Man-A-Thon Ficathon Entry
Apr. 30th, 2006 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lostakashaTitle: Breathless
Pairing: Wes/Angelus/Angel/Fred
Summary: Set in AtS early S3: Wesley gets darker with every breath he takes.
Rating: NC-17
Word Count 1,685
Warnings: Autoerotic asphyxiation; fetishism.
Disclaimers: These characters belong to ME, Whedon & Greenwalt. I own nothing, mean no harm.
Author's notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
winterlive and crazydiamondsue's Man-A-Thon ficathon. jellicle_freak requested jealousy, confrontation, and the way men hide from each other. I hope this works for you! Thanks to ely_jan for beating me into making this a phallic-centric endeavor, and to sweptawaybayou for the second set of eyes.
Breathless
It sifts through his consciousness, uninvited. How he manages to keep the image from his head during the daylight is a function of an exquisitely compartmentalized mind; when touching dusty tomes with decaying pages he is anchored, centered to the reality of work, of the day. Anchored, too, when bearing arms; grounded by the slice of blade into demon flesh and soothed by the spattering of eerie fluids against his skin. Work is lust of a different kind.
But in dawn’s latent hours the other lust seizes him and wakes him from unsettling dreams. It’s always the same now. The familiar comfort of an imagined touch wrests him from uneasy sleep to draw him down, draw him out. To release.
Ice and shadow encircles his throat, and a whispered growl that speaks to his deepest beast lifts him from the darkness. The grip’s not nearly tight and he’s already hard like the teenager he was when he first slipped his mother’s linen and leather belt around his neck.
Exquisitely cold fingers lace beneath his chin and lift his skull and Angelus always says the same thing:
“Is this what you want, Wesley?”
And as if he could direct the beast, he moans and rasps and pretends that his words have meaning.
“You know what I want.”
Surrounded by his father’s books in the dusty attic, the watcher-in-training builds his first lover. Lashes a muted paisley shirtwaist belt to a length of clothesline. Loops the line around his back, down and around the steering rudders of the old flexible flyer sled on which he sits, the hard, unforgiving bed of his first desire. Slides his head into the fragrant noose, scented with traces of Yardley’s rosewater and glycerin from his mother’s hands, and pushes against the rudder with all his might.
Fight the panic, let it feed the pulsing of his heart and the throbbing between his legs. Snatch at flesh buried beneath flannel trousers, hard and hot and aching. Just as the light bleeds out of the room up, up, up, almost there crimson violet indigo and…
At the moment just before blackness, remember to kick and loosen the line.
Angelus laughs and tightens the chokehold, but it’s not nearly enough.
It’s not enough until Angel kneels before him, eyes liquid and yellow, fangs descended. He does not lick or kiss or prepare the flesh on which he feasts, nor does he favor his victim with a caress. He waits, patient as a penitent, for his twin to slowly cut off his lover’s oxygen supply. Only then does Angel pierce the femoral artery, and drinks.
It’s the only way Wesley can come.
And it’s been this way for longer than he cares to remember. But it’s easy enough to store away his fantasies in the daylight hours, in the time between referencing and researching and patrolling. It’s easier than anyone would guess to wear the guise of Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, and as long as he is in the presence of Cordelia and Gunn he can manage the illusion of a fetish-free existence, rooted in friendship and fighting the good fight.
He believes it enough, eventually. And the arrival of Winifred Burkle lends credence to that lie.
So much so that he feels that he might love her, that he might take her to his bed and capture some semblance of a life without complexity. Some semblance of living. Something resembling human desire.
She walks like a wraith among them, chattering and interested, frail and alive. Gunn pays her scant attention, and Angel is far too enraptured by blondes natural and bleached to pay her any mind. Wesley pays attention, and carefully marks the time.
II
Steady as a metronome, dependable as moonrise. In the darkest hours she wakes from dreamless sleep and swims into consciousness, hungry and wanting; swollen and aching and desperate for release.
If Angel set store in clocks he could set them by Fred’s nocturnal habits. He waits to hear her stir in the next room, breathes in the intoxicating scent of rising blood and arousal that seeps past lath and plaster to reach him, to curl around his senses. He sees her clearly, as if through a windowpane, and knows instinctively if she is on her back, on her belly, on the bed, against the bureau, or in the chair. Squatting. Sitting. Standing. Bent over the windowsill.
