Title: Pandora
Author: samsom
Posted: Dec 06-Jan 07
Email
Rating: ot for kids, but nothing explicit. Yet. (overall R/N-17)
Category:Dark
Content:C/A
Summary: Mutual obsession and need come to a head when Cordelia discovers Angel’s sketchbook.
Spoilers:
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution: Ask first, please.
Notes: It’s Thanksgiving, and no one’s posting. Left to my own devices, is it any surprise I went straight into the gutter?
Thanks/Dedication:
Feedback: Always appreciated.
Part 1
He was Buffy’s. In her mind was always the picture of them at Buffy’s seventeenth birthday - nearly stuck together, hands brushing, eyes meeting.
Cordelia’s an observer, and she saw the signs of a lost cause.
Three and a half years later, she still thinks he’s a lost cause, but something in her has changed.
Before she could look at Angel like a pretty painting, two dimensional and completely untouchable.
Now he’s living color, drawing forth from her the storm and thunder of emotion as effortlessly as he coaxes images from charcoal and paper.
Tonight, as she is thrown back up to the surface after a vision, he is leaning over her, eyes intent on her face and the clench of his fingers burning the skin of her back.
“Angel!” She gasps because his name is all that’s anchoring her, yanking her back from the horror in her head.
“Tell me.” His voice is low, urgent with purpose and anger.
“Vamps hunting - car?” She closes her eyes and envisions again what she saw. “No, surrounding a car. They’re waiting for the driver to get out.”
It’s then she realizes she’s half in his lap, both of them sitting on the lobby floor of the Hyperion. The smell of the industrial strength cleaner they’re using to clean the floors is mixing in her nostrils with the musky scent of Angel.
She tries to move off but he holds her closer, hands tightening in a grip she can’t break.
Behind his shoulder, Wesley stares down at them with worried eyes and Gunn just looks focused. He wants to kill, gripping his axe tighter, seeing his sister in every one of her visions.
“On the corner of - uh,” hesitates again when Angel’s breath brushes the skin of her cheek and she loses the thread of what she’s saying. “-12th and Vine.”
Peers up finally into his steady gaze so he understands this next part.
“You have to help them.”
He nods.
“I will.”
Easing her gently off his lap, he helps her onto the round couch before they leave in a noisy blur of purpose and weapons.
She curls up and waits for them to complete their mission, knowing her pain will end when they finish the job.
Twenty minutes later, it dulls and fades until she’s left with aching, dry eyes and half moon crescents in the palms of her hands.
It’s done.
Getting up slowly, she heads for the stairs, wanting to clean the last of the lingering vision off of her body before going home. It’s a ritual - hot water, towels, and a shot of whatever Angel keeps in his kitchen.
****
Wiping the soft towel across her face one final time, she straightens the burgundy cloth and hangs it back up.
Angel’s apartment is dark, with only one lamp turned on for light.
The boys wouldn’t be back for another half hour and Angel’s things draw her with the same fascination Pandora must have felt, having that box of sin so close to her at all times. She pads silently over to his dresser, plain dark wood, and pulls open the top drawer.
Inside is a spill of rich fabrics, silks and whole cottons, dark colors every one of them. She runs her hands over the shirts, missing the feel of luxury at her fingertips. She used to wear the same kinds of clothes, from Italy and New York. Feeling the perfect fit against her skin as she walked through the halls of Sunnydale high school, she felt as if nothing could touch her.
Until something did.
The ghost pain flairs briefly to life, and she pushes it away with practiced ease. The rebar was kindness wrapped up in pain, opening her eyes to certain painful truths. She should see the incident as a much needed lesson, but every now and again, she can only feel the acidic burn of betrayal in the back of her throat, forever imprinted on her skin.
Her fingers brush something hard and she hesitates before grabbing the edge and pulling it up.
A sketchbook.
He keeps his art mostly to himself, only now and again drawing a demon as she describes it. But his art stays in his room. She recognizes what she’s doing is a horrible violation, but her fascination with Angel won’t let her put it back down and walk away.
