sofa, stretching out full length in the place he used to sleep.

He was tired of thinking, tired of trying to compose arguments strong enough to persuade the watcher of his good intentions. Tired of trying to find a solution to the mess he'd landed himself in. Liam had screwed him. Even if he could think of an explanation for why he had been found in the street with three vampires, three other vampires, and an unconscious woman, the watcher would surely grant more credence to a young man who had managed to escape from murderous captors. A young man who swore that Angel was evil. There was no precedent for him to recognise the uniqueness of a vampire with a soul.

Angel's thoughts kept going round in circles, getting him nowhere. One week. One more week to the night of the new moon. Then Angel would be free of his obligations, free to leave, free to return to his mission, his cause, his search for redemption. One week left to endure and then he could concentrate on forgetting this interlude had ever happened, banish his children from his life and his memory, as he had done so successfully for the last hundred years. With a sigh he swung his legs back to the floor and sat forward. Resting his elbows on his knees he scrubbed his hands up his face and decided that in spite of his reluctance, he really needed to think.

The past week, since the night Xander and Spike between them had so casually shattered his perceptions of himself and cast doubts on his future, had been uneventful, leaving Angel with far too much time to think. Spike's laughter had stopped abruptly when they'd heard the sound of the back door opening. He'd jumped to his feet and disappeared into the kitchen to investigate, but returned within moments, resuming his seat with a shrug. Dru had murmured some question and Spike had made some reply, but Angel hadn't been listening, too caught up in the shock of seeing all his plans in ruins under his feet. Why hadn't he seen it before? Why hadn't he realised the cost his temporary reunion with his family would inflict? He'd been doing good. He'd prevented the Master from rising, he'd been keeping the vampire population down, he'd been gathering information to help the slayer. He'd been waiting for her to arrive. It hadn't occurred to him that her watcher would come to Sunnydale before her. He'd imagined that Spike and Dru and even Xander and Jesse would be long gone before he had to declare himself.

Even after the fateful night when Liam betrayed him, he still hadn't made the connection. Why not? Was he so caught up in the immediate concerns over Dru's health and the certainty that Whistler had been informed by prophecy that he'd not allowed himself to see the obvious truth until Spike threw it in his face?

And Xander... Xander's exposure of the false premise behind Angel's good intentions, Spike's scornful reaction... They had rocked Angel's beliefs in a way he hadn't though possible. He'd sat transfixed as his whole existence reshaped itself before his bewildered gaze. Then he'd got up and walked out of the room, taking possession of Xander's bed, from where he'd not moved until the following night when Spike came in to bully him into feeding, so he could in turn feed Dru.

Angel had done that, doing his best to stamp on his response to the sensual pleasure Dru's fangs in his throat elicited. And he'd continued to do that - hiding in Xander's room, which had now become his, except when he was needed to keep Dru fed and as healthy as she could be, until the ritual was complete.

Assuming the ritual was successful. He shied away from that thought. The idea that his destiny could be put in such jeopardy and the cause of the damage then fail, was just too much to contemplate. Something good had to come out of this mess. He refused to consider the idea that putting a healthy Dru back on the streets was anything other than a good outcome. She was his childe and he loved her.

The sound of the door opening brought his head up out of his hands, even as his mind reeled again at the shocking realisation of his feelings for his childe. And there she was, his childe, who he'd possessed in his soulless state, but who he'd never loved. Not then. Dimly, through the roaring in his ears, he wondered if this was the ultimate curse of his soul - that he should realise he loved a woman who was not only evil, but also mad?

Standing in the doorway, her head tilted to one side, she regarded him seriously. "I slept so long," she said. "I thought I'd never wake."

Slowly she tottered into the room and Angel jumped up to help her to her chair. Smiling, she relaxed back into her seat with a sigh, her head resting against the chair back as she gazed up at him. "Have they gone?" she asked. "Have they gone to fetch it?"

Angel crouched down in front of her, fearful for reasons he didn't want to examine. "Yes, Spike's taken Xander and the servant. They've gone to fetch the cross."

She nodded, looking so frail that for a moment Angel wondered if she could make it through the next seven days. "Let me get something to eat," he offered. "Once you've fed, you'll feel better. Okay?"

