Needful Things

Something about drums.

Closed his eyes, it was there, that pounding, the dustclap slap and deep-throated growl of drums.

He woke in cold sweat, muscles pulled tighter than a . . .

He'd flinched so hard his nose was bleeding. With stupid, morbid fascination, he watched the long drip down, heavy dark drops catching the light then losing it, almost living in color again before dulling and dying twisted and splayed on the white sheet. He watched the ritual repeat itself half a dozen times before whatever physics governed him made his flesh sound again.

He was shaking while sitting still. It put him vaguely ill at ease. Pulled so leather taut his muscles responded to some other god.

Stretched and recurled his hands, trying to regain control of his body. The tendons were so taut as they slid over bone he could swear he heard the shrill whine of a violin's scream.

Too tight. Everywhere, he was too tight.

Tighter than a drum. Tighter than a fucking drum.

He stood painfully and glanced back at his bed, realizing with some curious concoction of disgust and fear that blood was not all he'd left on the sheets.

***

Running, muscles numbed by the fire of stretch contract slam slam slam.

It was a fucking good thing, he thought, that he didn't have to breathe.

***

"Do you miss me?"

He looked at her for a long time before thinking. It was the shock of seeing her. Maybe because it was shocking to talk to dead girls. He almost laughed. That probably wasn't it.

"I miss something," he said truthfully. He really wasn't sure.

"Do you miss me?" she asked again, crawling over to him. She smelled like that damn decadent flower she always wore. The one that smelled like whores but reminded him of decay. Baby girl hands, soft hands, on his thighs. "Darling boy?"

"I really want to," he whispered. It wasn't the answer she'd wanted, but she didn't seem to mind.

She pulled him close against her breast, holding him in something gentle and uncomplicated.

Although of course it wasn't.

He closed his eyes. The drums.

***

She was naked except for the armor.

Bronzed skin and gold hair, then the tarnished dented worn away grey silver. He felt like he should be a jeweler. Like he wanted to be. But no, not that, a blacksmith, with soot and char burn to hide behind.

(he was afraid of fire.)

A breastplate, battle scarred, with an angry puncture right above her heart. A leather belt circling her now-woman hips, a sword hanging from that.

He knew that sword like he knew every inch of her skin.

No. He knew that sword the way she knew his.

The armor was new. Maybe.

The dark circles under her eyes, and the pain there, those also were new, but he really should have seen them coming. Of course, he didn't, not until it was too late. Blinded by beauty or innocence or perfect happiness. He was pretty sure, though, that he knew before she did. Maybe she didn't know yet. She will.

She raised her sword. "On guard."

"I don't have a weapon."

She narrowed her eyes, tightened her soft pretty mouth into a blade thin line. "On guard."

He stood, fanning his hands open-palmed before her to show her his lack of artillery. Without hesitating, she drew the blade quickly and fiercely across his right palm. He almost didn't feel it, and his first real indication of what had happened was the noise of his blood slipping silkily and puddling on the ground with slight footstep drops.

"All you are," she whispered, "all you've ever done has led you here."

He looked up, fearful. "What will I become?"

There was no emotion on her face, nothing her, nothing not ancient. Maybe something of her, in that. "Are you worthy?"

He didn't know the answer to that, but it didn't bother him. He was immediately distracted when the drums started up behind her. Celtic warrior's tempo, and everywhere. She was made of it. It was drowning him.

He didn't know how he could have missed it before.

***

All this alone time probably wasn't too healthy. Too many thoughts, too much time to obsess over . . . things.

He lit another cigarette. It burned at him, flame and smell nipping at him like the dancing embers of a blacksmith's oven.

He shied away from it, without really meaning to.

It was hot going down, enough to fool his flesh into warming, softening, thawing, if even for a minute. Then, the exhalation, and the acrid smoke came out again almost cool enough to frost.

Foolish, hiding in his own fucking house. His own fucking house.

He was in one of the many, many bathrooms, back against the wall, sitting between the sink and the tub with his knees bent, his arms resting over his knees, and the lights off. Not that it mattered, except there was something kind of frightening in never being able to be completely in the dark.

The only thing he couldn't see was his reflection in the mirror only feet above him, and there was something kind of frightening in that, as well.

The rest of the team was stories below him, pattering on in their normal mortal ways. In the sunlight. Without the fucking cigarette or the need to hide. He could hear them, even through all the concrete and wood and ugly wallpaper.

