Work Text:
Angel rapped lightly at Alastor’s door, leaning on the frame. “If you’re awake, deerheart, I have a proposition for you.”
There was a long enough delay that Angel was starting to think Alastor was asleep, then the door opened on Alastor smirking curiously at him. “At approximately fuck-you in the morning?”
“Yup.” Angel grinned wickedly and shrugged. “Both our sleep schedules are fucked anyway. I thought of a game.” He bounced excitedly on his toes.
“Oh?” Alastor prompted, motioning Angel in then closing and locking the door. “What sort of a game?”
“You remember telling me about how you’d kill and butcher me?” Angel purred, hugging himself with two arms, other hands hidden carefully behind his back.
“Vividly,” Alastor confirmed, ears pricked attentively, eyes dark, and smile sharp.
“How’d you like to roleplay it?” Angel asked, eyespots flashing.
Alastor’s grin widened dangerously as he stepped closer to Angel. “I think I would like that very much.”
“Thought you might,” Angel chuckled low. He brought a hand out from behind his back, what looked like three pens held between his knuckled. “Your blades, sir.”
Alastor plucked one out of his grip to examine curiously, head tilted to favor his good eye since his monocle was off.
“They’re liquid liner pens,” Angel explained. “Basically makeup markers, but they dry quick and they show up good on my fur except for where it’s real thick.” He licked at his own teeth. “Thought you could draw where you’d cut me.”
With an encouraging hum, Alastor uncapped the liner and tested it on his own fingertip, watching the shiny black tick mark steadily go matte as it dried.
“Was also thinkin’, since you said the thing to do would be to smother me,” Angel continued, sultry, “we could start with a little bit a breathplay. I don’t wanna pass out, but enough for us both to get a taste.”
“Mhmmm.” Alastor recapped the liner and took the others one at a time from Angel, checking the colors—a red and a metallic silver. “Were you thinking anything else?”
“That you get one bite,” Angel breathed, “anywhere you want below the neck, as deep and bloody as the first time you bit me.”
Alastor’s brows ticked down in an expression that, on anyone else, would have been a frown. “Only one?”
Angel nodded firmly. “Only one. So you better make it count.”
“I better,” Alastor agreed coolly.
“You got any rules for me? Wanme to play dead, or—?”
In a fluid flash of movement, Alastor’s knuckles were at Angel’s collarbone, one uncapped liner held steady by his thumb a hair’s breadth from the hollow of Angel’s throat.
“Don’t speak,” Alastor ordered in a tone that brooked no argument and sent a shiver down Angel’s spine. “Don’t move once you’re dead,” he continued, casually pocketing his other weapons and pressing Angel to start walking backwards. “And, darling, do try not to scream.”
Angel’s hocks hit the bed and a sharp shove sent him falling, heart pounding, onto his back. Then Alastor was on top of him, straddling his waist, and Angel sucked a breath—just in time as Alastor’s hand clamped over his face, palm sealed over the flat of his nose and his mouth, red radio dial eyes burning into his own.
Instinctively, Angel grabbed at Alastor’s wrist but let that grip be pulled away, Alastor’s eyes gleaming and grin widening glitchily as he dug his fingers into Angel’s arm.
“I expected more fight,” Alastor mocked. “Pity.”
Lungs burning, Angel took the bait, grabbing and pulling at Alastor’s hands and arms and clothes, even with two arms out of six pinned awkwardly under Alastor’s shins, but tendrils of darkness ensnared his wrists and pinned his legs, Alastor never once breaking his gaze.
Just as the burn started to morph into something deeper than Angel wanted to play with, Alastor lifted his hand to let Angel gasp a breath, watched his face a moment, his own features relaxing back to their usual state, and lay his palm carefully over Angel’s eyes instead, holding him a moment in darkness then closing them with a gentle brush of movement. He released Angel’s wrists and Angel let his arms drop, breath evening, eyes still closed, as Alastor got off of him.
