TITLE: This Long Eve AUTHOR: seraC EMAIL: seraphcelene@yahoo.com SPOILERS: Through Release RATING: R ARCHIVING: Essential-Imperfect, Buffy Fiction Archive. All others please ask. SUMMARY: I had a dream, which was not all a dream. NOTES: AU during Release. My very first slash fic. Sometimes I really do surprise me. FEEDBACK: Is like air, highly necessary. In other words, yes please! THANKS: To my gorgeous Moonwhip for the lightening fast beta. Many thanks/Much blame goes to Jennifer-Oksana for inspiration. This little tidbit is a result of too much time spent at her lj. DISCLAIMER: Angel and all related characters belong to Joss Whedon, Sandollar, the Warner Company, et al. I’m just taking them out for a little exercise. Summary from George Gordon, Lord Byron's 'Darkness'. "In this wan and heartless mood, To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd, All this long eve, so balmy and serene, Have I been gazing on the western sky, And its peculiar tint of yellow green: And still I gaze -- and with how blank an eye!" -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dejection: an Ode This Long Eve The color of blood, like the purest of rubies, is deep and fathomless. Bloodstone. Dark, vibrant and alive with the essential patterns of glint and gleam. In the calculated angle of directed light rubies wink, blood does not. Wesley is very aware of that particular truth. He is also intimately familiar with the horror of life spilt into dew-shine on grass. He’s felt it slipping between his fingers and beyond the instinctive, protective cup of his hands. Impending death is a hot, pulsing thing that paints his eyeballs with forgotten memories and sings ‘never again’ into his ears, a requiem in the angelic voice of a boy-child. The flash of a blade in the corner of his eyes is Fortune’s way of reminding Wesley that there are other things in the universe that wink. But the flash came too suddenly and in his instinctive flinch from the arc of light on silver he failed to protect her. Now here she lies, sprawled across his lap and cuddled close into his chest. His most precious of failures. Faith is lovely in death. The corners of her mouth tilt slightly and he imagines that she is laughing on the Other Side. The joke is on him. Death came for her and she was only too ready to embrace it. They walked off hand in hand and the sound of her laughter in his ears is mocking. Deep and soulful, wry, but joyful in a way it never was when she still breathed. If he listens closely he might even hear Lilah’s husky chuckle floating on the wind. Their togetherness wouldn’t surprise him. He has failed them both. Wesley’s brain burns with the image of them arm in arm. Intertwined. Legs, hands, bodies. Faith on the top. Lilah looks ravaged and exhilarated. The satiated purr of her voice after sex is notorious and her laughter contains the timbre of Lilah well pleased. Faith would roll her eyes if she could. He is very sure. Or maybe that would be the old Faith. The woman draped across his lap is not the same person who drew patterns on his chest with a shard of broken glass. The blood oozing from her palm mingled with the blood on his chest and became indistinguishable. Blood, the color of rubies, but black as jet wherever the cuts were deepest. Wesley remembers she laughed, licked the shallow slices across her palm and then leaned forward, ever so slowly, to lap at the matching stain on his chest. He remembers the rasping sting of her tongue against his nipple. There is a scar bisecting his areola. He can’t look at his body in the mirror without recalling her. Wesley is branded by the memory of Faith as she was then. He’s no longer sure of who she was now. He lost his way long before they blotted out the sun. Lilah was only ever slightly curious, tracing the faint criss-crossing scars with the tip of one carefully manicured nail. Like it rough, do ya, Wes? There is a place, just over his heart, where Lilah once bit him and Wesley remembers that he came in that moment. Pain and pleasure collided. Lilah laughed somewhat manically and he was gripped with the thought that here was not where he really wanted to be. The same sensation stretches across the muscles in his legs and back, now. Tension coils tight in the hollow of his belly and Wesley is left to battle the instincts of his body to flee. Here is not where he wants to be. Sitting in night-wet grass, a slip of a girl cradled gently in his arms as if she were made of all the finest things in the world and not a construction of exhausted guilt and violence. Faith has shaken off her mortal coil and lounges, one supple leg flung carelessly across Lilah’s hip, on a blue and white gingham tablecloth spread on the grass opposite