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keelywolfeTitle: Strawberry Fields, 1/?
Author: Keelywolfe
Series: Angel
Pairing: Angel/Doyle
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: So not mine. Not even vaguelly mine. (Gee, it's only taken me what, four years to write Angel and Doyle? Not dating myself or anything.) Apologies to the Beatles from whom I stole the title.
Summary: Set after Bachelor's Party, with the slight AU of Doyle not getting the 'Save Buffy at Thanksgiving' vibe yet.
Nothing is real
and nothing to get hungabout
Strawberry fields forever
From the middle of the crumpled bed, he tried not to whimper.
There was no pain, not yet, but it was coming. He could tell by now, the first bare thread of it unraveling, leaving a trail of coming agony. A bottle was clutched loosely in his hands at an awkward angle, a thin trickle of amber liquid spilling from it and soaking through the sheets.
He didn't care, couldn't really because everything was wound into that single thread of pain and he had to stifle tears, detested weeping and the pain but almost worse was knowing what came with it.
The vision. Pain, yes, oh yes, there was no mistaking the pain but it was the vision that kept him here in his ruined bed, staring into darkness that wasn't as dark since life had taken a turn at twenty-one.
"Please, no more," Doyle whispered, his voice crackling with dryness. "Please. I can't—" It was still coming, pitiless and emerald hard. He buried his face in his arms, too tired to even plead. It couldn't have lasted longer than half a minute, blurred images raking through his brain and he choked out a rasping scream, the bottle rolling free and clattering to the floor in a wash of spilled alcohol.
The images stopped long before the pain and it was several minutes before he finally managed to shift back up, wiping at his damp cheeks with back of his hand. Leaning against the wall, he rested his head against it and willed the throbbing to ease.
It was not going to happen again. He believed it with all the desperate, clutching hope of those who visited the healing waters in Lourdes. He had no choice but to believe. Until the thread began to unravel again and all he could do was wait. And scream.
"So, before I even had time to go in for the second audition, they'd already signed Pamela Anderson up for the role, I mean, can you believe that?" Cordelia slouched down in her chair with a scowl, fiddling with an ink pen. "She's got more plastic in her than a Tupperware party."
With only the barest idea of who Pamela Anderson was, Angel gave her a blank look which he hoped would make her give up on explaining the loss of her last audition. Sometimes it worked, and she would give him a lovely look of silent disgust before going to do things like file paperwork or even type. But today was not his day for wishes to be granted. Cordelia, oblivious to all but her lost chance, stabbed a manicured nail in his direction.
"Exactly! How could they pick her?" Cordelia gestured at herself, her designer clothes carefully made to cling in all the right places, her shoes which probably cost half of what Angel paid in her a month. "Do you think Pamela Anderson is prettier than me?" she asked seriously.
Angel was saved from having to answer by Doyle coming in. Calling his look 'worse for wear' would really be giving it too much credit. His clothing was the kind of rumpled that declared firmly they'd been slept in, possibly more than once. Eyes red-rimmed and he was a shade of pale that would have made most vampires look healthy. All of it told a long story about a doomed love for alcohol and the leftover bastard child called hangover, but Angel looked back down at his magazine and said nothing. Doyle's proclivity for drinking was nothing Angel could stop and so long as he kept out of trouble, it was none of his business.
Tact and Cordelia, however, had never even met much less shared a handshake. "Gee, Doyle, looking a little rough around the edges there, don't you think?"
Doyle had stumbled over to the coffee machine and had poured a cup of dubious, dark liquid that might possibly even have been coffee the day before. He tossed the cup back with barely a grimace and poured another, leaning against the counter in a way that suggested he actually needed the support. "Yeah," he mumbled, sipping his second cup more sedately. Angel hoped Cordelia was at least capable of calling 911. One more cup of that coffee and he was afraid Doyle would go into a coma. "Think I'm coming down with a touch of the flu."
"Must be that vicious Jack Daniels strain that's going around," Cordelia said sweetly, slapping her notepad down on Angel's desk with more force than was strictly necessary. As expected, Doyle flinched from the noise, actually wobbling before steadying himself.
"Cordelia," Angel warned softly, but Doyle cut him off.
He pressed a hand to his heart in mock pain. "You wound me, princess," Doyle said quietly, but some hint of sincerity in his tone seemed to mollify Cordelia. She picked up her notepad and flipped through the pages of neat writing. "All right, just the basics here today. One girl being stalked by her boyfriend, luckily of the normal, human variety that gives us so much joy. However he will be in jail until tomorrow morning so that leaves us with..." She flipped to the next page, chewing fiercely on the end of her ink pen. "Aha! One Mr. Tobias, who is evicting a group of Chokya demons from his apartment complex and wants us to help to make sure it goes smoothly."
"An eviction?" Doyle took the notebook and squinted blearily at the writing before giving up and tossing it back on the desk. "No offense, but we're supposed to be investigators. When you know where the people are, there's not much investigating to be done. May as well play Clue by yourself. Since when are we hired muscle?"
Angel looked at Cordelia sourly. "Since he was here before I got up this morning and Cordelia took the job before I could say no."
"It's a perfectly legitimate job," she declared, standing and retrieving her notebook. "And unless the Sundance Kid has a vision today, your schedule isn't exactly overflowing."
Was it his imagination or did Doyle go distinctly pale at the thought of a vision? Not that Angel blamed him; a vision on top of a hangover had to be distinctly unpleasant.
"All right," Angel agreed heavily. "Let's just get this over with." He pulled his coat on before laying a steadying hand on Doyle's shoulder. "You coming?" he offered, giving him the option of bowing out gracefully.
To his surprise, Doyle nodded an agreement. "Yeah, I'm with you. Wanna go through the sewers or in the trunk of the car?"
As unpleasant as the sewers were, it wasn't a long walk and there hadn't been a trunk created that Angel found to be living anywhere near the word comfortable. "Sewers," he decided and Doyle shrugged, tossing back the rest of his coffee before following him downstairs.
Halfway down, and out of Cordelia's earshot, Angel finally asked, hesitantly, "Are you all right?"
"'M fine, why?" Doyle answered distractedly, his eyes on the stairs.
"It's just, you smell—" Doyle stopped and gave him a vaguely horrified look.
"I smell?" Angel watched with some bemusement as Doyle lifted an arm and took a cautious sniff.
"No, I'm not commenting on your personal hygiene," he paused, frowning at the tousled state of Doyle's hair and decided to let it go. "I mean, you smell strange."
