Author: Morgan R
Email: Lshallot@juno.com
Summary: An evening at home long ago, D/Aus
Rating: PG-13 ish, maybe R for violence
Disclaimer: Joss et all own them, and hint at their darker pasts
Note: Welcome back to the states, MMW! Regarding the fic- I am perpetually
confused by the commonly held perception that Angelus found Dru's madness to
be merely irritating. After, all, his behavior in Season Two seemed to
indicate the exact opposite. Hence, this.
****
Angelus crept like velvet, like the velvet he wore, dark and soft and rich, sliding around corners like fabric slowly spilling out of careful folds.
Finally, he hovered in a doorway, his eyes burning in firelight as he watched her.
Her long fingers were dancing in the flames, and he caught a whiff of charred flesh. It was a mesmerizing sight, the interplay between blackened pale hands and the cheerfully destructive fire.
Her body was shuddering, shivering, trembling as she sat too near the fire, and he moved into the room on velvet feet, eager to see her face.
It was contorted in pleasure, pure ecstasy, as her flesh cracked and burned in the grate. Was this a true devil child? Aching for fire, sated by flesh turned ash without ending?
"Drusilla," he whispered.
Her eyes opened, full of cold flame, and the glory of torment lived in her death.
"Angel. I saw- oh, I saw such things."
He never saw such things. There were worlds hidden behind her glossy curls, her maelstrom eyes. And Angelus, who wished to achieve all things glorious and depraved, was forced to live in the most mundane of worlds, while she lived every life worth speaking of, over and over every day.
Their eyes were locked together, and he tried again to understand what he saw. But he didn't know the language of fire, and she could never concentrate long enough to translate.
"Tell me," he begged.
He was a monster, and it galled him to be so close to something he wanted without comprehending. He was the pinnacle of everything- a master of combination, existing as beast and exalted cultivation, the perfect gentleman who could dance and flirt and bury his fangs in soft skin without every feeling any contradiction. An artist of depravity.
And like any artist, he knew when he was outclassed. Drusilla's fairy loveliness was incomplete without her bloodlust, and her composition was almost too perfect. He had given her immortality so that he could study her flawlessness, and yet he could hardly study what he could not fathom.
"The fire knows...either." She had done her best, but it could never make sense to him.
He knocked her over with a snarl, slamming her body into the thick carpet. Heedless of his ivory cuffs, so vulnerable to stains, he grabbed her burned hand.
His strong fingers dug down, breaking through black layers of damaged forever, cracking scabs and feeling smooth bone. She screamed as he clawed at tender nerves, her back arching, her eyes staring off into the shadows of the room. His growl underscored her shrieks of pain, her wordless explanation of what, exactly, fire was.
And in the fussily overdecorated parlor, as he ravaged her destroyed hand, he knew the 'either' she had described. Every time his fingers shifted in the depths of her decimated skin, with each attempt her small body made to throw him off, he caught a glimpse of what she had seen, what she had sought.
He sat up, his mind full, absently wiping his hand with a lace edged handkerchief. Pieces of her flesh scarred the white linen as he had scarred her soul, and her panting was in harmony with the sound of the fire, still burning in the polished grate.
"Oh, Daddy," she gasped.
He looked back at her then, saw her wicked smile, and remembered why his order owned her chaos. Her kiss was grateful and wanton, almost an echo of the flame.
"Let me help you see," she asked, before he broke her apart all over again.
****
finis