He dropped another dead shell of a fix to the floor and picked up another one in a slow trancelike motion. He placed it between his lips, flicked a match from red to yellow and brought it to the tip.

He stopped, the flame dancing in gleeful leaps just breaths away from him.

Not that that was a useful unit of measure anymore.

With the hand not keeper of the flame, he removed the cigarette from its absurdly dramatic place and dropped it on the floor. The match he kept, and he watched with gruesome interest as the dancers flung their tiny fluid bodies around in mad arcs until they tired, coming closing into small balls, the resting position, disappearing into his fingers . . .

It hurt. Jesus God, did it hurt. He closed his eyes and drew in a sharp and unneeded unit of measurement hard enough to crack his ribs.

(the pain is . . . less)

He closed his fingers around the still burning match, still burning skin cupped in his palm

(what will I become?)

and then - slowly - closed his fingers around the flame.

***

"It's funny."

The monster that was once a whore looked at him in a manner he was sure didn't belong to her. "What's that?" She was holding him in her lap, which was softer than the silk sheets puddled around them, but just as cold. Stroking his hair, cuddling and petting him with a hand that he thought her recognized as his mother's. Anyway. You really could discern those lines anymore, and maybe it was for the best.

He looked down at his hand a bit doubtfully. "There's no scar tissue."

She drew her tiny golden eyebrows together. "Scar tissue."

He looked at his palm. "It should be . . . broken."

"Why should there be scar tissue?"

He drew away from her, looked at her curiously. "I told you, there . . . I should be broken."

She sighed and shook her head. "No." She took both his hands in hers, squeezing him gentler than he remembered her ever doing. "No, love, nothing's wrong. You're my precious darling boy, and I'm taking care of you. And nothing's wrong."

He lowered his head, partially in thought, partially to try and get another look at what should have been his ruined hand.

Her

(his mother's)

hands slid up his arms, his shoulders, his neck until they cradled his face. She inched on her knees until she was in his lap, slipping her gorgeous legs around his hips and cuddling him close to her. She whispered quiet little murmurs that meant love and smelled like whores and decay.

The smell was hers but he was sure the words weren't.

He listened anyway.

***

"Demons."

That was going to be his answer if anybody wanted to know about his hand. He dressed in a too long shirt, though, and the soft dark material pooled down around his hand, obscuring the thick white bandages.

So nobody asked.

Or, if they did, he didn't know it.

He was going through everything in a sort of off-color way. It was like he was in color, and everything else, that was fifties TV reruns and it was going by him so fast and in colors so washed they were like shades of grey. People moved their mouths, and there was sound, but those sounds didn't make words. All just a rush of advertising and laugh track.

He had started spending more time smoking. Spending more time alone.

He slept more.

Maybe nobody noticed.

"Demons."

He turned around too quickly, wondering in a sort of pre-panic unease if someone had caught on to him. It was Cordelia, looking at him like Samantha, all dolled up in some Technicolor version of the truth, her mouth moving in a way that he wasn't sure was real and her voice coming like it had been dubbed.

She raised her eyebrows and rolled her eyes, right on cue, and he wanted to smack her too pretty face witchy face. "Hello, earth to Angel? Demons. The call from the guys out by . . ."

She left again. Her mouth kept moving, but all the noises she was making words with got lost behind the laugh track. He squinted, tried to focus, as if that would help.

". . . he sounded really cute on the phone and when I asked him about whether they had three spines or five and did he have a girlfriend . . ."

Gunn stepped into the main floor of the lobby and Cordelia's chatter was swallowed by the sound of the live studio audience welcoming a favorite player with catcalls and whistling. Angel looked at him for a long time, until he started talking too, and the crowd grew fidgety and excited like a flock of dirty pigeons and the stereo of Cordelia and Gunn speaking at once over the birds and then those motherfucking drums again

He closed his eyes futilely and shook his head like it would do something. "I have to go," he said, but he doubted if anyone could hear him over the fucking cacophony going on in the lobby.

He ran up the stairs, taking them two or three or eight at a time, thinking no one had noticed. He might have been surprised at the shock his two friends' faces registered as he disappeared from sight.

Or maybe not. He couldn't really breathe, couldn't even open his eyes with those fucking drums.

***

"The armor."

She looked at him like he was dumb. "Yes?"

"Where'd it come from?"

She looked down at it doubtfully, scattered at her feet and looking much thinner and cheaper than it had yesterday. She sucked in her bottom lip like a little girl's gesture of confusion and doubt, then slowly brought her eyes to him.