"Of course. Of course, yes, we could ask the wizard," she murmured, her head turning from side to side. She rarely talked like normal people, but there was a note of delirium in her voice that concerned him. "He knows where the dark god is. He knows."

Angel eased himself up and hurried into the kitchen. Glancing at the stove, he decided there wasn't time to wait for water to heat up to warm the blood. He'd just have to drink it cold. It wasn't a hardship, not like choking down cold pig or cow. Grabbing four bags and a pair of scissors, he filled a large tankard and downed the contents in no more than a couple of long gulps, repeating the process twice more. Then he poured the last bag into the tankard and carried it back with him, placing it on the coffee table.

Returning to Dru, he lifted her, surprised that she didn't weigh less, so fragile she looked. Sitting down in her place he settled her comfortably, sideways across his knees. She raised her right hand to his left shoulder as she twisted around and he guided her mouth towards the other side of his neck. Then he leant back and relaxed, allowing her to sprawl across his chest.

As always, the sheer sexual pleasure, the sensation of family, threatened to engulf him and as always he fought to subdue it, but the recent recognition of tenderness made it more difficult this time. Without him noticing when he'd started, he found he was stroking her side, up and down her ribs, a soothing motion, but whether to comfort her or himself, he couldn't tell.

They remained like that for a few long minutes, the pull from her fangs sending tendrils of want through his body, his hand gently stroking. When her hand slipped off his shoulder, he hardly registered the fact. It was not until she took his own hand in hers, as the flow of blood began to slow, and guided it lower, to her hip, that his conscious mind began to reengage. When she tried to push it in towards her lap, he finally realised his own danger and pulled away.

Letting out a little mewl of protest, she raised her head and looked at him from beneath half closed lids, her expression so knowing that Angel felt again the rush of need he so often felt when she flirted with him. "No," he groaned. "Dru, please. I can't."

Lifting her as he stood, he set her back in her chair and stepped away, out of physical range, but he knew he couldn't leave. She might have fed, but she was not well and he couldn't walk away from her if she needed him.

"You could," she said. "If you wanted to enough. You could stay with us. We could be a family." She sounded so frail and pitiful that he closed his eyes to find the strength to resist her. He counted to ten before he opened them again and now she was sitting up straight in her chair, her momentary weakness apparently past, for now. "You've not always been alone, even after you deserted us, left us to fend for ourselves, you had companions by your side. How would this be different?"

"I... Not really," Angel protested. "I didn't really." The only time he'd ever settled down for any length of time had been in the sixties in Detroit. The only person to ever share his home had been a weaselly little man who had attached himself to his household there, somehow, when Angel was living the life of a shady recluse. Parson, that was his name. He'd taken on the duties of a manservant and had punctuated his tasks in caring for Angel's clothes with talk of girls and their beavers. Angel had been both repelled and fascinated by his obsession. He'd had books with pictures of half dressed women in them and magazines showing more. Women with their fingers spreading their lower lips for the camera. He'd always sounded like his mouth contained too much saliva when he spoke of them and Angel had come close to killing him, more than once. Thinking back, it would probably have been a good thing to have done.

His confusion suitably tamed by that memory, Angel frowned at Dru. "I never had anyone I cared for," he admitted. "I made sure of that." Bending down he picked up the tankard and drank some of its contents, to give him something to hide behind. As his rational mind once again took control of his thought processes, he narrowed his eyes and stared at her, suddenly realising that she looked far stronger and far less delirious than her recent feed alone could account for, compared to her state moments before. 'The minx!' he thought.

Dru smiled the serene smile of the Madonna, with more than a hint of mischief. Then she shrugged, acknowledging his victory in this round of what, he suddenly realised, was their game.

Continued here.

Comments

[thismaz.livejournal.com]

*g* The beaver obsession came from a vague memory of something in Kurt Vonnegut's book, Slaughterhouse Five, but I couldn't find my copy to check it out. I just remember that when I read it, as a teenager, I was struck by how tacky it was, so when I wanted sleaze...
Yeah, Dru is physically weak, but she is in control of so much here. I really wanted to draw a Dru who is mad, but is also sane enough to be in charge.
Thanks hon.