"Strange?" Doyle repeated, bewildered. "Strange how?"
Angel gave him an exasperated look. "If I knew how it was strange, then it wouldn't exactly be strange, now would it."
"I guess not," Doyle replied dubiously. He pulled up the front of his shirt and gave it a sniff. "Maybe I'm using a new laundry detergent, eh?"
It wasn't worth pointing out that he would have known if the smell was soap. It wasn't unpleasant, precisely, but it wasn't something he normally smelled on Doyle. It made him want to lean in and inhale it deeply, taste it to see exactly what that strangeness was. But that would be a serious infringement of personal space and while Doyle was a fairly laidback guy, there were limits. Being sniffed by a vampire probably rated up there.
Instead, Angel held the trapdoor open for Doyle and followed him down silently.
"What the hell is a Chokya demon, anyway?"
The second night he gave up on the whiskey. With the first vision still trembling in the back of his mind, hanging there behind his eyes, he staggered out of his apartment to a bar he knew downtown. The air was heavy with smoke too thick to be simply nicotine that stung his aching eyes but it was easy to find what he was looking for.
Easy to let the other man take him around back and press him against a rough brick wall, his mouth tasting of the liquor Doyle hadn't drank that night. Strong, taller than him, but only human, and Doyle gasped when he bit lightly at the curve of his neck and knew he couldn't do it. Mumbled apologies and a dim struggle later left him laying on the concrete, the taste of blood sharp and bitter in his mouth, too stunned to reply to the wash of insults that were both vicious and true, fucking little cocktease that he seemed to be.
He tested the cut on his lip with the tip of his tongue, slick blood dribbling down his chin, and it was so against any gay stereotype he'd ever heard that Doyle laughed, choking on the sound as it made pain flare in his head.
The man was still standing there, blood griming his fist and Doyle flinched, expecting another blow, perhaps a real beating to round out the evening. But the blow came from within, no faint wave of warning before he was dropped into true pain and he saw.
It barely eased when the images halted and he could feel gravel in his hair, stuck to the back of his coat. The other man was gone. Too drained for humiliation or shame, for anything but the heavy throb of pain that nothing could reach, Doyle curled up on the ground amidst cigarette butts and broken glass and cried, digging his fingers into his scalp as though to tear the pain away with his bare hands.
No one spoke to him.
"What's going on?" Angel asked. He pressed a cool cloth into Doyle's hand and he accepted it wordlessly, draping it over his forehead.
"Told you, I was coming down with the flu," he muttered, eyes hidden beneath terrycloth.
"You have a cut on your lip," Angel said mildly. "Was that the flu too?"
"Cut myself shaving."
It was so ridiculous that Angel had to resist the urge to shake him and had to cross his arms over his chest. "I haven't shaved for a long time, but even I know you don't generally shave your lips."
"You do if you slip." Doyle sat up with a sigh, scrubbing his face with the washcloth. "Angel, I promise, I'm just a little under the weather." At Angel's skeptical look, he added, "Didn't I come to you the last time I was having trouble?"
"After I cornered you and forced you to tell me."
"Yeah, and I'm cornered right now and I'm telling you, it's all right."
Angel didn't believe him, the sincerity in Doyle's eyes too artful and pleading to be real. It stung him deeply and he turned away, letting Doyle keep his lies for the moment. Sooner or later he'd confess, and when he did, Angel would be there to help.
He only hoped it would be before Doyle was really in trouble.
The third night he went to a different bar, flashier and brighter, and the noise dug into his already aching head like claws. He never felt his humanity so strongly as when he was surrounded by demons, their faces as strange and horrifying to him as the one he saw occasionally in the mirror and it reminded him too much of the first moments of blinding terror. Always, always, he remembered it, frozen horror where no skittering thought could break through his panic and he'd thought himself damned.
He'd only been half right.
Crept onto the stage and sang the only song he could think of, something by Prince or whatever the hell his name was or wasn't now, his voice cracking ridiculously on the high notes. He'd expected laughter or even cruelty, standing beneath the spotlight with sweat creeping down his face. He'd never expected the silence, looming over him like pity and he'd stopped halfway through the song, stumbling down the stairs.
Gentle hands caught him, red eyes in a green face filled with that same pity and Doyle hadn't waited to hear the truth, knew exactly what the demon would have told him. He'd seen it every hour of the night, the blurry fast-forward of images he'd been avoiding for days.
He knew exactly where he was supposed to go.
The problem with living in a place that had a door was that, inevitably, people knocked on it. Or pounded on it in the middle of the night, as the case may be.
Still shaking off sleep, Angel padded over in bare feet to open it. If it was Cordelia, he swore that someone had better be dead and not someone of the cockroach persuasion. He'd had to have the exterminator in twice since that week she'd stayed here. Was it part of his penance that he could never get a straight eight hours of sleep? Righteousness could be a cruel master.
"All right, all right," he muttered, pulling open the door. Only to stumble back as Doyle fell inward. Angel caught him automatically, nearly sending them both to the floor. He caught his balance, dragging Doyle back up with him. His head lolled back, his open eyes the only sign that he wasn't unconscious.
"Doyle?" Green eyes rolled towards him and then away and in his panic, Angel shook him harder than was strictly necessary, dragged a pained moan from the limp man in his arms.
"Doyle? What happened? Are you hurt?" Angel asked. He moved them over to the sofa and settled Doyle on it, searching with careful fingers for any injuries. Someone had attacked him, over another debt perhaps? He found no broken bones or obvious bruises and Doyle was batting him away before he could check again. The smell of whiskey was strong around him, his eyes lined with red. He looked like hell, and that was saying something from someone who'd seen it firsthand.
"What happened?" Angel asked again, slowly. It wasn't like Doyle to come over for something as simple as being drunk; otherwise he expected he'd have seen the man a lot more often. After a brief morning check in, he'd been conspicuously absent at the office the day before but that was hardly unusual; Doyle didn't exactly get paid by the hour.
Doyle managed to push up into a sitting position, wincing and trembling visible. "I—I can't…" he rasped out. He struggled to say something else, his voice vanishing into a cough and Angel started to ask if he needed a drink, some water or even another glass of whiskey.