On this night, she is at the wall that adjoins their rooms. Supported by brow and palm against green painted walls defaced by vermillion ink, slick fingers trace equations and algorithms and postulations as if her own juice could lend them power.
Some nights she simply chants his name until the rush of orgasm silences her. On others, she croons rambling tales of monsters and caves and saviors until she falls off the edge of consciousness into release.
The story she whispers on this night does more than spark his own desire; it is enough to move him to rise from his customary seat in the club chair and draw him to the wall, where he rests his brow against the place he knows hers also rests. Flattens his palm to spread against hers, connecting through gypsum, almost a touch. Resists the urge to stroke himself in time to her breaths, preferring, for the moment, just to listen.
“Having this room next to you is safe because I don’t bleed anymore, you know. Not that there’s anything wrong with me but a touch of secondary amenorrhea brought on by five years of stress and starvation and the resulting hormonal irregularity, which I suspect will right itself over time. It’s been months since I’ve been here and I thought it’d be back any day now, but it’s taking its time. Not that it matters, except that I’d want you to take me then, take me when I’m bleeding because it would be safe for you and you wouldn’t have to bite me or turn me or anything you’d feel bad about after.
“You could drink me dry and it would be our secret. I think about you putting your tongue on me all the time, licking me silly and shivery and eating me until I just die. But the blood would make it so much nicer for you, don’t you think?”
III
Days pass, and leather-bound books conceal Wesley’s carefully planned agenda: to stay as close to Fred as possible. She becomes a lifeline to him, more than the twisted clothesline of his childhood or the dream of skilled hands controlling his last breath. Safe and secure in the knowledge that he alone desires her, he works long into the darkness and contents himself by knowing that he stands sentinel while she sleeps.
Turning pages echo in the silence as Wesley waits for Angel to return from his customary nighttime prowls. Maybe it’s the comforting quiet, or maybe the sheer size of the empty hotel that emboldens him, but he finds himself climbing the stairs and turning down the hallway toward her room.
Silent footfalls betray nothing as he approaches her door. Presses cheek to plank and listens for the catch of her breath, for the whisper of cotton on flesh as sheets slip and twist around her hips.
Fevered whispers barely reach him, and he struggles to thread together their meaning.
“..knew it in Pylea … you there … let you … put your mouth … apotheosis... you would understand …”
He knows she is moving around the room, hears the slap of her bare feet against carpet and sheets of paper and the detritus of a complex mind. Listens as her voice fades away from him, unintelligible, strains to make sense, and fails.
The door to the adjoining room is open, and hours remain before dawn.
He slips undetected through Angel’s door, and maps Fred’s whispers against the wall like tracks, stopping when her words become barely clear enough to decipher. Slips his glasses from his eyes and puts them in his pocket, all the better to get close to the voice on the other side.
“…that’s not irony, though. It’s coincidence. But it’s a good coincidence though. There’s not enough to call you to me yet, but give it time and there might be. Well, or there’ll be more anyway…”
Chilled fingers grip Wesley’s neck and twist his face into the wall. A wide, hard knee spreads his thighs, pinning him, jolting him into the reflexive red blood flash of fear-induced desire.
“Is this what you want, Wesley?” Tiny flecks of spittle, chilled and surreal, stipple his cheek. That, and the sound of Angel’s voice is enough to send a wild pulse through him, and he shivers from cock to crown.
Finds his voice, but it sounds hollow and foreign to his ears.
“Angel…I…thought you…”
He expects Angel to slam his face against the wall, but instead feels eight stone against his back as Angel presses his full weight against him and brings his knee up closer, harder.
“Is this what you want? To hear the things she tells me? What she wants, how she wants it? How…much she wants it?”
“No… Angel...I thought I heard Fred call out and…”
No, mother, I didn’t realize it was your favorite. I was just trying to refine the steering on the sled.
A bloodless thumb presses against his left carotid artery; exsanguinated fingertips drive into his right, sending kaleidoscopes of light swirling before his eyes. Blood rushes to his head as his breaths become shallow, and Fred’s hushed intimations are rendered to white noise in his head.
“Is this what you want?”
Belts and ropes and pulleys and nylon stockings and cock rings and scarves and father’s ties and just enough slack…
Soothed by anoxia’s hymn, Wesley shudders and waits for the last wave of blackness to consume him, release him. Make his dream come true.
As if struck by lightning, or by terror, or by something far more hideous and deadly, Angel releases his grip on his neck and reels away.
“Go home, Wes,” he tells him. “Just go the fuck home.”