His silhouette faint in the dim, Angel watched Alastor stand over him at the bedside for a long moment, then he took hold of one of Angel’s legs dangling off the side of the mattress, slid his slipper off like some inversion of Cinderella’s prince, set it aside, did the same with its mate, then sat next to Angel and hauled him upright with tailored strength and a little huff of effort. Angel took the excuse to lean heavily against him, grinning a little to himself slumped over Alastor’s shoulder as careful, sharp-nailed hands pulled his shirt up over his head, navigating with easily-recovered-from clumsiness around ragdoll arms.
It felt…odd. Definitely not sexy, but not chilling like perhaps it should have been. Still intimate, a moment of closeness. More than anything, it felt like half-remembered snatches of Cherri undressing him on her bathroom floor when he was too fucked up to do it himself, or—older and fainter—his mother doing the same.
Alastor dumped him back onto the mattress, tugged loose the drawstring on his shorts, pulled them down, unhooked them from Angel’s ankle, shoved Angel’s legs fully onto the bed, and started humming to himself as he lay Angel’s clothes neatly on a side chair.
Angel took a deep breath, shifting a little just to feel Alastor’s coverlet drag against his naked body. Eyes closed, he watched the shape of Alastor meticulously unbutton then shrug out of his pajama shirt before returning to the bed. He rolled Angel over—he landed awkwardly on a couple of his own arms and twitched with the urge to move them but kept still as ordered. Mindful, Alastor adjusted how Angel lay, running evaluative touches down Angel’s arms and over his prone form. Angel felt himself melt under the touches, the mattress sank as Alastor settled next to him, still humming, then deft fingers smoothed the back of his hair and his breath caught at the feeling of a cool point pressed firmly to the base of his skull.
With a slow, smooth, gliding stroke Alastor drew that point all the way down Angel’s spine. Angel shivered involuntarily. Alastor ignored the movement and took hold of Angel’s ankle to draw another cut in clean little strokes up his leg to join the stroke down his spine, then did the same with the other leg.
The melody stopped as Alastor hummed with consideration, then he lifted Angel’s hands one by one to trace around each wrist and draw cuts up each arm. The repetition lulled Angel even as something dark in the back of his mind prickled with an uncomfortable awareness of why Alastor’s motions felt so practiced and sure. He parted Angel’s hair and extended the cut along his spine up to the crown of his head.
A shift of Alastor’s weight and a quiet tack marked him setting his weapon aside, then his hands were on Angel again, humming a different tune now, something Angel vaguely recognized, as he worked his way from Angel’s ankles up his body, smoothing his fur away from the lines he’d drawn, the cuts he’d made. Skinning him.
He rolled Angel over, resettled him, and dragged his fingers through either side of Angel’s hair from the back of his head towards his face in a way that sent a tingle down Angel’s spine, Alastor’s ears pricked attentively and eyes aglow as he cradled Angel’s face for a moment as though he was going to kiss him. But of course he didn’t.
He ran his hands up Angel’s sides, curled his fingers into his fluff and pulled—then chuckled when Angel bit back a gasp.
Alastor reached over him, a clicking of caps marked a changing of pens, then he traced a careful cut from between Angel’s hips all the way up his belly stripe to his sternum, two fingers of Alastor’s other hand steadying the way. More smoothing hands pressing into Angel’s belly then a pause, the silhouette of Alastor’s head cocked in consideration, ears ticked back just a little.
Then, with sure quick movements, a palm cupped Angel’s groin, tugging enough to pull the skin taught for a few quick slashes along the underside of his sheath to not catch, though his breath did and he bit his lip hard in a mostly-successful attempt to keep quiet. He did not, however, manage to bite back a yelp at Alastor hauling one of Angel’s legs up, grabbing his ass with one hand to spread it, and efficiently tracing a circle around his hole.
“Such an uncommonly noisy corpse,” Alastor said, as though he were talking to himself, carelessly dropping Angel’s leg again.
