I'll Never Love You

CHAPTER 4: Influence



I planned to leave town the moment the sun sank under the horizon. I could be in LA in a few hours and I fully intended to lose myself in the nightlife there. But for now I was stuck in the mansion with Xander, who’s lying on the floor in my sitting room taking up my past time of staring at the fire.

"If you’re done playing out your little revenge fantasy, leave," I told him from my place on the couch.

"Why? We were just beginning to learn so much about each other."

"Get out," I ordered hollowly, already knowing what his response was going to be.

"Again, I say—make me."

I think I’m beginning to understand why Xander enjoys being juvenile. Hardly anyone’s willing to stoop to his level. I certainly wasn’t. So I abandoned the conversation, but I still wanted him gone. He was taking up my space and wasting air I didn’t need.

"You used me. I don’t know how yet, but I’m pretty sure you used me against her for some reason," Xander said.

I could have ignored him, offered silence against his accusations, but I was all too familiar with Xander’s type. You can’t disregard someone like him, a person who craves attention. Silence only encourages—something Xander proved to be true earlier.

"You’re not important or useful enough to use against anyone, Harris. I thought the incident with Faith hammered that point home so succinctly even you’d grasp the concept. I mean didn’t you ever wonder why they kept her around after she tried to play pop the weasel with your head?"

When Xander remarkably held his tongue I pressed on. I might not be able to hurt him not physically but I was well versed in other forms of inflicting pain. Skilled enough to damn well tear likes of Xander Harris apart at the seams.

"I’ll tell you why. I’ll even use small words. She could still be a valuable asset if we got her back on the straight and narrow. The good she could do out weighed any harm she’d done. And what are you? Oh, you have your uses… can’t think of any off-hand but the gang keeps you around for something, I’m sure. But if you disappeared would you really be missed? How easy would it be for Buffy and Willow and Giles to shrug en masse and move on?"

When Xander didn’t respond we fell back into an indifferent silence.

I watched him lying there on the floor, his eyes unwavering as he stared into the hearth and wondered what did it take to get rid of him?

"And is it my fault you placed so much of your own self worth in helping Buffy?" I asked after a while. "Or that you repulse ninety-nine percent of Sunnydale’s population with your personality?"

Xander turned his head in the cradle of his arms and looked at me. There was no malice in his eyes, no sardonic gleam, just an honest to god wondering stare. For a moment I was uncomfortable, uncomfortable because I wasn’t used to surprises and Xander was springing surprises on me one after another today.

"You told her about that night, sans the real details obviously, but why? That’s the question. To break up with her? You could have done that without screwing me over…"

"Don’t strain yourself there, Harris."

”You wanted to make the split for keeps."

I returned his stare and I knew he didn’t see anything in my expression. Xander held the contact for a beat longer then returned to studying the fire. "Anyway, you set me up pretty good. Didn’t know what hit me…" he laughed a little.

"I didn’t set you up, Xander. I wasn’t even thinking about you."

"I’m sure you weren’t."

"What do you want? An apology?" I asked with a false tone of amusement

"I can’t imagine an instrument in the universe small enough to measure how little I need an apology from you."

"Then why are you still here?" I asked. Well and truly fed up with him being here, sick and tired of hearing his voice, of smelling him so close to me.

Xander turned to me again and pouted. "You’re my only friend."

I wanted to rip his throat out when he tilted his head back on his arms and started snickering. I never realized how irritating Xander’s laughter was. Of course I’ve never heard him laugh before today…




Why was I still hanging around? A fair and good question, but I didn’t know the answer. Maybe because the mansion was the last place I’d run into my friends—not that I had any.

There was home, but I don’t imagine being anymore relaxed there than I was here. A bastion of serenity home was not. And at least Angel knew how to be quiet for more than five minutes.

"It’s been decades since I’ve killed a human being," I heard Angel say somewhere under my laughter, and I stopped to listen to him, "but I could really fall off the wagon for you."

"Go ahead, it might be the first perfect crime you ever committed. Not that you were all that concerned about hiding your crimes. Kinda of a show off really…"

"What the hell are you doing?"

My eyelids shot open. Jesus! I almost went asleep right there on Angel’s floor!

"You are not sleeping here, Harris!" Angel hissed. "I’ll pick you up by the scruff of your neck and toss you out on your scrawny ass if I have to before I let you lay your head here!"

"I doubt that." I yawned.

I guess today was more trying than I thought. When I came to the mansion ready to stake Angel six ways to Sunday I was hopped up on anger and the thrill of finally being able to kill the son of a bitch. But I was running on the fumes of those earlier emotions now. And the fact that I’d lost my friends, and a… fuck, okay, Angel was right, a big part of my identity was starting to catch up to me.

Besides, I was never all that great at dealing with the heavy emotional turmoil in the first place, and sleep seemed like a pretty good way of non-dealing.

"You doubt it?" Angel stood up from the couch. My eyes darted to him and I turned my head to follow. The vampire was looming above me with his fists clasped down at his sides looking down at me like I was something nasty he was about to step in.

"Yeah. Ya don’t really wanna touch me."

"There’s probably a nationwide movement of people who don’t want to touch you, Harris, that doesn’t mean they, or I, wouldn’t throw you through a window."

"That hurts… being thrown through a window I mean," I said.

Angel reached down and grabbed the collar of my shirt. He roughly hauled me off the floor. I heard the stitching in my shirt rip. I gained some footing, but mostly Angel had me on my tiptoes. I imagine his breath would have been all over my face under different circumstances. Say if he was alive, but he wasn’t, so he was just in my face.