--fin--
Pairing: Wes/Angelus/Angel/Fred
Summary: Set in AtS early S3: Wesley gets darker with every breath he takes.
Rating: NC-17
Word Count 1,685
Warnings: Autoerotic asphyxiation; fetishism.
Disclaimers: These characters belong to ME, Whedon & Greenwalt. I own nothing, mean no harm.
Author's notes: Written for
winterlive and crazydiamondsue's Man-A-Thon ficathon. jellicle_freak requested jealousy, confrontation, and the way men hide from each other. I hope this works for you! Thanks to ely_jan for beating me into making this a phallic-centric endeavor, and to sweptawaybayou for the second set of eyes.Breathless
It sifts through his consciousness, uninvited. How he manages to keep the image from his head during the daylight is a function of an exquisitely compartmentalized mind; when touching dusty tomes with decaying pages he is anchored, centered to the reality of work, of the day. Anchored, too, when bearing arms; grounded by the slice of blade into demon flesh and soothed by the spattering of eerie fluids against his skin. Work is lust of a different kind.
But in dawn’s latent hours the other lust seizes him and wakes him from unsettling dreams. It’s always the same now. The familiar comfort of an imagined touch wrests him from uneasy sleep to draw him down, draw him out. To release.
Ice and shadow encircles his throat, and a whispered growl that speaks to his deepest beast lifts him from the darkness. The grip’s not nearly tight and he’s already hard like the teenager he was when he first slipped his mother’s linen and leather belt around his neck.
Exquisitely cold fingers lace beneath his chin and lift his skull and Angelus always says the same thing:
“Is this what you want, Wesley?”
And as if he could direct the beast, he moans and rasps and pretends that his words have meaning.
“You know what I want.”
Surrounded by his father’s books in the dusty attic, the watcher-in-training builds his first lover. Lashes a muted paisley shirtwaist belt to a length of clothesline. Loops the line around his back, down and around the steering rudders of the old flexible flyer sled on which he sits, the hard, unforgiving bed of his first desire. Slides his head into the fragrant noose, scented with traces of Yardley’s rosewater and glycerin from his mother’s hands, and pushes against the rudder with all his might.
Fight the panic, let it feed the pulsing of his heart and the throbbing between his legs. Snatch at flesh buried beneath flannel trousers, hard and hot and aching. Just as the light bleeds out of the room up, up, up, almost there crimson violet indigo and…
At the moment just before blackness, remember to kick and loosen the line.
Angelus laughs and tightens the chokehold, but it’s not nearly enough.
It’s not enough until Angel kneels before him, eyes liquid and yellow, fangs descended. He does not lick or kiss or prepare the flesh on which he feasts, nor does he favor his victim with a caress. He waits, patient as a penitent, for his twin to slowly cut off his lover’s oxygen supply. Only then does Angel pierce the femoral artery, and drinks.
It’s the only way Wesley can come.
And it’s been this way for longer than he cares to remember. But it’s easy enough to store away his fantasies in the daylight hours, in the time between referencing and researching and patrolling. It’s easier than anyone would guess to wear the guise of Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, and as long as he is in the presence of Cordelia and Gunn he can manage the illusion of a fetish-free existence, rooted in friendship and fighting the good fight.
He believes it enough, eventually. And the arrival of Winifred Burkle lends credence to that lie.
So much so that he feels that he might love her, that he might take her to his bed and capture some semblance of a life without complexity. Some semblance of living. Something resembling human desire.
She walks like a wraith among them, chattering and interested, frail and alive. Gunn pays her scant attention, and Angel is far too enraptured by blondes natural and bleached to pay her any mind. Wesley pays attention, and carefully marks the time.
II
Steady as a metronome, dependable as moonrise. In the darkest hours she wakes from dreamless sleep and swims into consciousness, hungry and wanting; swollen and aching and desperate for release.
If Angel set store in clocks he could set them by Fred’s nocturnal habits. He waits to hear her stir in the next room, breathes in the intoxicating scent of rising blood and arousal that seeps past lath and plaster to reach him, to curl around his senses. He sees her clearly, as if through a windowpane, and knows instinctively if she is on her back, on her belly, on the bed, against the bureau, or in the chair. Squatting. Sitting. Standing. Bent over the windowsill.
On this night, she is at the wall that adjoins their rooms. Supported by brow and palm against green painted walls defaced by vermillion ink, slick fingers trace equations and algorithms and postulations as if her own juice could lend them power.