He moved surprisingly fast for someone who looked like they'd been a couple rounds with a Chevy truck. One moment he was on the sofa, shaking and sick and the next he was over Angel, pressing their mouths together in a sloppy kiss. Angel snatched him away, and was forced to catch Doyle again by the arms as he sagged to the floor. He was sobbing, curling around Angel's grip to rest his head on the vampire's shoulder. "I can't do this. I can't—"
"What happened?" Angel punctuated it with a gentle shake, trying to get him at least talking. They could worry about all this making sense later.
But Doyle hadn't stopped, grating out harsh, nonsensical things, "--I can't, they can't expect me to do this, I'm trying me best and I—" He cut off abruptly, Doyle's eyes rolling back as he started convulsing and at least this was something familiar, holding Doyle and soothing him until the vision passed.
Sweat made Doyle's clothes stick to him damply; Angel could feel it through the back of his shirt as he cradled Doyle in his lap. Glazed green eyes drifted up to him, awash with tears. "Talk to me," Angel urged, patting away the sweat on Doyle's forehead with the sleeve of his robe. "Tell me what you saw."
The laughter was unexpected, shrill and pained. Doyle tried to push away and sit up before surrendering with a soft moan and sliding back down. "What did I see?" he said, shaking his head and the laughter held a bitter edge, closer to hysteria. "S'what I always see, isn't it? Us. I keep seeing us."
"Us," Angel repeated, trying to make sense of it.
"Us," Doyle agreed, fresh tears on his cheeks and his nose was running. He wiped it with the back of his arm, making Angel wrinkle his own nose in disgust. "I see us—" He broke off with a gesture, crudely poking the finger of one hand into the loosely cupped palm of the other and Angel started, because that was pretty unmistakable.
"Oh. Us," Weakly. Angel had a sudden wish that he had gotten the bottle of whiskey in the back of his cupboard because this was not turning out to be a normal evening, even for them. If the Powers That Be had designs on his virtue, they usually went the other way. "So you had a vision about us having sex, got drunk and came over here to do the deed?" Angel asked disbelievingly.
Doyle laughed harshly. "A vision? A vision." As Angel watched helplessly, his laughter seeped back into tears. "More like a baker's dozen, every night. They get worse every time. About every fucking half an hour, like clockwork. You could bake a cake by following it."
Dozens of visions, with all the pain that came packaged with them. Angel couldn't think of words to express his horror. It was a miracle Doyle had waited as long as he had to come here, even more that he had actually made it.
"I couldn't take it anymore," Doyle continued, his words slurring into each other. He was moving now, as loose-limbed and awkward as a newborn calf as he crawled into Angel's lap, straddling him. Angel simply let him, his hands fluttering nervously, wanting to stop Doyle, not wanting to hurt him any more.
"I can't take it," Doyle said, simply. His face was so close to Angel's it made his eyes try to cross, blurring it into something strange. Angel caught him by the shoulders, holding him away when Doyle would have moved closer.
"How do you know this will make them stop?" Angel asked, his own voice rough to his ears. Doyle was sitting on him and moving, resisting Angel's efforts to keep him still and it was more distracting than Angel wanted to admit. Doyle would hardly have been in preference for a bed companion if he'd been given a choice, but he hadn't, and the half-demon wasn't exactly unattractive by any standards.
"Isn't that what we do?" Doyle smiled thinly, tilting his head so he could rub his cheek against Angel's restraining arm. It was so deliberately seductive, calculated, that it shamed him at how it made him hard. How was it he could be so casually sexy here and fumble it daily with Cordelia? "We follow the visions like good little pups, we do what we're told and we save the day. We help the hopeless, don't we?"
They did, and Doyle was smiling, his teeth digging lightly into his lower lip and he had to know what that did to Angel's demon. Doyle tried to lean in again, stopped by Angel's grip on his shoulders. He strained against it, not even flinching as Angel tightened it painfully.
"I can't do this, Doyle, you know I can't."
"Do you honestly believe you're going to find any perfect happiness in fucking me like this?" Doyle said, and the coldness in his usually easy voice made Angel close his eyes briefly, wondering how much pain it took to make his friend like this. He opened them again to see Doyle wetting his lips, slowly, deliberately. "Help me."
He would have been able to resist a seduction but Angel couldn't resist his pain, the hot shine of it in his eyes. Doyle was surprisingly light in his arms as he carried him to the bed. Doyle didn't wait, briskly stripping off his shirt and unbuckling his pants the moment Angel released him.
Angel mimicked him, slower, stripping off his robe to leave him just in boxers. Suddenly, this all seemed very awkward and he had to fight the ridiculous urge to put the robe back on. With his goal achieved, Doyle had lost all his seductiveness and was rummaging in the night table by Angel's bed.
"D'you have anything to make this easier, like?" Doyle's voice was muffled as he leaned over further, nearly falling off the bed as he looked under it.
"Easier?" Angel repeated blankly.
Doyle flashed him an exasperated look. "Lubricant?"
Flustered, because there was only one reason he would have any use for lubricant, Angel dug a small tube out of the back of the drawer. Doyle didn't bat an eye at the fact it was half-empty though Angel squirmed inwardly. A quarter of a millennium old and he was still embarrassed to have proof that he masturbated.
Doyle's eyes were shadowed now, lowered, and his brisk manner faltered. "You're gonna have to—"
"I know," Angel interrupted hastily, making no move to get on the bed. He shifted from foot to foot, feeling absurdly naked and practically virginal. It had been a long time since he'd had sex with anyone, over a century since he'd done it with a man and even then, he hadn't had any preferences for men. Women were softer, sweeter, and in abundance. There had been no reason to have men, other than the occasional drunken foray and being Angelus hadn't really made it a gentle experience, just mindless fucking with bloodslicked skin and mouths.
Still, his few experiences had left him with the knowledge of what to do. It was a shame that it didn't make him feel any better about doing it.
"Right," Doyle pushed his opened pants down and off, leaving Angel with a brief glimpse of nudity before he drew his legs up. If anything, Doyle suddenly looked even more awkward than Angel felt. "Um, how do you," Doyle's voice cracked and he settled for a weak gesture. "Want me?"
The sudden surge of relief nearly made him weak at the knees and even that made him ashamed. Doyle had apparently already decided that he was going to be the one on the bottom, not that Angel would have told him no, but...if that was how the vision wanted it to be Angel wasn't about to argue the point. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Doyle to roll over onto his knees so he wouldn't have to look in his eyes. Certainly he doubted Doyle would protest that. But the way he was still trembling, the shade of pain still behind his eyes, made Angel rethink it. Facing each other wasn't going to be better but it would probably be a little easier for Doyle to lay there and—
They were really going to do this. "Why would the Powers want us to have sex?" he blurted. He had a sudden image of a group of omnipotent beings hovering in their little cloud-dome, waiting for their hero to give them some homemade porn. Just when he thought his life had reached the borders of strangeness, it always pushed on through and found another continent of bizarre waiting to be discovered.