"I think it's yours," she said softly. She looked small all of a sudden in a way that had little to do with the armor being gone, littered at her feet, and her just standing in front of him naked, small shoulders and little girl's hands and baby doll eyes.

"Where did it go?" he demanded, acting as though he hadn't heard her response to his first question. Second, maybe. He'd asked her something else, but he couldn't remember what it was. Maybe it wasn't important.

He had a sneaking suspicion that it was.

She flinched at his tone, a scolded, frightened little girl. "It's right there in front of you." She kicked at it listlessly with a bare foot. The metal - looking thinner and more like a child's toy every second - made crinkling, sharp music noises as it fell and tickled past itself. Buffy flinched again.

"Why'd you take it off?"

She raised her clear eyes to him. "Oh. That."

She folded her hands delicately in front of her, partially obscuring his view of where the sword

(swords)

had been.

"I didn't."

He started to get angry again, heat sensors reading a clear bright red all of a sudden. He stared at the heap of twisted metal at her feet, then glared up a her. "You -"

"You did," she finished, throwing her eyes upon him warily.

"I did," he repeated emptily.

"Yes," she said cheerily. "But I figured I should let you, because it was partly your doing in the first place."

"Was it." Didn't really feel like a question to him.

"Oh, yes," she murmured happily, stepping over the armor and coming toward him in cautious toddling steps. "You were the blacksmith, remember?"

He didn't say anything. He felt like screaming.

"Remember?" she asked again, gently, coming to a still in front of him. She searched his face with wide intelligent eyes, waiting for . . . something.

"Yes," he whispered mournfully. "I do."

She smiled softly, extending a tiny jeweled hand

(hands, crown, heart)

to him.

(you wear the heart pointed toward you, see, to show that you belong to somebody)

He looked dubiously at her proffered hand for what seemed like an eternity before shyly extending his hand - the right one, which should have been cut and burnt but didn't hold the wounds here. Smiling, she took his, folding it gently into hers.

"I love you," he said weakly. "I've never loved anything else all my life."

She stood up on her tiptoes and dusted a small kiss across his cheek. "I know. That's why you're not allowed to have me."

He started to cry. From under her slender fingers, dark rivulets of blood began to pool around her fingertips and trickle down to the floor below, which for some reason Angel wasn't able to see.

Cocking her head slightly to one side and meeting his eyes, she said finally: "But if it means anything, I love you, too." He opened his mouth to speak, but any sound he would have made was seemingly swallowed when her lips parted again, tiny and soft but more powerful than Acathla's. "And I'll always be your girl."

She wrapped her arms around him, drawing her close and smearing him with blood. She nuzzled close to him, lips on his mouth, his throat, and then resting lightly over his ear.

"Forget the drums, Angel."

He was surprised; he hadn't known that she knew.

"They'll swallow you whole."

"Tell me -"

She shook her head. "We don't have much time . . . ." She kissed him. "I love you."

He started to speak again, but all that sound was swallowed up.

***

He sat bolt upright in bed, sweating and tangled in his sheets. He couldn't remember anything but snatches of his dream.

Something about drums.

***

"Are we playing a game?"

***

"Put the blade in the wall."

***

Another pack gone, three, four.

With all the sleeping he was doing, he had no idea how he found time to smoke. He lit another one, closed his eyes, and took a deep drag. The sink in the bathroom he'd been using was beginning to yellow. Didn't matter. He couldn't see a thing with his eyes closed.

Finally.

***

He hadn't been downstairs in days.

***

"How's that feel?"

"I'm not sure. I can't feel anything at all."

Darla arched an eyebrow. As if drawn by it, one corner of her cherry blossom mouth drew up, as well.

"That sounds about right."

He couldn't hear her. The drums.

***

He woke up dusted like Ash Wednesday. He'd fallen asleep with a burning cigarette cocked in his hand. It had only just begun to burn his fingers.

He didn't really feel the pain. The pain, the real pain, was in his head. Those fucking drums.

***

He crept downstairs quietly, never more than an inch and a half from the wall on his way down. Whether he was going downstairs out of need or compulsion he didn't know, but there was still an almost tangible voice in the back of his head whispering for him to go. Insistent, highly-cadenced. Every word coloring a beat of the drums.

***

"Forget the drums, Angel."

***

"Are we playing a game?"

***

Cordelia is alone at the desk, and he can tell from the smell and the heat and the beat and intensity of the drums that she is the only one in the building.