Some nights she simply chants his name until the rush of orgasm silences her. On others, she croons rambling tales of monsters and caves and saviors until she falls off the edge of consciousness into release.
The story she whispers on this night does more than spark his own desire; it is enough to move him to rise from his customary seat in the club chair and draw him to the wall, where he rests his brow against the place he knows hers also rests. Flattens his palm to spread against hers, connecting through gypsum, almost a touch. Resists the urge to stroke himself in time to her breaths, preferring, for the moment, just to listen.
“Having this room next to you is safe because I don’t bleed anymore, you know. Not that there’s anything wrong with me but a touch of secondary amenorrhea brought on by five years of stress and starvation and the resulting hormonal irregularity, which I suspect will right itself over time. It’s been months since I’ve been here and I thought it’d be back any day now, but it’s taking its time. Not that it matters, except that I’d want you to take me then, take me when I’m bleeding because it would be safe for you and you wouldn’t have to bite me or turn me or anything you’d feel bad about after.
“You could drink me dry and it would be our secret. I think about you putting your tongue on me all the time, licking me silly and shivery and eating me until I just die. But the blood would make it so much nicer for you, don’t you think?”
III
Days pass, and leather-bound books conceal Wesley’s carefully planned agenda: to stay as close to Fred as possible. She becomes a lifeline to him, more than the twisted clothesline of his childhood or the dream of skilled hands controlling his last breath. Safe and secure in the knowledge that he alone desires her, he works long into the darkness and contents himself by knowing that he stands sentinel while she sleeps.
Turning pages echo in the silence as Wesley waits for Angel to return from his customary nighttime prowls. Maybe it’s the comforting quiet, or maybe the sheer size of the empty hotel that emboldens him, but he finds himself climbing the stairs and turning down the hallway toward her room.
Silent footfalls betray nothing as he approaches her door. Presses cheek to plank and listens for the catch of her breath, for the whisper of cotton on flesh as sheets slip and twist around her hips.
Fevered whispers barely reach him, and he struggles to thread together their meaning.
“..knew it in Pylea … you there … let you … put your mouth … apotheosis... you would understand …”
He knows she is moving around the room, hears the slap of her bare feet against carpet and sheets of paper and the detritus of a complex mind. Listens as her voice fades away from him, unintelligible, strains to make sense, and fails.
The door to the adjoining room is open, and hours remain before dawn.
He slips undetected through Angel’s door, and maps Fred’s whispers against the wall like tracks, stopping when her words become barely clear enough to decipher. Slips his glasses from his eyes and puts them in his pocket, all the better to get close to the voice on the other side.
“…that’s not irony, though. It’s coincidence. But it’s a good coincidence though. There’s not enough to call you to me yet, but give it time and there might be. Well, or there’ll be more anyway…”
Chilled fingers grip Wesley’s neck and twist his face into the wall. A wide, hard knee spreads his thighs, pinning him, jolting him into the reflexive red blood flash of fear-induced desire.
“Is this what you want, Wesley?” Tiny flecks of spittle, chilled and surreal, stipple his cheek. That, and the sound of Angel’s voice is enough to send a wild pulse through him, and he shivers from cock to crown.
Finds his voice, but it sounds hollow and foreign to his ears.
“Angel…I…thought you…”
He expects Angel to slam his face against the wall, but instead feels eight stone against his back as Angel presses his full weight against him and brings his knee up closer, harder.
“Is this what you want? To hear the things she tells me? What she wants, how she wants it? How…much she wants it?”
“No… Angel...I thought I heard Fred call out and…”
No, mother, I didn’t realize it was your favorite. I was just trying to refine the steering on the sled.
A bloodless thumb presses against his left carotid artery; exsanguinated fingertips drive into his right, sending kaleidoscopes of light swirling before his eyes. Blood rushes to his head as his breaths become shallow, and Fred’s hushed intimations are rendered to white noise in his head.
“Is this what you want?”
Belts and ropes and pulleys and nylon stockings and cock rings and scarves and father’s ties and just enough slack…
Soothed by anoxia’s hymn, Wesley shudders and waits for the last wave of blackness to consume him, release him. Make his dream come true.
As if struck by lightning, or by terror, or by something far more hideous and deadly, Angel releases his grip on his neck and reels away.