Some part of Angel’s mind automatically came up with a snarky retort, but he found it took almost no effort to resist voicing it, and let himself get lost instead in Alastor’s hands rolling him onto his side and running over his abdomen again, another small quick cut drawn crossways between his hips with a flick of Alastor’s wrist.
Alastor rolled him back onto his back and parted the fluff of Angel’s chest to reach the skin, keeping it parted with one hand as he worked his way in short strokes back and forth down Angel’s breastbone, leaving a thick line Angel could feel cool against his skin until it dried. Smooth swipes of cuts over and over each other low against Angel’s ribs on each side. Alastor’s bare arm laid against Angel’s chest, that hand closed in a fist, the warmth of him and smell of him close as he drew a cut across the hollow of Angel’s throat. That fist pulled down to Angel’s belly before being lifted.
A moment of stillness.
Another change of pens. Alastor leaning over Angel again, close enough he could surely feel Angel’s breath on his skin—except, Angel might have been holding his breath.
Hands spreading Angel’s legs, uncaring but careful. Alastor’s weight settling between them, one hand pressing down on Angel’s thigh to open the joint of his hip. A smooth swipe of a cut along the crural crook of his groin to sever the tendons there, then another in the same place, and another, and another. That leg pulled up to extend the cut all the way around the hip then dropped. The same attentions repeated in mirror image on the other side.
The same sort of ritual repeated a half dozen times more with each arm, Alastor’s grip firm as he lifted each wrist, pushing Angel away or pulling him closer to roll him partly onto his sides so Alastor could reach the backs of his shoulders, the spiderweb of connective tissue that held them in place.
Alastor turned and tilted Angel’s head to swipe cuts under his jaw that sent a shiver down Angel’s spine. He gripped the back of Angel’s skull a moment, looking down at him, then made a quick motion that—had he held his grip—would certainly have broken Angel’s neck but that, as it was, just brushed tantalizingly past his cheek.
He rolled Angel over again, fingers feeling along his spine.
A sharp slash in the space between two vertebrae.
The click of a cap.
Hands roaming, searching, judging, then settling, clawed nails digging into the meat of Angel’s thigh. Hot breath disturbing the fine fur just above the back of his knee. A burst of white-hot pain as razor teeth cut into flesh, lightning bolts up Angel’s nerves forcing a jerk held still by iron grip. A faint whine and fainter shiver, goosebumps puffing Angel’s fur, his whole world narrowed to only the points where Alastor touched him, strong fingers holding, rapacious mouth mauling luxuriously.
When Alastor tore himself away with a wet shudder of breath, Angel’s world collapsed into himself.
Slowly the throbbing ache in his thigh drew Angel back to awareness. He grimaced slightly, a little sound of discomfort low in his throat, turned his face away from the smear of drool it was mashed into, and opened his eyes.
“Welcome back.”
Alastor’s voice was soft, barely distorted, and nearby.
Angel craned his neck a little to look up at Alastor without lifting his head.
He was sitting at the end of the bed, half leaning on the footboard, legs folded with one knee up, an elbow on that knee, glass of whiskey in that hand, smile small, pajama shirt back on but still open, not looking at Angel but one ear swiveled toward him.
“Hi,” Angel said quietly.
The corner of Alastor’s mouth twitched into a little bit more of a grin.
Angel shifted into a more comfortable position with a little wheeze, and took a moment to just gaze up at Alastor in profile.
He sipped his whiskey, eyes on the far wall, expression subdued but inscrutable.
“Are you back?” Angel asked softly.
“Mhm.”
A smile of his own warmed Angel’s expression. “You look like you need a cigarette in one of those fancy holders—not the real long ones, just the nice ones.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“I know.” Angel dared to creep a hand across the coverlet and touch the corner of Alastor’s shirt where it lay lose against the bed. When he wasn’t rebuffed, he rubbed the satin slowly between his fingers. “Any particular reason why…?”
“I never much liked how it feels; too much like drowning.”