"I don't know and I don't fucking well care!" Doyle was shaking again, his eyes squeezed shut. Angel wondered if he was fighting tears. It was worse to see him like this; skinny and naked, arms wrapped around his knees as he shook. "I'll be having another one soon, Angel, please."
He didn't wait for Doyle to beg. Sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed, Angel took the lube from Doyle before guiding him down to lie on his back. He went willingly, allowing Angel to maneuver him into a comfortable position. His normally deft fingers fumbled with the cap on the tube and Angel realized he was shaking, too. The last time he'd had sex with a soul, he'd awoken to agony and loss, and the things his soulless counterpart had done still haunted his nightmares. Let this be right, he begged silently. It had to be right, it was a vision, and Doyle's visions had yet to lie to them.
He touched Doyle with slick fingers, automatically petting his hair with his free hand as Doyle made a soft sound of discomfort. Angel wondered if Doyle had done this before, didn't have the nerve to ask. If not, he learned quickly enough, spreading his legs further and letting Angel push his fingers in deeply. God, hot and silky soft but he barely had time to register it before Doyle was speaking. "Please, quick," Doyle urged thickly, "Before another one comes, please, please…"
Angel slipped his shorts down and off, and had to fight a rush of hysteria as he realized he wasn't hard enough to do it. Kneeling over his shaking, nearly crying friend wasn't exactly his usual jerk off material. Falteringly, Angel took himself in hand and stroked, trying to think of something, anything, to help matters along. True to his luck, his mind went completely blank without even an old Playboy centerfold lurking in a corner to peek out at him.
He nearly fell off the bed in shock when cool, wet fingers wrapped around him, touching him. Doyle had large hands, strong and oily with lubricant and Angel arched into them without thinking, sucking in a sharp, unneeded breath as they squeezed. One thumb circling the head of his cock in a slippery little movement that had him gritting his teeth before they pulled away, sliding down to the comforter beneath them.
With damp, trembling hands he caught Doyle's hips and lifted, folding one leg over his shoulder. It had been years, years upon years, but his body knew what to do, pressing forward, the head of his cock against stubborn muscles that refused to give. A brief flash memory of Buffy but even she hadn't been this tight, excruciatingly hot against his much cooler flesh. Doyle had a double handful of the blanket clenched in his fists and he was staring glassily over Angel's shoulder. "Don't stop," he whispered, his eyes fixed.
He was hurting him, had to be but it was too late, the pressure, the impossible heat was calling to him as much as the thrum of Doyle's blood and Angel pushed forward hard, felt the tightness give as he barely slid inside. The sound Doyle made was like a siren call to his demon, the softest cry of pain, and it made him push, forging past any resistance. He couldn't wait, pulling back and shoving in again, hard enough that the bed groaned a protest and God, so impossibly tight, clenching around his cock like a brutal fist.
The skin beneath his hands was slippery with sweat and Angel dug his nails in automatically, holding Doyle still, pale skin beneath his palms and he itched to bring a flush of color to it. Deep redness drawn to the surface, purpling into sweet bruises and how lovely would it look. Doyle was lovely in this shaded light, dim and soft, touching the glistening dampness on his face and...Angel froze, shuddering, trying not to feel the cold heat of his inner demon, trying to keep still even as he hated himself for not being able to stop.
Doyle was crying, his face pinched tight as tears tracked down his cheeks. As he watched, they slid down into his hair and vanished, leaving salty lines of moisture as an accusation.
"Shh," Angel tried to soothe, shifting forward and stilling again as Doyle flinched. Guilt was like a noose, strangling him, and Angel could only whisper, "I'm sorry."
Green eyes flashed open. "Don't stop," Doyle whimpered. "You have to finish, you have to, it'll start again—" His voice rose, choked with hysteria, and he started moving, struggling against Angel's still body and sending brutal flashes of pleasure into the base of his spine, layer upon layer of heat.
Desperately, Angel rocked his hips, one gentle thrust and Doyle calmed, his white-knuckled grip on the blankets easing. It wasn't enough, not good enough to just comfort him, not when Angel was doing this, using him like this, shame like the taste of ashes in the back of his throat. It made it easier to be gentle, easing the awkward curl of Doyle's legs over his arms as he pushed back inside. He heard Doyle take a breath and that sound wasn't pain, not at all.
"Wait—" Doyle gasped, "Wait, I—" He couldn't, not with so many years crowding in, his demon howling in the back of his mind. Angel fumbled a hand free, sliding it down the wet skin of Doyle's belly and found him hard, blisteringly hot against Angel's cold palm but it warmed with the friction. Doyle was grabbing at his arms, a wild, keening cry escaping from him as scalding wet heat spurted over Angel's fist. His body clenched so tightly that Angel could feel it in his soul, thrusting mindlessly, needing that final release so damned much that when it came he gave a startled cry, draining himself in the willing clasp of Doyle's body.
He collapsed, sagging down onto Doyle until he remembered that one of them needed to breathe and wasn't doing it very well with what was probably double his own weight pushing him into the mattress. Doyle's ragged moan as he pulled out made him flinch, easing off the man to lay beside him.
Dark lashes trembled on Doyle's cheeks over the violet shadows under his eyes. Hesitantly, Angel touched the sweaty mass of his hair and was flooded with relief when Doyle didn't pull away. He wanted to speak but what to say? His etiquette wasn't really up to standard for normal situations and this was a tad beyond his meager skills.
He'd nearly had Doyle's hair straightened when Angel realized he was asleep. Probably closer to unconscious given the state he was in. Angel wondered how long it at been since the half-demon had managed to actually sleep. Days, he'd said earlier. A vision nearly every hour for days.
They were both cooling, Doyle more than Angel with sweat drying his skin to clamminess. Careful not to wake him, Angel managed to pull the comforter over them both. He went completely still when Doyle moved restlessly, shifting to lay closer and it was with cautious hands that Angel pulled him near, willing to take whatever passed for affection from this strange coupling.