“Go home, Wes,” he tells him. “Just go the fuck home.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-30 10:46 pm (UTC)That was hot.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-30 10:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-30 11:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 01:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 03:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 01:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 03:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 01:22 pm (UTC)*dances with wild joy*
*collapses at your feet*
*springs up to declare:*
YES! I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that your Princess of Paralellograms has informed every single line of Fred I've ever written. Fred would never give up on the dream of having Angel -- she knew she had him when he followed her bloody fist back to that cave. Fred tasering someone or plotting murder may have surprised Gunn or Wes, but it never would've surprised Angel. I've always thought there was an amazingly dark and interesting relationship there, and never understood why it got passed over.
The original scene at the wall between A/F in this was far more explicit and evocative of that relationship, but because it was a manathon I had to refocus to meet the request -- but god, was I ever all about Fred and Angel here. And yes, yes, yes on Wesley -- he would have to choose futile, lethal, and soul crushing sexual expression -- the idea that he couldn't come without both A/Au fascinates me for exactly the reason you state here.
Knowing you have that AU in your head gives me an enormous happy. Like, huge. *worships at your feet*
(Reply to this)(Parent)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 01:38 pm (UTC)Man, I just remembered that I promised to do the Bakery!Slash wedding. That's all right, though. All my WiPs that have "!" are just for fun, as is S Curve. It's good for me to have one to concentrate on, like "Crazy Diamonds" this past week. This will have to count as your birthday fic of 2006.
:looks for Fred icon:
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 06:22 pm (UTC)And oh, my! Your A/F...that's one hell of a 50th BD prezzie! Yes!!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 05:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 06:24 pm (UTC)While there, also read the Vamp!Mulder Ats/X-Files crossover -- some fine, fine Fred in there as well.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 09:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-02 03:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 06:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-12 11:38 pm (UTC)"Holy crap" is not the feedback that deserves...but holy crap! I'm so behind and playing catch up, but that was incredible. Angel and Wesley both hiding so much, but Angel having to know and bear both...fantastic.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-13 12:03 am (UTC)Hey! Have an exclaimation point! Or two!!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-17 07:08 pm (UTC)Love the A/F wall scene best. Your Fred voice was dead on and it was creepy and so sad and actually kinda sweet (But the blood would make it so much nicer for you KILLED me), so Fred. Poor Angel.
Also loved the flashbacks to Wesley's past/fantasies, especially this: No, mother, I didn’t realize it was your favorite. It works on SO many levels; Angel horning in on Wes's obsession with Fred parallels his mother almost catching him, but Fred does too, Fred could be the mother in this instance, the innocent bystander outside Wes's sick fantasy. Uh, if that makes any sense. And Wes voyeuring at the wall was creepy. I expect that sort of thing out of Angel, but it's always shiver-inducing with Wes.
And again, poor Angel. So exhausting to have to understand and feel and smell everyone's wants and desires. I love love loved that line in Soulless when Angel talks to Fred and Gunn about hearing them get it on; until then I'd never really thought about that, the suffocation of his super senses.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-17 09:41 pm (UTC)I can't tell you how excited your feedback makes me. Thank you! I just adore writing Fred and Angel, and always wrestle with the untold stories between them.
And yes, on Fred as mother figure to Wes, because as with most fetishes, the thrill is the danger of being caught. If you get caught axphyxiating yourself most of the time it means you're dead, and because it's a behavior that often starts in the teen years, the parents and siblings are the ones who find the bodies and deal with the resuliting trauma.
I also think part of the attraction Wes has to Fred is that sense of sibling safety. I never bought them as lovers in the sexual sense (Gunn/Fred made better sense to me, as does Angel/Fred, on some levels, as tender as their parting scenes were) Fred was safe, familiar and sisterly. And having sex with her would be like breaking an incest-like taboo which...er...I'm confident Wes would have no trouble breaking, by the way :)
Again, thanks for the thoughtful feedback. I could talk about this story and these ships for days!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 01:21 am (UTC)Apparently so is Bones.
I also think part of the attraction Wes has to Fred is that sense of sibling safety. I never bought them as lovers in the sexual sense (Gunn/Fred made better sense to me,
Me too. I thought I would enjoy Wes/Fred when I was spoiled for it, and I did in S3 when Wes was all lonely and longing silently, but then she got with Gunn, I loved it, and didn't actually see much between Wes/Fred.