He keeps so much to himself, indulging in long brooding silences as she stands in his doorway and watches him. He doesn’t know she’s there half the time, lost in the blood drenched memories of his past, looking for some fresh way to feel unworthy of the discovered Shanshu.
Opening the hardcover, she sees what she expects to.
Buffy.
The Slayer is smiling, hazel eyes wide with mirth.
The next few pages are of Buffy fighting, sleeping, and angry. Every emotion is represented in Angel’s talented hands.
Then she flips to the fifth page.
At first she doesn’t understand, and then the shock of recognition needles through her flesh at a rush.
She’s on her back, spine arched and head thrown back. She’s never seen herself in the midst of a vision before, and never like this. The O of her mouth is bracketed by lines of pain, and her brow is creased sharply over her closed eyes.
But it looks like she’s having an orgasm.
Her hands are shaking as she flips to the next page.
She’s smiling in this one, eyes bright. He even got the mole on her cheek. Her hair is swept back, off her shoulders, and her neck is prominent.
The striated veins are detailed.
The next drawing makes her breath strangle in her throat.
She’s dressed in a short spaghetti strapped slip, on her knees with her hands bound behind her. Her hair hides her face, but not the rivulets of dark liquid running down her shoulder, staining the dress.
The next sketch is of her asleep on her bed; sheet slipped half way down her hips and one arm over her head.
It’s drawn as if the artist is peering through her bedroom window.
In the next, the sheet is gone, and she’s on her side, nightgown rucked up to her thighs. Her eyes are half lidded and she’s smiling a sleepy smile of invitation.
She slams the sketchbook closed with shaking fingers and stuffs it back into the drawer, heart pounding a frightening rhythm behind her ribcage.
She turns to leave and runs right into Angel’s chest.
His hands come up to grasp her elbows, immovable as stone, and she can’t tug them free.
“See something interesting?” He asks in a quiet voice.
Part 2
He waits a moment and then lets her go, stepping back and going around her. She turns, keeping her back to the door, and stares at the stiff lines of his body as he seats himself in his chair.
There is a cool rush of wind through her body as she waits.
“Angel, talk to me.”
He peers up into her questioning eyes.
“Have you already made up your mind?”
She shakes her head slightly, not taking her gaze off him.
“Not really capable of higher thinking at the moment. Blind panic, on the other hand, is a distinct possibility.”
He nods, and leans back against the wing backed cushion, eyes on her face.
She wants to tell him he’s not making it better, but when he looks at her like that, she loses the thread of her thoughts, forgets her outrage, her shame, forgets everything but the urge to take his hurt from him. She is suddenly, frighteningly aware of how deep the water is around her head, and staves off the panic by focusing on him.
She goes to the edge of his bed and sits, aware that she’s already making a choice.
“Tell me, talk to me.” She keeps her voice soft, willing him to tell her something she can live with, something to replace the dysfunction their friendship has sunk into in the last few minutes.
“When you’re having a vision, Cordelia, it scares me.”
The soft tone of his voice has the hushed quality of a confessional, and for a moment, sitting in the half darkness of Angel’s bedroom, the scent of incense smoke is heavy in her lungs.
She rubs at the tattoo on the inside of her left wrist, waiting for him to go on.
“You’re convulsing so much, and your eyes will roll into the back of your head and I’m trying to hold onto your body to keep you from hurting yourself.”
She remembers his arms around her, keeping her anchored, keeping her safe, and doesn’t tell him how many times she wished he would squeeze harder, make it hurt so she knew she wasn’t dying.
“But,” he pauses for a moment, chin buried in his chest. “There’s another part of me that loves your pain.”
He glances over; watches her with shame in his eyes, and she has to stop herself from reacting, but she can’t stop the way her heartbeat picks up, surging hard at his words.
"I'm not a man, Cordelia, I'm a vampire and the demon craves the agony that you go through. Every time you see something I can't, I want to know what you feel, what you see."
“Angel-“she falters, not knowing what to say.