He didn't sleep for a long time, but held Doyle as he did, listening to each slow breath, the rhythm between them and his heart.
end chapter 1
Author: Keelywolfe
Series: Angel
Pairing: Angel/Doyle
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: So not mine. Not even vaguelly mine. (Gee, it's only taken me what, four years to write Angel and Doyle? Not dating myself or anything.) Apologies to the Beatles from whom I stole the title.
Summary: Set after Bachelor's Party, with the slight AU of Doyle not getting the 'Save Buffy at Thanksgiving' vibe yet.
~~*~~
Nothing is real
and nothing to get hungabout
Strawberry fields forever
~~*~~
From the middle of the crumpled bed, he tried not to whimper.
There was no pain, not yet, but it was coming. He could tell by now, the first bare thread of it unraveling, leaving a trail of coming agony. A bottle was clutched loosely in his hands at an awkward angle, a thin trickle of amber liquid spilling from it and soaking through the sheets.
He didn't care, couldn't really because everything was wound into that single thread of pain and he had to stifle tears, detested weeping and the pain but almost worse was knowing what came with it.
The vision. Pain, yes, oh yes, there was no mistaking the pain but it was the vision that kept him here in his ruined bed, staring into darkness that wasn't as dark since life had taken a turn at twenty-one.
"Please, no more," Doyle whispered, his voice crackling with dryness. "Please. I can't—" It was still coming, pitiless and emerald hard. He buried his face in his arms, too tired to even plead. It couldn't have lasted longer than half a minute, blurred images raking through his brain and he choked out a rasping scream, the bottle rolling free and clattering to the floor in a wash of spilled alcohol.
The images stopped long before the pain and it was several minutes before he finally managed to shift back up, wiping at his damp cheeks with back of his hand. Leaning against the wall, he rested his head against it and willed the throbbing to ease.
It was not going to happen again. He believed it with all the desperate, clutching hope of those who visited the healing waters in Lourdes. He had no choice but to believe. Until the thread began to unravel again and all he could do was wait. And scream.
~~*~~
"So, before I even had time to go in for the second audition, they'd already signed Pamela Anderson up for the role, I mean, can you believe that?" Cordelia slouched down in her chair with a scowl, fiddling with an ink pen. "She's got more plastic in her than a Tupperware party."
With only the barest idea of who Pamela Anderson was, Angel gave her a blank look which he hoped would make her give up on explaining the loss of her last audition. Sometimes it worked, and she would give him a lovely look of silent disgust before going to do things like file paperwork or even type. But today was not his day for wishes to be granted. Cordelia, oblivious to all but her lost chance, stabbed a manicured nail in his direction.
"Exactly! How could they pick her?" Cordelia gestured at herself, her designer clothes carefully made to cling in all the right places, her shoes which probably cost half of what Angel paid in her a month. "Do you think Pamela Anderson is prettier than me?" she asked seriously.
Angel was saved from having to answer by Doyle coming in. Calling his look 'worse for wear' would really be giving it too much credit. His clothing was the kind of rumpled that declared firmly they'd been slept in, possibly more than once. Eyes red-rimmed and he was a shade of pale that would have made most vampires look healthy. All of it told a long story about a doomed love for alcohol and the leftover bastard child called hangover, but Angel looked back down at his magazine and said nothing. Doyle's proclivity for drinking was nothing Angel could stop and so long as he kept out of trouble, it was none of his business.
Tact and Cordelia, however, had never even met much less shared a handshake. "Gee, Doyle, looking a little rough around the edges there, don't you think?"
Doyle had stumbled over to the coffee machine and had poured a cup of dubious, dark liquid that might possibly even have been coffee the day before. He tossed the cup back with barely a grimace and poured another, leaning against the counter in a way that suggested he actually needed the support. "Yeah," he mumbled, sipping his second cup more sedately. Angel hoped Cordelia was at least capable of calling 911. One more cup of that coffee and he was afraid Doyle would go into a coma. "Think I'm coming down with a touch of the flu."
"Must be that vicious Jack Daniels strain that's going around," Cordelia said sweetly, slapping her notepad down on Angel's desk with more force than was strictly necessary. As expected, Doyle flinched from the noise, actually wobbling before steadying himself.
"Cordelia," Angel warned softly, but Doyle cut him off.
He pressed a hand to his heart in mock pain. "You wound me, princess," Doyle said quietly, but some hint of sincerity in his tone seemed to mollify Cordelia. She picked up her notepad and flipped through the pages of neat writing. "All right, just the basics here today. One girl being stalked by her boyfriend, luckily of the normal, human variety that gives us so much joy. However he will be in jail until tomorrow morning so that leaves us with..." She flipped to the next page, chewing fiercely on the end of her ink pen. "Aha! One Mr. Tobias, who is evicting a group of Chokya demons from his apartment complex and wants us to help to make sure it goes smoothly."
"An eviction?" Doyle took the notebook and squinted blearily at the writing before giving up and tossing it back on the desk. "No offense, but we're supposed to be investigators. When you know where the people are, there's not much investigating to be done. May as well play Clue by yourself. Since when are we hired muscle?"
Angel looked at Cordelia sourly. "Since he was here before I got up this morning and Cordelia took the job before I could say no."
"It's a perfectly legitimate job," she declared, standing and retrieving her notebook. "And unless the Sundance Kid has a vision today, your schedule isn't exactly overflowing."
Was it his imagination or did Doyle go distinctly pale at the thought of a vision? Not that Angel blamed him; a vision on top of a hangover had to be distinctly unpleasant.
"All right," Angel agreed heavily. "Let's just get this over with." He pulled his coat on before laying a steadying hand on Doyle's shoulder. "You coming?" he offered, giving him the option of bowing out gracefully.
To his surprise, Doyle nodded an agreement. "Yeah, I'm with you. Wanna go through the sewers or in the trunk of the car?"
As unpleasant as the sewers were, it wasn't a long walk and there hadn't been a trunk created that Angel found to be living anywhere near the word comfortable. "Sewers," he decided and Doyle shrugged, tossing back the rest of his coffee before following him downstairs.
Halfway down, and out of Cordelia's earshot, Angel finally asked, hesitantly, "Are you all right?"
"'M fine, why?" Doyle answered distractedly, his eyes on the stairs.
"It's just, you smell—" Doyle stopped and gave him a vaguely horrified look.
"I smell?" Angel watched with some bemusement as Doyle lifted an arm and took a cautious sniff.
"No, I'm not commenting on your personal hygiene," he paused, frowning at the tousled state of Doyle's hair and decided to let it go. "I mean, you smell strange."
