Work Text:
I
She is pink ribbons and red death, she is secret nonsense and sacred mysteries. She is stretched wide, open, lifted hips on green velvet pillows, and legs tied apart.
In the pain she is lucid, and Angelus fancies he can see the cracks in the porcelain of her skin mending, hot blown glass bubbling and spinning to make itself whole.
She will break again. The thought alone makes him hard.
But he is frustrated more, with the ribbons and the candlelight, with the simple tools of woman- when what he really wanted was to nail her to a cross, to watch her wriggle against holy wood, while he sat beneath her in safety and comfort, his mouth fastened to her cunt. But Darla would have no more of his religious perversions, and she wanted to play with this newly broken doll, and so. Angelus sits.
In a high back chair, smoking a cigar. With white shirt open to his waist and sketchbook open on his lap, he draws what Darla wanted. Not that the picture is without appeal: Satin threads wound round each of Drusilla’s ribs, tightly up her throat, across her dark eyes and tear stained cheeks. Her breasts pressed together, her thighs wide apart, and between them, Darla slips a long, slender black candle in and out of her sex.
Drusilla is panting and weeping, thighs trembling in effort, and Angelus watches the shadows play on white white skin, mottled only by spatters of blood, and in the softest of places, hardened candle wax.
Darla’s wrist quickens, and Drusilla’s head tosses to one side, the tangle of hair hiding her blush.
And it is this which he would capture with pens and pastels, but he can’t- damn it, it just will not come, and along with the scent of sex and burned skin there is a rising odor of anger in the small parlor.
“Darling,” Darla whispers, cupping her own naked breast in her palm, “be finished with it.”
Angelus’ head snaps up, and were it anyone but her… He tosses the pen to the floor in frustration instead. “I can’t! She keeps- moving.”
Darla laughs. “Well, yes dear. This is my profession, you know. And I am rather good at it.” Her smile is a snake, a lizard, a tiger, and should he draw it a thousand times he will never grow tired of the apples and debauchery it promises.
“Yes, you are, my love”, he says, climbing out of his chair. “But Drusilla knows better than to deny Daddy what he wants.”
He comes to kneel beside her, runs a hand tenderly through sweat and curls. “Don’t you, dear girl?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
And Angelus smiles. Slides the candle from between Drusilla’s legs and lights it with his cigar.
“Open your mouth,” he says, then, “there’s a good little novice,” as he slips the candle between her parted lips.
The flames cast bold shadows across her face as her eyes widen. “Now then,” he says, standing up and brushing his hands off on his pants, “if you move your head you will burn that pretty face, and Daddy would not be happy. So. We will have none of that, yes?”
Darla laughs and Drusilla does not move. She is still, a bound and helpless thing, and Angelus has to loosen his trousers before he sits. Darla’s head bows between Drusilla’s legs, but Angelus does not need to look inside of her to see all the cracks reappear.
He picks up the sketchbook, and rubs the cigar ash between his fingers. He presses his thumbs to Drusilla’s eyes, which stare up at him, lifeless and dim, from the linen page. Rubs the gray bits into her hair, her mouth, into the hollows between her breasts and into the curls covering her pink and swollen cunt.
There.
She is painted in purity and dirt, stained with moon and gray ash. Captured for his keeping.
And when Darla is through with her, he shows her the picture, and Darla laughs again with delight.
He takes her there, on the floor, covered in beeswax and blood, the black candle still in her mouth. He rocks into her, with no care for the singing flame dripping hot wax onto her cheeks and chin. And his palms stain her breasts, and he coos to her. Calls her his little ash girl. His dirty princess. His Cinderella.
II.
Drusilla believes in fairytales, because she has seen them. Little creatures buzzing, buzzing, always talking to her in the evenings when she tries to sleep, and circling her tea cups like naughty little bees when she tries to drink. Their tails are golden, they waggle and sing, and sometimes the fire fairies steal Daddy’s matches. They need them, they tell her, to keep their tails lit. Daddy doesn’t believe in fairies. He says William steals the matches, because William is a pain in the ass.
Daddy and William have both come out with her tonight, but Grandmum is at home, and this is a rare thing, indeed. So much so that Drusilla claps her hands loudly and spins, making all the dew fairies jump in the grass beneath her slippered feet.
There is a carousel, with horses. There are always horses in fairytales. And she would ride them all. Quickly, quickly now, because they three must be home for supper. Angelus helps her climb up on the carousel and the horses each greet her by name. “Hello, Princess Dru,” says the prettiest pony, and she curtsies.
She is the good princess, and her Daddy is the fair king. William would be her knight, but he doesn’t like to be called William anymore, he wants to be called something else. Or maybe that hasn’t happened yet. It is so hard to tell, with time all in a circle this way, and all the king’s horses moving up and down. The music begins and she has to close her eyes so she can see it. Each note is a color, and each color has a taste, and sometimes if the note is just right, she can swallow the night whole. She tilts her head back and spins in place until she nearly falls, but the king catches her.