“I can’t tell you I don’t want the things I drew.” He gets up and crosses over to her, kneeling in front of her clasped knees. “I can’t even tell you that I won’t ever hurt you or that I don’t want to hurt you, but-“
He stops and she waits for more, but realizes that there really isn’t anything more to add, no reassurances or promises, just his confession that she forced by violating his trust. She brings her right hand up and cups the side of his cheek, just under his ear, thumb soft over the stubble that grows over his jaw.
His face is raw with need and fear, and she knows he’s afraid she’ll get up and leave, reject him for being what he is.
“Angel.” She whispers his name because it’s still her safe word, and leans down and touches her mouth to his.
He tries to pull back but she won’t let him, using both hands on the sides of his head to bring him forward, deepening the kiss but he yanks his mouth away just as quickly, to the side, and her lips drag across his cheek.
She stops and presses the spot, arms around his shoulders, holding him, giving him the absolution of her touch.
She can feel him shudder against her, mouth against the bare flesh of her shoulder and though his touch is cold, it burns all the way through her.
Then the burn reaches up through the back of her skull and suddenly she is thrown out of her body and into a vision of hell -
Mirrors within mirrors and she’s dizzy with pain, the world spinning in sickening circles, her brain frying with heat and blood
she realizes that someone is screaming Angel’s name but she can’t connect to the voice at all, and just holds onto the rock holding onto her, watching Angel take her blood as she shudders on the bed, dying, his eyes gold with lust and grief and even now she wants to comfort and hold and then nothing but pain and pain and hot, scalding pain….
is thrown back up and screams once, her throat closing in.
“Cordelia!”
Angel is staring down at her and she realizes he is pressing her into his bed, palm cupped to her forehead, forcing her head back so that her throat is arched tight.
She struggles then, wanting out of his hold before she throws up, rolling off the bed when he releases her and stumbling over to the door.
He makes to follow her -
“No, don’t, please-“
Lurching through the door, she runs away.
She still feels his hard cock pressed between her legs, the way her thighs clenched his hips closer as she watched him take her blood, the rushing intensity when she finally came, thrashing in the throes of her vision.
He killed her, and she orgasmed as she died.
Part 3
Angel forces himself to his feet, following Cordelia where she has told him not to, worry and desire making a mad war in his skull as he watches her small shadow silhouetted by the inky black night.
It’s no hardship to keep up, he could go all night, but soon she’s turning into her street, flying out of the car and up the walk to her apartment.
He stays until the sun forces him home.
****
The drawings are rumpled from being shoved hastily back into his drawer, and he smoothes the wrinkles out with his hand over the images, one by one.
The shame threatens to overwhelm him again, that she should see what he never meant for her to see.
“Then why didn’t you destroy them, Angelus?”
The voice is whiskey rough and little girl sweet, toying and taunting.
His hand runs over the image of a slumbering Cordelia, her face softened by dreams.
“She didn’t need to know.”
A hand, perfectly made, settles along his shoulder, the weight of her body winding around the back of his chair.
He glances up into Darla’s pixie face before returning his gaze to his sketches.
“You left them in a drawer with curious mortal girls roaming your home – did you really expect she wouldn’t find them?”
He doesn’t answer, his eyes searching the vellum for flaws.
****
Instead of sleeping he waits, and when the sun falls back behind the horizon, he opens his balcony windows to the cool autumn night, curtains weaving around his bared torso like a lover’s soft touch.
Gazing in the direction of Silverlake yields nothing of Cordelia, but it pleases him to do it anyway.
The ghost in his bed is lounging with ease across his bedspread.
“She needs you.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
That he’s sure of. If it weren’t for him, she would still be an aspiring actress, ruling men and empires with her smile, not having her head torn apart nightly by visions meant to redeem him.
“Poor tortured Angel, guilt has really made you its dog, hasn’t it?”
He doesn’t answer.
****
In Silverlake, Cordelia huddles on her couch with a blanket wrapped securely around her legs.
Dennis is an unseen presence next to her, smoothing her hair as she stares without seeing at the television.
The images streaking past her mind’s eye are of her own making. Blood and death and Angel, the dark unknowable things that grip him every day and every night, that take him by the scruff of his neck and jam his nose in the mess of his past. She can see him through an unbreakable glass, his soul held by a fragile thread and suspended over the deep well of his demon’s desires and urges and delights.