him. She leans up on her elbow and whispers into Lilah’s ear without speaking. There is a picnic basket and Wesley is fascinated by the slow drag of Lilah’s hand up Faith’s thigh. Faith leans into the caress and Wesley can’t look away. He is riveted. He is pinned. Faith’s body contains a weight that goes beyond physical pounds. It is heavy with remorse that has settled firmly in his heart. He cannot let her go, she is weighted with a million impossibilities. Faith, on the blanket, watches him as intensely as he watches them. Her full lips curl slyly and she speaks without moving her lips. I know what you want Wes. Her voice is the hollow ringing of disaster as she shifts onto her knees over Lilah. You like to watch, don’t ‘cha Wesley? She looks back over her shoulder, smiling all the while. Wesley knows that she is dead. Her voice is only in his head. Watch this. She commands in a whisper and the tableau has shifted so that he is watching them from the side. Watch, Faith demands again in an alluring curl of sound that forces him to focus on the length of her tongue, red as a strawberry, as it strokes slowly against Lilah’s equally berried lips. Her body undulates and Lilah is surprisingly complacent beneath her, whimpering lightly and grinding her hips into the juncture of Faith’s thighs. Wesley holds her closer, squeezing the body tightly. He can feel the wetness of blood through his shirt and that should signal the reality of life at present, not the hallucinated vision of Lilah and Faith at play. It’s all right, Wes, Lilah smiles gently. I enjoy what I do. You never did get that. Her hand has disappeared beneath Faith’s conveniently short skirt. Wesley can only recall Faith in a dress once. Something slinky and black and dangerous. Dangerous even then, when his lust was solely reserved for Cordelia. Faith is arched hard over Lilah. Her dark hair, streaming down her back, brushes against the smooth length of Lilah’s shins she is bowed so far backward. Wesley can see the strain in her calves, the muscles in her legs taut. Her legs are spread as far as they can go. “Faith died doing her duty,” Wesley whispers dumbly. “She died in battle, protecting innocents.” Lilah’s husky laughter makes a mockery of his justifications. Faith was caught off-guard. There’s a knife buried in her back to prove it. I died, Wesley. Deal with it. Faith is no longer smiling. Her forehead is crumpled, lips parted though she doesn’t breathe so much as pant deeply. Wesley watches the shivers that start off as gooseflesh traveling up her skin in waves of rhythm. Her hips, guided by Lilah’s fingers beneath her skirt, lead the motion. She twists, grinding hard, and Wesley can feel his cock rise in anticipation of her release. His breathing is shallow and horrified. Even more so when he notices the knife protruding from Faith’s back as she strains towards orgasm. Wesley wants to reach over, pull it out, and maybe join them. But that’s wrong. Lilah was his lover and Faith was his... What? Guilt. Failure. Lost cause. It’s a muddle in his brain. She is newly dead in his arms and fucking his equally dead lover on a tablecloth covered in sunlight in the middle of a park at midnight. It doesn’t have to make sense, Wesley. Faith is too caught up in her pleasure to speak and she isn’t even looking at him, but the voice is hers and it rings in his head like a warning. None of it makes sense. It never did. As the tempo of her hips increases so does his breathing. His arms around her body tighten and he is with her. Breathing heavily, his face suddenly slick with tears. God, Wesley. Lilah whispers, her eyes wide with lust. She is amazing. Wesley, Faith whimpers his name. Her hips move faster. Her back arches further. The crown of her head nearly touches her heels. Wesley, she says again. Wesley squeezes the body in his arms tighter and tighter as she moves faster and faster. Wesley! Faith screams his name when she comes. Wesley’s body jerks and shudders at the clarity and longing of his name on her lips. His arms around the body are drawn so tight that it bursts along with him and the world is covered in the blood-red sparkle and shine of rubies that wink in the light. Wesley is covered in sweat when he wakes, sticky with come and breathing hard. He drags his hand over his face, wiping the sleep from his eyes. He concentrates on slowing the frantic beating of his heart. “A dream,” he says and looks down at himself. “A wet dream, at that.” Dragging himself from the bed, Wesley stumbles towards the bathroom. He closes the door gently behind him and never notices the shadow perched on the edge of his bed. Lilah watches him with sad, weary eyes. “Oh, Wesley,” she whispers. “She is so beautiful.” end