When she opens her eyes, William is sullen and forlorn, taking large swigs from a bottle that smells like church. Angelus looks at him with disdain, like he always will, like he always does… She wishes they could get on better, her king and her knight, but they don’t know the story the way she does, and so it simply isn’t meant to be. She wishes she could tell them the story, because she knows it all from end to beginning and back again. Drusilla knows everything, really. About animal speak and Slayers, chaos theory and the price of Chinese tea. But many of these things have no name, no words, because they haven’t happened yet, because time is a circle, a funny funny thing. So she is silent, and they say she speaks only in rhymes and riddles. They are wrong of course, because men often are.
Perhaps, she thinks, they just need a mommy, but everyone knows all the mommies in fairytales are dead.
Daddy is lifting her on the highest horse, and straddling the saddle behind her. His chest is hard and soft all at once, a pillow and a pea. The horse whinnies and shuffles its feet, and she grabs the silky mane as it bounces her higher and higher into the air. A hard cock is pressed against her bottom, and she thinks she would like to rut here. Like a horse, like a pony, she would roll in the hay and shake her head against a nasty leather bit. She lifts her skirts, the blue and orange saddle is cool and smooth against her secret parts.
William is watching, watching; he is always watching, and it does not suit him. He tastes of horses when she drinks from him. Chase and run and catch and thrill. Always sweat and thirst. But he did something wicked, something naughty, tonight, or yesterday or tomorrow, and so he has to watch. Her Willy, her drunken knight on a pale white horse, spinning, spinning, and she fears that he will never be able to stop. She growls, and arches against Angelus’ cock, now buried to the hilt inside of her.
“My pony girl,” he laughs against her neck, and bites. His bite makes all the fairies scream.
And she wants William to come and kiss her, but he is only supposed to watch. Crooks her finger at him nevertheless, because she is the wicked princess, and he must do her bidding. A smirk and another swig of drink, and he is in front of her. Balancing in the stirrups, cupping her chin in one hand, and his tongue fills her mouth while Angelus rides her and the pony rides her and her blood covers them all.
Daddy will be angry with William, and later on there will riding crops and begging. She will lick William clean and call him Pan. And his blood will tell her things, about evil princesses with golden hair who will cut the tails off of all the fairies, leaving only great and terrible unhappily ever afters.
But now, the carousel spins.
There are stars in her mouth and stallions inside her, and she sings with the queen.
III.
William is but a small thing in the center of the bed; four redwood posts and a canopy of green goose down and silk around him. His head is yanked back, the dark and tangled curls held tight in a large fist. His legs are apart and his red nightshirt has been torn open to bare himself to the man above him. The man whose mouth is open to bare white teeth. Such big teeth.
The fireplace in the corner crackles and crunches, the sound of embers and dying leaves. Footsteps over fallen wood.
Angelus is buried deep inside of him, crooning to him quietly, calling him pretty. His breath smells like the hunt.
“Such a pretty boy, good boy,” he says, running his tongue over the curve of William’s cheek and rocking his hips. There is a growl in the brogue tonight. When William closes his eyes, he can see teeth snapping in the dark.
“A-Angelus,” William whines, struggling not to move, not to cry. On his back like this he is bent nearly in half; a tree felled by lightning, a prey animal showing its belly. His aching cock is pressed between his stomach and Angelus, and the pleasurepain is a dark, black thing that threatens to swallow him whole. William has always hated the woods. Never could learn how to swing an axe.
The sheets and his thighs are stained in red, and the smell of his own blood is making him dizzy. Because it isn’t his blood, not really, not anymore. His blood was all lost in an alleyway to a madwoman, and so it is her blood being spilt now on the cotton and silk. Hers, and she is Angelus’, so it is his blood too. And the thought of Angelus’ blood running down his thighs makes William impossibly harder.
“Angelus, please,” he says, even though he hasn’t been given permission to beg.
Angelus’ eyes flash as he twists his hips and William fights back a howl. Waits for the inevitable slap, but the big hands on his face are soothing, coaxing a groan from him despite his best efforts. “What is it?” he says, “ Tell me. My good boy. My clever boy. Tell me what you want.”
William brings his own hands up slowly, uncertain, and wraps them around Angelus’ shoulders.
“Such a good boy,” Angelus whispers again. Then leans in and closes his mouth over William’s adam’s apple. Fangs on either side of the bulge in his throat, not biting down, just resting there. Waiting. And when Angelus thrusts forward with his hips, William sinks his teeth into his own tongue to keep from screaming.
Yellow eyes and something more, something old and horrible, rests on its haunches in the grass. Sharp branches catch and tear his red cotton shirt, but still he runs, until he is naked, cold and shivering in the rain, in the trees. He is so tired. And so tired of running.
Angelus lifts his head, spit and blood and secrets on his lips. “Tell me what you want, William. Tell me.”
William bucks his hips, whines again, low in his throat, and watches the face above him shimmer and shift. That smile is slow and sharp, a quick blade that would scarcely hurt going in. Silver daggers and broad axes. William wrenches his head free.
“ I want..I want to be the wolf,” he says.
Angelus’ skin breaks like damp earth when William tears his neck open, certain he will find himself inside. The blood is hard and cold. Bitter like winter apples turned to cider. Smooth like hearth and den.
A rumbling against his chest as Angelus laughs, and after a while, tugs himself free. When William smiles up at him, little bits of skin remain, caught between his teeth.
-End