“Mm.”
“Then,” Alastor pulled the corner of his shirt out of Angel’s grip but looked over at him and reached to ruffle his hair, “it became a matter of professional responsibility and pride to preserve my voice.”
Angel let his eyes fall closed again. “It’s a nice voice.”
“I certainly think so,” Alastor chuckled. He smoothed Angel’s hair then returned his hand to its resting place in his lap. After a moment and another sip of his drink, he noted, “You didn’t come.”
“Mm-mm,” Angel confirmed, nuzzling against the coverlet. It smelled like clean cotton, the faint spice of Alastor’s preferred soap, and the subtle musk of Alastor himself. “This wasn’t really that kinda thing.”
Alastor hummed.
“You don’t owe me anything.” Angel rolled over and stretched a little, arching against the bed. “I got what I wanted outa this.”
“Oh?” Alastor eyed him curiously, ears pricked. “And what was that, cher?”
“Your hands on me.” Angel smiled.
Alastor’s ears went still in the particular stiff way that meant he was keeping them still on purpose.
“Not in a sexy way,” Angel added, still languid. “I’m just…a really physical sorta person, and I love feelin’ you touch me, so I like findin’ ways you actually like touchin’ me. This,” he smoothed his fluff away from the bold slash of red liner down his sternum, “or dancin’ with ya. It’s nice." He shrugged. "I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable, but I wanna be close to you, so, yeah….”
Alastor had subtly but visibly relaxed. He nodded slightly and sipped his whiskey.
For a long moment, they were both quiet, Angel watching Alastor, Alastor pensive.
“You know,” he said slowly, “I didn’t eat people in life.”
“Nah?” Angel asked with mild surprise and genuine interest.
“Well,” Alastor’s grin sharpened, “there were a couple exceptions.” He chuckled then took a breath. “But even those exceptions weren’t really food, that wasn’t the point. It may have given me a bit of a taste for cannibalism, but I didn’t develop a particular appetite for it until after I passed, and it’s hardly difficult to find humanitarian cuisine in the right parts of town when one wants to go about things neatly, so I’ve never actually had occasion to skin and dress a person for myself.”
“I wouldn’t a guessed.” Angle pulled up his knees, running his lowermost hands over the fronts of his legs. “Felt like you knew what you were doing.”
Alastor’s gaze slid over to smirk down at Angel. “Oh, mon cher, but I do. It’s often far easier to move a body in pieces, so I’ve had cause to dismember a corpse, and I grew up hunting as a matter of subsistence. I could field dress a deer by myself before I learned to shave; rabbits even before that. A person is just another animal.”
“Guess so,” Angel mused. “It’s easy to forget you’re from the boonies, polished and prim as ya are.” He took a breath. “I never really done the intimate parts a that sorta thing. Just shoot a bastard full a holes if I gotta, let somebody else clean it up, and buy my meat at the butcher’s counter. Unless, y’know, it’s a different kinda meat. But then I’m sellin’, not buyin’.”
Alastor rolled his eyes.
Angel laughed a little, yawned, rolled onto his side, nuzzled against the coverlet, took a breath and let it out on a sigh. “We oughta bandage up my leg so I can head back to mine before I fall asleep right here.”
With a hum, Alastor knocked back the last of his drink, vanished his glass, then vanished himself in a swirl of shadow. He reappeared a moment later at the bedside with a damp cloth and gauze and tended with pragmatic care to the bite wound on Angel’s thigh, Angel dozing lightly as he did, breathing little sounds of discomfort when his raw flesh was touched.
Angel stirred more fully when Alastor shoved him to roll over so he could pull the blood- and drool-stained coverlet out from under him. He pushed himself halfway into a sitting position. “I’ll go.”
Alastor gave the coverlet another yank. “Did I tell you to go?”
“...no?” Angel said slowly.
Alastor dropped the coverlet on top of his laundry hamper. “Do you want to go?”