"Strange?" Doyle repeated, bewildered. "Strange how?"
Angel gave him an exasperated look. "If I knew how it was strange, then it wouldn't exactly be strange, now would it."
"I guess not," Doyle replied dubiously. He pulled up the front of his shirt and gave it a sniff. "Maybe I'm using a new laundry detergent, eh?"
It wasn't worth pointing out that he would have known if the smell was soap. It wasn't unpleasant, precisely, but it wasn't something he normally smelled on Doyle. It made him want to lean in and inhale it deeply, taste it to see exactly what that strangeness was. But that would be a serious infringement of personal space and while Doyle was a fairly laidback guy, there were limits. Being sniffed by a vampire probably rated up there.
Instead, Angel held the trapdoor open for Doyle and followed him down silently.
"What the hell is a Chokya demon, anyway?"
~~*~~
The second night he gave up on the whiskey. With the first vision still trembling in the back of his mind, hanging there behind his eyes, he staggered out of his apartment to a bar he knew downtown. The air was heavy with smoke too thick to be simply nicotine that stung his aching eyes but it was easy to find what he was looking for.
Easy to let the other man take him around back and press him against a rough brick wall, his mouth tasting of the liquor Doyle hadn't drank that night. Strong, taller than him, but only human, and Doyle gasped when he bit lightly at the curve of his neck and knew he couldn't do it. Mumbled apologies and a dim struggle later left him laying on the concrete, the taste of blood sharp and bitter in his mouth, too stunned to reply to the wash of insults that were both vicious and true, fucking little cocktease that he seemed to be.
He tested the cut on his lip with the tip of his tongue, slick blood dribbling down his chin, and it was so against any gay stereotype he'd ever heard that Doyle laughed, choking on the sound as it made pain flare in his head.
The man was still standing there, blood griming his fist and Doyle flinched, expecting another blow, perhaps a real beating to round out the evening. But the blow came from within, no faint wave of warning before he was dropped into true pain and he saw.
It barely eased when the images halted and he could feel gravel in his hair, stuck to the back of his coat. The other man was gone. Too drained for humiliation or shame, for anything but the heavy throb of pain that nothing could reach, Doyle curled up on the ground amidst cigarette butts and broken glass and cried, digging his fingers into his scalp as though to tear the pain away with his bare hands.
No one spoke to him.
~~*~~
"What's going on?" Angel asked. He pressed a cool cloth into Doyle's hand and he accepted it wordlessly, draping it over his forehead.
"Told you, I was coming down with the flu," he muttered, eyes hidden beneath terrycloth.
"You have a cut on your lip," Angel said mildly. "Was that the flu too?"
"Cut myself shaving."
It was so ridiculous that Angel had to resist the urge to shake him and had to cross his arms over his chest. "I haven't shaved for a long time, but even I know you don't generally shave your lips."
"You do if you slip." Doyle sat up with a sigh, scrubbing his face with the washcloth. "Angel, I promise, I'm just a little under the weather." At Angel's skeptical look, he added, "Didn't I come to you the last time I was having trouble?"
"After I cornered you and forced you to tell me."
"Yeah, and I'm cornered right now and I'm telling you, it's all right."
Angel didn't believe him, the sincerity in Doyle's eyes too artful and pleading to be real. It stung him deeply and he turned away, letting Doyle keep his lies for the moment. Sooner or later he'd confess, and when he did, Angel would be there to help.
He only hoped it would be before Doyle was really in trouble.
~~*~~
The third night he went to a different bar, flashier and brighter, and the noise dug into his already aching head like claws. He never felt his humanity so strongly as when he was surrounded by demons, their faces as strange and horrifying to him as the one he saw occasionally in the mirror and it reminded him too much of the first moments of blinding terror. Always, always, he remembered it, frozen horror where no skittering thought could break through his panic and he'd thought himself damned.
He'd only been half right.
Crept onto the stage and sang the only song he could think of, something by Prince or whatever the hell his name was or wasn't now, his voice cracking ridiculously on the high notes. He'd expected laughter or even cruelty, standing beneath the spotlight with sweat creeping down his face. He'd never expected the silence, looming over him like pity and he'd stopped halfway through the song, stumbling down the stairs.
Gentle hands caught him, red eyes in a green face filled with that same pity and Doyle hadn't waited to hear the truth, knew exactly what the demon would have told him. He'd seen it every hour of the night, the blurry fast-forward of images he'd been avoiding for days.
He knew exactly where he was supposed to go.
~~*~~
The problem with living in a place that had a door was that, inevitably, people knocked on it. Or pounded on it in the middle of the night, as the case may be.
Still shaking off sleep, Angel padded over in bare feet to open it. If it was Cordelia, he swore that someone had better be dead and not someone of the cockroach persuasion. He'd had to have the exterminator in twice since that week she'd stayed here. Was it part of his penance that he could never get a straight eight hours of sleep? Righteousness could be a cruel master.
"All right, all right," he muttered, pulling open the door. Only to stumble back as Doyle fell inward. Angel caught him automatically, nearly sending them both to the floor. He caught his balance, dragging Doyle back up with him. His head lolled back, his open eyes the only sign that he wasn't unconscious.
"Doyle?" Green eyes rolled towards him and then away and in his panic, Angel shook him harder than was strictly necessary, dragged a pained moan from the limp man in his arms.
"Doyle? What happened? Are you hurt?" Angel asked. He moved them over to the sofa and settled Doyle on it, searching with careful fingers for any injuries. Someone had attacked him, over another debt perhaps? He found no broken bones or obvious bruises and Doyle was batting him away before he could check again. The smell of whiskey was strong around him, his eyes lined with red. He looked like hell, and that was saying something from someone who'd seen it firsthand.
"What happened?" Angel asked again, slowly. It wasn't like Doyle to come over for something as simple as being drunk; otherwise he expected he'd have seen the man a lot more often. After a brief morning check in, he'd been conspicuously absent at the office the day before but that was hardly unusual; Doyle didn't exactly get paid by the hour.
Doyle managed to push up into a sitting position, wincing and trembling visible. "I—I can't…" he rasped out. He struggled to say something else, his voice vanishing into a cough and Angel started to ask if he needed a drink, some water or even another glass of whiskey.