She lays her head back and brings forth the vision of Angel on top of her, draining and filling her at the same time, and the deep, voluptuous ecstasy of surrendering to the fall.
She turns her head into the cushion and cries.
****
On Monday she’s the first to arrive.
Angel is sitting on the steps waiting, watching as she slowly opens the door and walks in.
He’s back in basic black, shirt open at the throat so she can see a smooth patch of pale perfection, and the ache begins all over again, an endless lump she has to constantly swallow against.
“Hey.” He says.
“Hey.” She replies as she steps down and walks across the lobby to her desk. He gets up and follows, and she has a fleeting thought of being surrounded by the dead.
“How’s your head?”
full of you
“Doing well enough.”
He pours her a cup of coffee and holds it out to her – long fingers wrapped around the ceramic. Fragrant steam rises from the cup. She looks at it and then looks up at him.
“Thank you.”
She takes the mug and brushes his fingers with hers, watching the trembling she feels echo in his hands.
She never thought there would be a point in their relationship where he could hurt her with a touch or a look, but here she is bleeding all over the floor of the hotel, his eyes spilling over her like a summer storm, full of thunder and lightning and sulfur.
When did she agree to star in someone else’s tragedy?
“Cordy.” He takes a step towards her, compelled by something he sees in her eyes.
“Hello!”
Wesley has arrived.
Angel belays his advance and instead turns on his heel and walks around the counter, away from her.
Wesley comes in with fresh books and fresh enthusiasm and she sits at her desk to boot her computer, hand wrapped tightly around her coffee. Wesley is talking about hearing something from one of his underground sources, Angel answering when spoken to, slowly pacing in her periphreal.
She stares at the black void of her monitor as Wesley fades out.
The only sound she hears is the soft cadence of Angel's voice.
Part 4
He’s everywhere.
Angel’s voice, his eyes, follows her as she moves, to her desk, to the bathroom, across the lobby.
She settles at her desk finally, with an ancient book, searching for a symbol, needing a reason not to gaze back at him, to reach out for him.
The vision stays at the back of her tired mind, warning her off, but she’s never needed a warning where Angel’s concerned.
She knows the dangers of loving him.
But now it feels as though she’s on a leash, straining and clawing, reaching for her own doom, aching for a taste of death.
She considers confiding in Wesley, busy translating more of the Wolfram and Hart Scroll, but he’s quietly absorbed in the text. His fingers brush the vellum gently, coaxing answers from the script.
Then a vision reaches for her, and she slumps against her desk top, hands clenched across the surface, eyes closed tight against the raging glimpse of hell.
She rides the tumult as best as she can, picking up what she needs, and when it lets her go the first thing she feels is his hands on her shoulders, sure as the rising sun.
Opens her eyes and sees him down in front of her, eyes searching her face.
Does he see something to draw, she wonders.
“Cordelia?” He prompts her softly, fingers pressing the bones of her shoulders, willing her to speak.
She realizes he’s waiting for her to tell him who needs help and where to go, and shame makes her hot under the skin. He’s still Angel, still willing to fight for good.
Through the pounding in her skull, she searches the disjointed images.
“There’s a vampire waiting for a couple to come home. He’s in the bushes in front of their apartment. 1450 West Circle Blvd.”
Wesley’s warm gaze is full of concern.
“Will you be okay?”
She nods, giving him a small smile of assurance, and he turns and heads for the weapons cabinet, already thinking of the mission ahead.
Angel won’t let her go, pressing his fingertips into her skin.
Wesley waits by the double doors, a sword in each hand.
“Angel?”
He slides his palms down her arms in a caress that makes her quiver and shake.
“Go.” She whispers.
Please go.
“Lie down,” he says as he gets up. “Get some sleep.”
****
One hungry vamp, and not very bright.
Angel makes short work of it, angry again at the cost to Cordelia, for this one runt of the undead litter.