Angel chewed his lip, curled his fingers in Alastor’s sheets, and admitted, “No.”
“Then lay back down,” Alastor ordered.
Angel obeyed. Alastor sat beside him, spent a moment just looking down at him, then reached out to sweep Angel’s hair out of his face. “Close your eyes.”
He did.
Alastor stroked a gentle fingertip from between his brows down to the faint bump of his nose, then did it again, and again, setting a slow, steady rhythm to which he began softly to sing in French. Angel drifted quickly, unquestioningly to sleep.
~
Angel couldn’t move. Flat on his back, on the floor or the ground he couldn’t tell, in darkness. Footsteps echoed, he couldn’t tell from where, but drawing closer.
A creature emerged from the darkness, stalking gracefully on too-long limbs with too many joints, a skull face crowned by golden antlers festooned with ribbons of dripping gore. The creature loomed over him, head cocked, empty eyes staring. Slowly, it lifted a clawed hand to place on Angel’s chest, where it sank into the fur and kept sinking, through skin and bone, to grip his heart and tear it, still beating, out of him.
The creature, the monster, the demon threw its head back, jaw wide with laughter, and lifted Angel’s heart to drop it into its gaping maw—
Angel woke with a start. He was laying more or less on his front, in the faint twilight of Alastor’s room, in Alastor’s bed, Alastor himself curled asleep on his side across from him with a few inches of airgap between them, arms and legs tucked close to his body, hands folded under his chin, one ear flopped over and propped up by the antler next to it, hair slightly tousled, expression blanked and relaxed.
Angel sucked a tiny gasp and closed a couple fists against the urge to reach over and touch—last he remembered, he’d had all his arms out, but now there were only four. Must’ve pulled them in in his sleep. He chewed his lip, chest feeling tight, and just watched Alastor sleep, the slow rise and fall of his chest, the quiet, static-less sound of his breath, bangs falling across his brow. He really wasn’t that much older than Angel was; at rest like this it was so much easier to see.
Fuck, Angel wanted to kiss him. He took a deep breath and let it out slow.
One of Alastor’s ears twitched—the flopped over one, assuming a somewhat more dignified attitude. He opened his eyes, gaze focusing quickly on Angel, usual smile returning immediately to his countenance, though—Angel could tell—not because he was happy to see him.
“Sorry,” Angel murmured, “didn’t mean to wake ya.”
“Y—” Alastor cleared his throat. “You didn’t.” He sat up and rolled his shoulders, looking away. “I wake up throughout the night regardless. Go back to sleep.”
“Mm,” Angel hummed, closed his eyes, buried his face in the sheets, felt the mattress move as Alastor got up, and listened to him moving around the room, doing Angel-knew-not-what, until he did drift back off.
When Angel next woke, he was alone in bed. Alastor was up and dressed, sitting at his desk, feeding a new sheet of paper into his typewriter. Angel rolled over to see him better and Alastor spared him a glance and a turn of an ear but carried on with what he was doing.
“Mornin’,” Angel greeted blearily.
“Bonmatin, cher.”
Angel grinned a little. “Buongiorno, caro.” He sat up, yawned and stretched, looked down at himself, the overlapping layers of remarkably un-smudged makeup liner tracing skillful butcher’s cuts over his naked body, glanced to the chair where his clothes were still laid from last night, sighed, and got up to put them on, wincing slightly as he put weight on his bitten leg, though he could tell it had already healed a fair bit overnight. “Did you ever come back to sleep?”
“Mhm.” Alastor hit something on his typewriter, it made a metal-on-metal sort of sound that didn’t seem like one it was supposed to make, Alastor glared at it, smacked the side of it, and tried again with more apparent success. “You didn’t wake up when I came back to bed.”
Angel hummed softly, pulling his shirt on over his head. He sat, redressed, in the chair and just watched Alastor work for moment. “Thanks for letting me stay.”
Alastor shrugged and hit the return key; the type carriage slid home with a jaunty little chime. “I didn’t mind.”