He moved surprisingly fast for someone who looked like they'd been a couple rounds with a Chevy truck. One moment he was on the sofa, shaking and sick and the next he was over Angel, pressing their mouths together in a sloppy kiss. Angel snatched him away, and was forced to catch Doyle again by the arms as he sagged to the floor. He was sobbing, curling around Angel's grip to rest his head on the vampire's shoulder. "I can't do this. I can't—"
"What happened?" Angel punctuated it with a gentle shake, trying to get him at least talking. They could worry about all this making sense later.
But Doyle hadn't stopped, grating out harsh, nonsensical things, "--I can't, they can't expect me to do this, I'm trying me best and I—" He cut off abruptly, Doyle's eyes rolling back as he started convulsing and at least this was something familiar, holding Doyle and soothing him until the vision passed.
Sweat made Doyle's clothes stick to him damply; Angel could feel it through the back of his shirt as he cradled Doyle in his lap. Glazed green eyes drifted up to him, awash with tears. "Talk to me," Angel urged, patting away the sweat on Doyle's forehead with the sleeve of his robe. "Tell me what you saw."
The laughter was unexpected, shrill and pained. Doyle tried to push away and sit up before surrendering with a soft moan and sliding back down. "What did I see?" he said, shaking his head and the laughter held a bitter edge, closer to hysteria. "S'what I always see, isn't it? Us. I keep seeing us."
"Us," Angel repeated, trying to make sense of it.
"Us," Doyle agreed, fresh tears on his cheeks and his nose was running. He wiped it with the back of his arm, making Angel wrinkle his own nose in disgust. "I see us—" He broke off with a gesture, crudely poking the finger of one hand into the loosely cupped palm of the other and Angel started, because that was pretty unmistakable.
"Oh. Us," Weakly. Angel had a sudden wish that he had gotten the bottle of whiskey in the back of his cupboard because this was not turning out to be a normal evening, even for them. If the Powers That Be had designs on his virtue, they usually went the other way. "So you had a vision about us having sex, got drunk and came over here to do the deed?" Angel asked disbelievingly.
Doyle laughed harshly. "A vision? A vision." As Angel watched helplessly, his laughter seeped back into tears. "More like a baker's dozen, every night. They get worse every time. About every fucking half an hour, like clockwork. You could bake a cake by following it."
Dozens of visions, with all the pain that came packaged with them. Angel couldn't think of words to express his horror. It was a miracle Doyle had waited as long as he had to come here, even more that he had actually made it.
"I couldn't take it anymore," Doyle continued, his words slurring into each other. He was moving now, as loose-limbed and awkward as a newborn calf as he crawled into Angel's lap, straddling him. Angel simply let him, his hands fluttering nervously, wanting to stop Doyle, not wanting to hurt him any more.
"I can't take it," Doyle said, simply. His face was so close to Angel's it made his eyes try to cross, blurring it into something strange. Angel caught him by the shoulders, holding him away when Doyle would have moved closer.
"How do you know this will make them stop?" Angel asked, his own voice rough to his ears. Doyle was sitting on him and moving, resisting Angel's efforts to keep him still and it was more distracting than Angel wanted to admit. Doyle would hardly have been in preference for a bed companion if he'd been given a choice, but he hadn't, and the half-demon wasn't exactly unattractive by any standards.
"Isn't that what we do?" Doyle smiled thinly, tilting his head so he could rub his cheek against Angel's restraining arm. It was so deliberately seductive, calculated, that it shamed him at how it made him hard. How was it he could be so casually sexy here and fumble it daily with Cordelia? "We follow the visions like good little pups, we do what we're told and we save the day. We help the hopeless, don't we?"
They did, and Doyle was smiling, his teeth digging lightly into his lower lip and he had to know what that did to Angel's demon. Doyle tried to lean in again, stopped by Angel's grip on his shoulders. He strained against it, not even flinching as Angel tightened it painfully.
"I can't do this, Doyle, you know I can't."
"Do you honestly believe you're going to find any perfect happiness in fucking me like this?" Doyle said, and the coldness in his usually easy voice made Angel close his eyes briefly, wondering how much pain it took to make his friend like this. He opened them again to see Doyle wetting his lips, slowly, deliberately. "Help me."
He would have been able to resist a seduction but Angel couldn't resist his pain, the hot shine of it in his eyes. Doyle was surprisingly light in his arms as he carried him to the bed. Doyle didn't wait, briskly stripping off his shirt and unbuckling his pants the moment Angel released him.
Angel mimicked him, slower, stripping off his robe to leave him just in boxers. Suddenly, this all seemed very awkward and he had to fight the ridiculous urge to put the robe back on. With his goal achieved, Doyle had lost all his seductiveness and was rummaging in the night table by Angel's bed.
"D'you have anything to make this easier, like?" Doyle's voice was muffled as he leaned over further, nearly falling off the bed as he looked under it.
"Easier?" Angel repeated blankly.
Doyle flashed him an exasperated look. "Lubricant?"
Flustered, because there was only one reason he would have any use for lubricant, Angel dug a small tube out of the back of the drawer. Doyle didn't bat an eye at the fact it was half-empty though Angel squirmed inwardly. A quarter of a millennium old and he was still embarrassed to have proof that he masturbated.
Doyle's eyes were shadowed now, lowered, and his brisk manner faltered. "You're gonna have to—"
"I know," Angel interrupted hastily, making no move to get on the bed. He shifted from foot to foot, feeling absurdly naked and practically virginal. It had been a long time since he'd had sex with anyone, over a century since he'd done it with a man and even then, he hadn't had any preferences for men. Women were softer, sweeter, and in abundance. There had been no reason to have men, other than the occasional drunken foray and being Angelus hadn't really made it a gentle experience, just mindless fucking with bloodslicked skin and mouths.
Still, his few experiences had left him with the knowledge of what to do. It was a shame that it didn't make him feel any better about doing it.
"Right," Doyle pushed his opened pants down and off, leaving Angel with a brief glimpse of nudity before he drew his legs up. If anything, Doyle suddenly looked even more awkward than Angel felt. "Um, how do you," Doyle's voice cracked and he settled for a weak gesture. "Want me?"
The sudden surge of relief nearly made him weak at the knees and even that made him ashamed. Doyle had apparently already decided that he was going to be the one on the bottom, not that Angel would have told him no, but...if that was how the vision wanted it to be Angel wasn't about to argue the point. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Doyle to roll over onto his knees so he wouldn't have to look in his eyes. Certainly he doubted Doyle would protest that. But the way he was still trembling, the shade of pain still behind his eyes, made Angel rethink it. Facing each other wasn't going to be better but it would probably be a little easier for Doyle to lay there and—
They were really going to do this. "Why would the Powers want us to have sex?" he blurted. He had a sudden image of a group of omnipotent beings hovering in their little cloud-dome, waiting for their hero to give them some homemade porn. Just when he thought his life had reached the borders of strangeness, it always pushed on through and found another continent of bizarre waiting to be discovered.