Swinging the sword in one easy arc, he severs the head and then watches as the ashes settle over the shrubs and grass at the end of the block.
“That was easy.” Wesley says, sounding slightly disappointed.
Angel agrees.
Too damn easy.
****
fangs in her flesh, seeping, weeping wound, and she cries but he can’t hear, lost in ecstasy, teeth and cock tearing at her, and she screams but he can’t hear
She jerks from the dream, head up from the cradle of her arms.
Her skin tightens.
She’s not alone.
Something creeping, something craven.
Something floating in the corner of her eye.
Turning her head, she sees a drawing pinned to the cabinet door.
Her, blood drenched and dead.
Getting up, she tears it down, before Wesley or Gunn comes back, before anyone sees it.
Someone laughs.
She turns, staring into the half open doors of Angel’s office, seeing nothing but darkness and the shadowed outline of his desk.
Then a spot of diaphanous white appears between the wooden doors.
Cordelia focuses her eyes, finally seeing the white limbs and white blond hair.
Blood runs cold in her veins when the woman smiles, exposing her fangs, gleaming and sharp.
“Hello, princess.”
****
The Hyperion is quiet when Angel steps back through the entrance.
But he can smell Cordelia’s blood in the air, and closes his eyes, concentrating on its location.
Upstairs.
He ascends quickly, feet barely touching the stairs, and rounds the corner in a blur.
Splintering the wood with his booted foot, he steps through the broken door, coming up sharply at the rich copper scent that stains the air in his suite.
Cordelia is lying across his bedspread, wearing a white nightgown so sheer, he can see the pale peach of her skin through the material.
Everything dims around him; everything important slips to the background.
All he can see is her, smell is her.
There’s a bite on the side of her throat, not a killing wound, but enough to make her bleed down into the empire collar of her gown.
Her head is turned to the side, eyes half open.
He whispers her name, terrified. For the unfocused look in her eyes, for the need that rises sharply in his gut, choking in his throat.
“A seer, darling boy, and yours.”
A hand winds its way around his collar, slipping over his skin as he stands frozen, afraid to move closer, unable to back away. Petite and deadly, Darla sways against his side, whispering softly of all the things he doesn’t dare think of.
“Take her like you dream of, Angelus, and release yourself from the chains that hold you back.”
Cordelia moans low in her throat, and he vamps, teeth aching, eyes coveting. He does want her, and he knows she wants him, though she tries to hide it, it shines from her every minute of every day.
“She does want you. She can lie, but her body doesn’t, her dreams don’t.”
The snake’s voice urges him closer and closer, and suddenly the toes of his boots are against his bed frame.
Cordelia lies before him like a sacrifice on an altar.
“All for you, love.”
He moves hesitantly at first, bending to crouch over her, then with more surety, moving up on the bed until he’s lying over her.
She kissed him once, trying to rid herself of the visions, but her pulse jumped all the same, and her lips tasted like sweet brandied pears.
Bending low, arms braced on either side of her head, he ghosts his mouth along her throat, gathering up traces of blood against his tongue, the taste exploding over his senses.
“Her blood is like wine, Angelus, sweetened by fear.”
Darla is a weight against his side, pressing him down over his seer, and he goes willingly, relishing the feel of her thighs against his, hipbone hard against his erection.
His teeth scrape the flesh of her throat.
“Bite her, give her what she’s been thinking of since she found your drawings.”
Pressing slightly, her flesh gives beneath the pressure of his fangs.
“That’s my boy.”
There is a rush of white noise right before he pushes his fangs in, a spray of blood hitting the back of his throat as Cordelia arches against him, her mouth open and her head back.
For one perfect moment, he is surrounded by her, drowning in her.
And then he’s pulled deeper.
holding her down, drinking from her neck and fucking her as she screams and claws his back, then it’s someone else, screaming and dying and pain ruptures his mind and he’s never been on this end before, helpless and hurt, begging for help that never comes-
The vision lets him go and he rears his head back, gasping with shock, staring down into Cordelia’s wide open and horrified eyes.
TBC...
samsom
Leave a comment
View
comments
(used for general site comments/queries also)
|