"You know what I find the least tolerable about you, Harris? You’re too stupid to know when to shut the hell--"

I brought my hand up to his face and touched him. My hand was motionless, flat against his cheek. I felt the muscles in Angel’s face go tight against my palm when he grimaced with… suspicion?

Yeah, I’d definitely call that a suspicious expression.

"What--" Angel started but I placed my thumb on his mouth.

His flesh was still warm. I watched my thumb slide slowly back and forth over his lips. They were dry and soft… I wanted to… Angel let go of my shirt and raised his left hand placing it over mine and removed it from his skin. But Angel didn’t let go of my hand, and his grip was neither slack, nor tight. Just sort of careless, like he was unaware of what his hand was doing. Or maybe he wasn’t.

"Why are you still here, Xander?" Angel asked in a low, throaty voice.

There wasn’t much distance between us in the first place and I closed that. I mashed into him, and, god, I remember this, too. The hard bulges of his chest and even harder flatness of his stomach pressed against me.

I pulled my hand out of Angel’s and wrapped my arms around his mid-section then moved them upwards until my hands reached his shoulder blades. Angel’s arms just hung loosely at his sides over my biceps. He stared down at me, waiting for my next move. I stayed on my tiptoes so Angel and I stood eye to eye, our noses touching. I turned my head and stretched my neck out, our cheeks brushing as I brought my mouth close to his ear and asked: "Do you have dreams?"

It was an unassuming question on the surface, and without the proper context no one would have known exactly why Angel went rigid in my arms. But I knew, sure. We shared the most fucked up male bonding experience of all time.

"Just echoes," he replied with certainty that was more or less believable.

"I know. I have her running through my mind sometimes. I remember things I shouldn’t. Like going to a Kenny Loggin’s concert the summer after they married. Giving birth to their daughter. I even remember why she chose to take my body instead of yours. That the only reason I had you inside me was because she liked tall men."

I stroked my fingers slowly up and down the deep grove where his backbone lay under his shirt. It’s so strange touching him like this. And weird not being able to completely wrap my arms around someone, Angel’s back was too broad and was laden with hard heavy muscles. Hugging him was a different experience than Cordelia Faith Buffy or Will… just different.

Stranger still was how it felt when Angel put his arms around me and buried his face in my throat. He wasn't doing much besides kissing—I didn't feel teeth. Just his moistened lips sucking gently, traveling across the tendons in my throat, the wet tip of his tongue flicking out instances before his mouth suckled.

His mouth on my skin sent an intense wave of arousal through me, and every nerve in my body vibrated. I let out a strangled moan, and unintentionally offered every inch of my neck to Angel. Angel accepted.

Then his tongue is everywhere, cold and wet, never seeming to get any warmer. Now he’s slowly licking one continuous icy curve from the hollow of my throat to the summit of my chin then closes his mouth around the point of my jaw and bites down lightly. Bluntly scraping his teeth over my skin until his lips sealed around my chin, and I’m shaking now and I can’t catch my breath.

Angel went on to plant firm lingering kisses across my face. It was sweet and intimate and it took all of my self -control not to grab his hair and make him stop. Finally, Angel quits with the romantic crap and our lips meet in a surprisingly gentle kiss. And I couldn’t help but feel like it was a mocking, bitter union—a liar's kiss. But still I savored him as our tongues explored each other’s mouths, and I cling to him like he was going to save me.

Angel tasted like nothing. There was no sweetness to him, like with Cordelia, who sometimes tasted like ripe wild berries or peach flavored lip-gloss. French kissing Angel was like tonguing someone who’d just gargled with a gallon of hydrogen peroxide.

I devoured him anyway.

And it’s going to go further than our lips twining, and our tongues competing. Angel and I were both excited enough and destroyed enough to shed our clothes and finish what he started when he confessed to Buffy. And neither of us was afraid he’d lose his soul. Though I was only partially convinced either of us cared in the slightest that he would. It didn’t matter anyway.

Love is one of the main ingredients in that gypsy curse and we detested each other.

Angel pulled back and disentangled my arms from around him. But he kept a hold of my right hand. He turned and led me over to the couch.

Before I’m aware of it my back is sinking into the cushions on Angel’s sofa and his bulk is settling on top of me. His hips gyrating, shifting, as he tries to find a comfortable position, and I spread my legs to help, in fact, I’m just plain greedy by now.

My hands are roaming everywhere over his chest and his back. I yearned to feel the smooth, tight flesh I knew was lurking under Angel’s clothes. To have him naked gliding over every inch of my body cooling the blood and muscle boiling under my skin. Skin already covered in a thin sheen of sweat that I’m sure reeks of my arousal. I hated it.

The longing I was experiencing didn’t stem from any real attraction on my part. For months I’ve felt like I’ve been in a minor state of withdrawal, aching with a need so pervasive I dreamed about being with Angel. Woke up hard, craving the cold body that had driven me to pleasures I’d never known before, or since. Even the perverse lust I’d felt for Cordy those first few weeks into our relationship was more sincere than the desire I had for Angel right now.

And occupying the same space with my twisted need was an ocean of rage. I wanted to tear Angel’s face off. To chew his lips away, and hear him scream while I poured holy water on his balls. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to me… I felt absolutely no affection for Angel.

Angel raised off me, his knees between my legs, and started to unbutton his shirt from the collar down.

"I’ll never love you," he says mean, like he’s trying to hurt my feelings.

I brought my hands to the front of his slacks and worked his belt buckle undone, staring up into his dark, angry eyes. "And I don’t want your love. Your love is poison."