But your explanation here is like a revelation--so, so so freakin' good and illuminating and thank you. Because although I think Wes loved and cared for and wanted Fred from the get-go, I think he could've lost her gracefully and gotten over it had he not tried to take Connor and lost his friends. I don't know, sure, there was that darkness is Wesley before, the resentment of Gunn was there before, but after Connor Fred seemed to become much more of an obsession for Wesley, much more an object of resentment, much more than just a woman he could've loved. I don't know, sometimes the way he acted later on it was as if Fred represented everything he'd ever wanted in life and he just never got.
But what I love about that is how it's been pointed out that there are so many Fred,Connor parallels. No, Wesley stealing Connor does not = Wesley stealing Fred, but I like the way that parallels. But also, through that action, Wesley loses Angel, who imo is like a center of Wes's familial love but also dirty!bad!wrong sexual desire. So that instead of on Angel he focuses his obsession on Fred, which feels more right to him but also possibly because it's more wrong, because he actually desires Fred in more of a familial way than a sexual way. Whoa. I don't know if that made any sense to you just now, but whoa.
And I CANNOT believe that in the initial reaction to this fic I didn't process the idea that Angel tried to smother Wesley. And that Angel also felt the need to distinguish himself from his soulless self when he did it. Like I said, there's a whole lot going on here and I love the way so much of it is packed in so subtely. I have some issues with Fred; I liked her on the show but never felt strongly about her, and was growing less and less interested in her as I played more in fandom. But I love the way she fits with people, plays a part in so many ways. It makes me more interested in her and feel sorta bad for neglecting her.
Thanks again for the insights and sorry for rambling in your journal.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 02:05 am (UTC)...the way he acted later on it was as if Fred represented everything he'd ever wanted in life and he just never got.
That is so clear to me now! Fred is all of that goodness and *rightness* that Wesley strives to have -- which beings us slam bang back to Billy and his belief that whatever misogyny he may have expressed under Billy's influence was not a product of his environment, but an inescapable part of him. Remember that discussion in the commentary with Minear & Bell? Well, I think Angel represents the kind of person who thinks misogyny is an imposed contrsuct, and Wes represents the kind who believe it's an inherently male characteristic. (Did they say that, because I'm feeling like I just realized that this second. *shrugs*)
...through that action, Wesley loses Angel, who imo is like a center of Wes's familial love but also dirty!bad!wrong sexual desire. *lightbulb* which is why Wes lets Angel drink from him in Deep Down! I always thought that was purely sexual (dirty minded that I am) but it's also deeply familial. In giving Angel his blood, he's trying to reestablish that broken tie. Still, that scene is one of the most intimate in all of AtS for me -- right up there with the B/A "drink me" scene.
So much to talk about with that Wes/Angel/Fred circle...and I'm knocked out that this piece sparks this kind of discussion. BTW, I've decided that my
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 06:12 am (UTC)I need to rewatch Billy, and I've never seen the commentary (I haven't seen most of them; I'm saving them up. No, really!), so it's possible I'm missing what you're saying. But I could see Wes working as a bit of a misandrist, now that we're talking about it (men=misogynists and are dirty and animal and awful). What I like about that is that Wes would feel that Angel, because Angel is inhuman, is beyond that--because I think Wes truly worships Angel at first, sees Angel as a hero. And then stuff happens and he realizes Angel is actually just a man after all. (Actually just a father, a concept Wes has trouble with anyway.)
And yeah, I always read the drinking in Deep Down as familial: blood to blood; Wesley stole Angel's blood (Connor) and then gives it back (and more than just literally. When Wesley took Connor, he also took away Angel's best friend, Wesley himself, so Wesley reviving Angel is giving himself back to Angel). I ended a fic with that once. What's funny was when I wrote it I didn't read Angel and Wesley as very slashy (hey, I was pretty new!), and I kept trying to write Wes feeding Angel as something familial, and then there were all those sexual vibes. So I left it pretty ambiguous--which it is.
I love how in this fic Wes needs to fantasize Angel both asphyxiating him and and drinking from him, because Angel ends up doing both those things, and they work as little bookends to Wesley taking Connor: he's punished (asphyxiation) and then forgiven (blood-letting), so the way you've written it it's like Wesley needs both to get off. Which I think is a really interesting insight into the character.
I'm so glad you're going to do more on this piece! I think you've really hit on something insightful here that's making me think about things in new ways. Thanks again.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-21 02:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 07:01 am (UTC)speechless, here.... and still breathing...... [in, out; in, out....]
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-08 01:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-14 07:12 am (UTC)This is...[fans self.]... well.... :-)