Slashed Sonnet Sequence

"Not Forbidden"
Connor/Wesley
Longer Ficlet
A/N: **Indicates present-tense - the "now"**; other text is past-tense - what came before.

**They are holding hands, fingers intertwined with lazy care. His hand is much smaller than Wesley's, slim and pale.**

He can't remember when they first met. Perhaps as he walked home from the law firm? July or August of 2004. Sometime in there. Yes, a humid, sultry LA summer night. That's right.

He'd have been in a mood of grim satisfaction. The Wolfram & Hart musclemen couldn't fathom why he didn't live on-site, and it gave them apoplexy wheninsiinsisted on traveling alone. Traveling by bike was grave enough risk. Announcing he'd go on foot? By choice? Declaiming that amused the sheer hell out of him. One night he'd bring popcorn, all the better to enjoy the show.

**Wesley leans over to kiss the corner of his lover's mouth. Playful, he nips and worries at the r lir lip. He's pleased when it quirks in a sated, weary grin and bites back. Only thinks in passing how oddly natural biting is to the younger man.**

He'd seen the boy before they met properly. He'd a fondness for lounging in the night air on the steps of an ancient property converted into student apartments. Wesley had thought idly that he'd likely be attending UCLA, and thought no more of him.

But that night – yes, the details are coming back – he'd seen he was reading a thick book that wouldn't have looked out of place in his own library. Not in English. Not a human language.

His steps slowed, natural curiosity brightening his eyes. The boy glanced up, threw him a careless summer grin.

And it began.

**Wiry arms twine around his neck, pulling Wesley closer. They're sweat-slick, sheened from previous couplings, but his lover is young and hormones his friend. They laugh against the curve of each other's shoulders, tired yetitedited, content yet craving more.**

"Where did you find that book?"

The youth leaned back against the step, broad grin somehow... familiar. "Some crazy shop downtown. They have all kinds of junk there." He caressed the battered leather binding. "This just spoke to me. Or it would, if I knew what language it was in."

Curiosity, an interest in boy and book, kept Wesley there instead of scuttling away to his preferred loneliness. "I've studied linguistics in my time. May I?"

"Knock yourself out." The boy tossed dark hair out of his eyes, offered the book, kept his hand out. "I'm Connor. And you are?"

**Wesley works his way down the smooth body, tasting every inch with quick flicks of his tongue, loving the way Connor gasps under the touch.**

"I'm no one important."

"Yeah, right." Connor scoffed off the demurral. "All dressed up in your – what is that, Mr. GQ? I don't know designers. Goodwill's high as my fashion elevator goes. You know, I've seen you leaving that law firm. Wolfram & Hart. Are you a lawyer?"
ley ley smiled at that, a bit creaky from lack of practice. "Not quite." He absently stroked the book. Quortoth origin. How odd that it should have come to be in LA.

"Huh. What do you do?"

"A little of everything."

"Must be important."

"Not very."

"Sure. That's why you're always thinking so hard, every time you walk down this street."

Wesley glanced up curiously. "Why do you say that?"

"Because it took me this long and a weird-ass book just to get your attention."

**Warmth floods Wesley as he remembers. He writhes against his partner, sharing all of himself that he can, glorying in the equal payback he receives.**

Far too soon – not quickly enough – they moved past pleasantries on the steps, coming inside. From there, a few stumbling steps found them one night breathless and gasping, grappling at one another with the desperation of starving men.

Connor pulled back, glossy-eyed, grinning. "I'm keeping you."

"You can't know –"

"But I do." Wesley found himself kissed softly and deeply, a promise of riches beyond his wildest dreaming. All that lacked was their claiming. "Trust me?"

He stared at the beautiful young man, doubting, hoping, wishing, daring. "Why me?"

A third kiss. "Because." And that was all.

But it was enough.

**At the end of the night, slow, sleepy caresses ease them both toward much-needed sleep. They spoon up close together as they drift away.

Wesley is happier than he has ever been, and properly grateful. He knows what he owes Connor. His very life, for a start. He came in at the lowest ebb and raised him up again, saving him from – he doesn't know what, but nothing good.

Connor's taught him not to question the strange miracle that they are to one another. Bu mea means to – he is – repaying him as best he can. Teaching him everything he knows. He's quick as Wesley, soaking up knowledge fast as it can be poured into him. If an odd flicker of recognition, as if remembering something he already knows crosses his face from time to time, neither pays it much mind. Connor grew up in a plain family, never knowing of the supernatural till he touched the Quortoth book and then Wesley himself. Deja vu happens, and there's simply no way he could be familiar with any of what Wesley has to impart.

He will, of course, be better for it in the end.

Wesley pulls his lover closer as the last threads of consciousness slip from his grasp. ~You shalver ver regret, Connor,~ he swears sleepily to himself. ~For the future is bright... and it is ours.~**

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For those interested...

Sonnet 6

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thy self to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.