***

"How's that feel?"

He hasn't fed in weeks.

***

She doesn't look up until he's close enough to count her freckles and the drums make it difficult for him to stand up straight.

"Hey," she murmurs. She's always quieter in the evenings, and when they're alone together. He likes that about her.

It's kind of difficult for him to move his mouth.

"Hey."

"Kind of nice to see you, you know, awake."

There's insult there, but mostly she's worried. He doesn't really care about either.

"Cordelia."

She narrows her kohl-lined eyes, looks at him oddly. "Are you okay?"

No. No, he's not okay, his head is caving in. The entire hotel is shaking. There's an earthquake in his blood and it's all because of her and her goddamn drums. He closes his eyes briefly, trying to shut out the pain, and when he opens them again, Cordelia slides from caramel to snow white to bronze and then back into herself. Her eyes can't seem to hold themselves; they're brown then blue then green, a change for every drumbeat.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Her eyes widen, surprised, green all of a sudden, and her mouth drops slightly to a little girl's Acathla. A mouth that knows every inch of his . . . "Angel, are you okay? What are you talking about?"

The pain . . . it hurts, God it hurts so bad, and it's only getting harder . . . . he flies his hands over his face, trying to smooth the unease out of his skin. It doesn't work, and he starts to panic, and he's wide-eyed when he looks back up at her. She's risen, and she's coming toward him, and she is

(stepping over the armor)

close now, very close, and he can smell her perfume and her pulse goddammit she smells like heaven and if I could only, just for one second . . .

She pales rapidly, and whispers in a whore's voice, "I know you want it."

He doesn't know what she's talking about, and he's panicking now . . . Darla's lit by the sun all of a sudden, and her bronze skin looks dark dark around the tiny lovely mouth, which is all Angel can look at . . . "You want me," she whispers, and he takes a step forward, two steps, and closes his hands around her small arms . . .

He pulls her close, into his body, buries his nose in her hair . . . he looks down at her, briefly, and her hair is darker than it should be, but Jesus God, she's just so fucking warm and she feels like heaven, Jesus, she does . . . he kisses her mouth, lets his hands run over her body, and at first she makes little protesting noises in the back of her

(supple)

throat, but then she relaxes against him . . . he pushes her back, until she bends against the desk as her legs hit, and he climbs on top of her easily, fuck yes, he knows how to do this; it may have been years but it's just like riding a

(smelled like whores but reminded him of decay.)

and anyway he's been doing it for miles in his dreams . . . she makes a noise, something loud, but something he can't hear over the drums . . . they're getting louder, getting louder as he tears off her clothing, as he runs his scarred hands over her gorgeous, taut caramel flesh . . . they're getting louder as he throws her Fred Segal skirt to the floor, as he tears her cheap underwear and slams into her with the same simple, forceful movement of a sword, getting louder as he closes his eyes and wishes for some peace and fucking quiet and some fucking release and

(she smells like heaven)

buries his face in her throat as he comes.

***

The drums have stopped.

***

Darla is waiting in the lobby. She is tired, and less beautiful than usual, because now she's human and she's a working girl to boot. Still, though, she's got that amazing sense of style, and she presents a gorgeous, professional face in her blue cashmere sweater and linen skirt, with her blonde hair twisted down around her pretty face in tendrils. She's smoking a cigarette in a very alluring way, not because she likes it, but because she knows how much his habit has grown of late, and she likes to add little personal touches to please her boy.

Mostly, she wishes she got to see the performance in its last act, but the aftermath is fairly self-explanatory, and almost as much fun.

Darla waits by the door not because she doesn't want to be spotted, but because she doesn't want any blood on her four-hundred dollar Chanel pumps. Perception is everything, and she doesn't need some poor Seer's blood ruining others' perception of her. Especially not today. Today is an important day.

Her victory. Her triumph. Her boy's homecoming.

She does do good work.

The Seer is still thrown across her desk, gloriously naked, surrounded by puddles and litters of pens and pencils and paper and her own posh clothing and dark blood. He tore her throat out after raping her, which Darla thinks is a particularly brutal touch that adds a sort of gothic ambiance to the entire scene. Of course, she taught him everything he knows.

Angelus is rising slowly; the soul is gone, but a bitterness remains, and the result is the procedure being a bit painful. Perfect happiness can be a bitch, sometimes. Darla takes another drag from her cigarette and reflects on this. She decides it's for the best; after all, aren't things more fun that way?

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