"I don't know and I don't fucking well care!" Doyle was shaking again, his eyes squeezed shut. Angel wondered if he was fighting tears. It was worse to see him like this; skinny and naked, arms wrapped around his knees as he shook. "I'll be having another one soon, Angel, please."
He didn't wait for Doyle to beg. Sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed, Angel took the lube from Doyle before guiding him down to lie on his back. He went willingly, allowing Angel to maneuver him into a comfortable position. His normally deft fingers fumbled with the cap on the tube and Angel realized he was shaking, too. The last time he'd had sex with a soul, he'd awoken to agony and loss, and the things his soulless counterpart had done still haunted his nightmares. Let this be right, he begged silently. It had to be right, it was a vision, and Doyle's visions had yet to lie to them.
He touched Doyle with slick fingers, automatically petting his hair with his free hand as Doyle made a soft sound of discomfort. Angel wondered if Doyle had done this before, didn't have the nerve to ask. If not, he learned quickly enough, spreading his legs further and letting Angel push his fingers in deeply. God, hot and silky soft but he barely had time to register it before Doyle was speaking. "Please, quick," Doyle urged thickly, "Before another one comes, please, please…"
Angel slipped his shorts down and off, and had to fight a rush of hysteria as he realized he wasn't hard enough to do it. Kneeling over his shaking, nearly crying friend wasn't exactly his usual jerk off material. Falteringly, Angel took himself in hand and stroked, trying to think of something, anything, to help matters along. True to his luck, his mind went completely blank without even an old Playboy centerfold lurking in a corner to peek out at him.
He nearly fell off the bed in shock when cool, wet fingers wrapped around him, touching him. Doyle had large hands, strong and oily with lubricant and Angel arched into them without thinking, sucking in a sharp, unneeded breath as they squeezed. One thumb circling the head of his cock in a slippery little movement that had him gritting his teeth before they pulled away, sliding down to the comforter beneath them.
With damp, trembling hands he caught Doyle's hips and lifted, folding one leg over his shoulder. It had been years, years upon years, but his body knew what to do, pressing forward, the head of his cock against stubborn muscles that refused to give. A brief flash memory of Buffy but even she hadn't been this tight, excruciatingly hot against his much cooler flesh. Doyle had a double handful of the blanket clenched in his fists and he was staring glassily over Angel's shoulder. "Don't stop," he whispered, his eyes fixed.
He was hurting him, had to be but it was too late, the pressure, the impossible heat was calling to him as much as the thrum of Doyle's blood and Angel pushed forward hard, felt the tightness give as he barely slid inside. The sound Doyle made was like a siren call to his demon, the softest cry of pain, and it made him push, forging past any resistance. He couldn't wait, pulling back and shoving in again, hard enough that the bed groaned a protest and God, so impossibly tight, clenching around his cock like a brutal fist.
The skin beneath his hands was slippery with sweat and Angel dug his nails in automatically, holding Doyle still, pale skin beneath his palms and he itched to bring a flush of color to it. Deep redness drawn to the surface, purpling into sweet bruises and how lovely would it look. Doyle was lovely in this shaded light, dim and soft, touching the glistening dampness on his face and...Angel froze, shuddering, trying not to feel the cold heat of his inner demon, trying to keep still even as he hated himself for not being able to stop.
Doyle was crying, his face pinched tight as tears tracked down his cheeks. As he watched, they slid down into his hair and vanished, leaving salty lines of moisture as an accusation.
"Shh," Angel tried to soothe, shifting forward and stilling again as Doyle flinched. Guilt was like a noose, strangling him, and Angel could only whisper, "I'm sorry."
Green eyes flashed open. "Don't stop," Doyle whimpered. "You have to finish, you have to, it'll start again—" His voice rose, choked with hysteria, and he started moving, struggling against Angel's still body and sending brutal flashes of pleasure into the base of his spine, layer upon layer of heat.
Desperately, Angel rocked his hips, one gentle thrust and Doyle calmed, his white-knuckled grip on the blankets easing. It wasn't enough, not good enough to just comfort him, not when Angel was doing this, using him like this, shame like the taste of ashes in the back of his throat. It made it easier to be gentle, easing the awkward curl of Doyle's legs over his arms as he pushed back inside. He heard Doyle take a breath and that sound wasn't pain, not at all.
"Wait—" Doyle gasped, "Wait, I—" He couldn't, not with so many years crowding in, his demon howling in the back of his mind. Angel fumbled a hand free, sliding it down the wet skin of Doyle's belly and found him hard, blisteringly hot against Angel's cold palm but it warmed with the friction. Doyle was grabbing at his arms, a wild, keening cry escaping from him as scalding wet heat spurted over Angel's fist. His body clenched so tightly that Angel could feel it in his soul, thrusting mindlessly, needing that final release so damned much that when it came he gave a startled cry, draining himself in the willing clasp of Doyle's body.
He collapsed, sagging down onto Doyle until he remembered that one of them needed to breathe and wasn't doing it very well with what was probably double his own weight pushing him into the mattress. Doyle's ragged moan as he pulled out made him flinch, easing off the man to lay beside him.
Dark lashes trembled on Doyle's cheeks over the violet shadows under his eyes. Hesitantly, Angel touched the sweaty mass of his hair and was flooded with relief when Doyle didn't pull away. He wanted to speak but what to say? His etiquette wasn't really up to standard for normal situations and this was a tad beyond his meager skills.
He'd nearly had Doyle's hair straightened when Angel realized he was asleep. Probably closer to unconscious given the state he was in. Angel wondered how long it at been since the half-demon had managed to actually sleep. Days, he'd said earlier. A vision nearly every hour for days.
They were both cooling, Doyle more than Angel with sweat drying his skin to clamminess. Careful not to wake him, Angel managed to pull the comforter over them both. He went completely still when Doyle moved restlessly, shifting to lay closer and it was with cautious hands that Angel pulled him near, willing to take whatever passed for affection from this strange coupling.
He didn't sleep for a long time, but held Doyle as he did, listening to each slow breath, the rhythm between them and his heart.
end chapter 1
