GENTLEMAN'S TIME

 

"I want to get off one time and not apologize..."--Third Eye Blind, Faster

 

It had been a long day, and Angel wanted nothing more than to just relax in a good, hot shower.  He ached from swinging his axe for seemingly hours on end, hacking heads and various other body parts off extremely vicious and odoriferous demons. Not to mention the smell of sewage that still clung to him. And his coat. Cost a mint to dry-clean the damn thing, too.

 

Then there had been the meeting. People in suits looking at him like he was something to be avoided or ignored, while he patiently explained that he'd never had to fill out paperwork in the past to kill demons well-known for their baby-eating tendencies.

 

Maybe he would have made a better impression if he hadn't smelled like a sewer.

 

He stripped, letting his clothes fall in a disordered pile on the floor. His new penthouse apartment had a good, roomy shower, at least. Room for three, he thought, not that there would ever be an opportunity to find out. And jets--ten of them. Hedonistic, he thought. He loved it but didn't like to admit it.

 

He turned on the water, adjusting it so it was steaming hot. He was cold--he was always cold--and the too-hot water, pounding from ten different angles, burned for a moment before his skin adjusted.

 

He stood for several long seconds, just feeling the heat, the water pounding against him. It was like being inside a waterfall. It almost made him feel alive.

 

His skin was oversensitized by now, the pounding jets of water almost hurting him. He let it. It felt good. The intense sensation made fire begin to crawl through his belly, thick and liquid.

 

It had been far too long. Since the Sisters. Not that he hadn't enjoyed that, but once every two years just wasn't sufficient. Plain and simple--his body was craving sex. Badly. It wasn't fair, he thought, that he could be dead and still be so horny.

 

The mere presence of the need made him feel guilty. One more thing he had no control over. At least it was a human thing. But if the church teachings he'd grown up on held any truth, he could end up in hell ten times over based on the sin of self-abuse alone. Forget the killings and torture.

 

It didn't matter to him any more. If he was going to hell--again--it would be for flaying nuns and eating them alive, not for jacking himself off one or four hundred times too many. Plain and simple.

 

He soaked his hair, shampooed and conditioned. Dug his fingers into his scalp, scrubbed until it hurt. Far too aware of his body, his growing arousal, his cock thickening, rising...

 

He soaped himself thoroughly, trying to make it straightforward and utilitarian. No such luck. He looked down, at the somehow accusatory regard of his cock, and gave a resigned sigh.

 

He wasn't completely erect yet, but damn close, the glans mostly exposed by now as his foreskin retracted along his hardening shaft. He cupped his scrotum, lifted it, feeling the weight of his testicles as he maneuvered them. The heat in his loins had become insistent, impossible to ignore. His whole body was clenching, aching for some kind of release.

 

He supposed there was no point fighting it. He sighed again, and braced his free hand against the wall.

 

He pressed and rolled his testicles, feeling the need rise in his groin, wrapping around his loins, pooling. Insistent. Demanding. His fist clenched against the wall and he closed his eyes.

 

Buffy. No. Couldn't think about Buffy. Too much. But that was where his mind went, as if it were an instinct. His hand on his balls became her hand, her mouth drawing his testicles in, one at a time. . .

 

He forced his eyes open. Too much. Even now, with so much time and space--so much shit--between them, it was more than he could handle. It had been more than he could handle then. So much emotion, and the hopelessness of it... He remembered carefully silent fellatio in her girlish bedroom, holding her head gently, caressing her face as she swallowed. Her green eyes smiling up at him. He so afraid of the pure love swelling inside him--

 

He tipped his head back and clenched his hand on his cock. No point to any of it except to get it the fuck over with. Holding himself too tight, thrusting brutally through his fist. He could hurt himself this way, and had, and did, the delicate edge of his foreskin tearing in a sharp stab of pain as he handled himself too roughly, too vindictively. But the pain, the smell of his own blood, just aroused him that much more, and he stiffened, his body convulsing, the sudden intensity of the release making him cry out involuntarily.

 

God, it had been too long, and the orgasm seemed to clench and rip through every muscle of his body. He felt himself bucking, saw the white come splattering against the wall of the shower, but it seemed to no longer have anything to do with him. It was just a fist clenched around his body, his soul, wringing him out.

 

You're pathetic, so fucking pathetic, no wonder nobody wants you no wonder you're reduced to this, you're worthless, you always have been, I am ashamed to call you son... Demon, demon you are no one you are nothing you are in hell...

 

He howled and slammed his forehead into the wall, feeling the pain, feeling everything pulse out of him, tearing out of the depths of his soul, his soul which was supposed to make him different, make him special, but which just made him hurt so Goddamn much...

 

His hips bucked and his buttocks clenched and he forced his eyes open, watching the last of the sticky come spurt out of his body. Not even him, he thought, nothing to do with him at all. It was cold and dead, worthless like the rest of him. He swallowed hard, letting himself relax, finally. Catharsis, it was supposed to be. He wasn't sure if it served that function. He didn't feel healed. He just felt empty.

 

He pulled the main shower head down from the holder and sprayed the wall clean. He was still bleeding. It would heal. Five minutes from now he'd be intact again. Even injury left no mark on him anymore.

 

When had he lost the ability to feel? But he knew the answer to that question, and he couldn't even feel the pain from that, because he had shoved it down so far inside him.

 

The come on the wall had blood in it. He washed it down the drain. Dead. Always had been, always would be.

 

Except that once.

 

END.