__The Art of (Non) Forgiveness__
By Amanda Sichter
He didn't know when not forgiving her had stopped being an option.
Maybe it was right now as she stood in front of him in her pigtails and her
fake Texas twang, proving how desperately she wanted him. That's what she
gave him that no-one else ever had - proof that he was, in and of himself,
a creature desirable.
She looked at him through her glasses and he wondered what she was trying
to say to him, trying to be for him. He wondered sometimes where Lilah
Morgan had gone, where this woman who wanted him so badly had come from. He
wondered sometimes why he wanted her so badly and which one he wanted;
Lilah Morgan, lawyer bitch from hell whose hard edges clashed so
deliciously with his own, or this other woman, this one who had only ever
been seen by him. This woman who spoke words meant to cut and hurt but
whose actions turned them back upon herself, sliced open her hard shell and
showed him where she was vulnerable.
He used to think he was a nice man. Such a bland word, such a bland man. He
had inspired passion in no-one, including himself. Passion, intensity -
these were things that hurt, that led to locked doors and dark spaces. To
be noticed was to gain another of the half a hundred scars that had faded
to nearly nothing (on his body at least). So he had put passion away, made
himself safe and nice and passionless, barely noticeable. He had felt love
but he had damped it down, hidden it so neatly and tidily that the ones he
loved could turn away from him, betray him, abandon him, without ever
knowing how it hurt.
Lilah Morgan had turned a key inside him, opened a door he barely knew
existed and, when she did, all the other parts of him had tumbled out. Dark
passions, strange desires, the pieces of him that wanted pain - to give and
receive it - the twisted places in his psyche that wanted both to dominate
and submit, the desires so perfectly poised that each fuck had become a
game to determine which would win. She had met and matched him, treated
each kink as another fascinating part of him, joined him in set pieces of
frightening eroticism, played the moves in his game so perfectly that
neither he nor she knew who held the power at any given moment.
They had become strange partners, caught in some twilight world they hoped
would never end, he as much as she. They knew they were enemies. They knew
they fought on opposite sides. But in her apartment, his apartment, her
office, there was a safe space where they could stop being Lilah Morgan,
Agent of the Apocalypse and Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, Agent of the Powers That
Be, and just be two creatures grappling in the dark, tied together by lust
and pain, power and desire.
They lied to each other with absolute honesty. They deceived each other
with perfect clarity. They hated each other with passion, a shout of skin
against each other as they drowned inside their darkness and told
themselves not to hope that the other would save them.
She thought that he loved Fred. Even now she said it, assumed it. She would
have been right once. Before. Before Lilah. Before passion you could fall
into, desire that scorched the skin with the heat of it. He did not know
who had done it to Lilah but she, too, had been damaged. Her goals might
oppose his utterly, but her damage matched his exactly and he didn't know
now how he would feel about someone who didn't fit into his jagged edges so
neatly.
And with Fred he would always be second choice. Third choice. The last (the
least?) of her loves.
To Lilah he was first and absolute. She wore her pigtails and her glasses
and her schoolgirl's outfit to prove it to him. She gave him absolute power
over her and, in doing so, took away his power not to forgive.
He didn't say it. It was never said in words. To say it would make it real
and if what was between them ever became real it would kill them both.
So he said it without words, said it with heat and a kiss and a sudden
hardness against her thigh, the only language they communicated in.
She had power over him and he had to make sure she didn't know it.
She had started this game and that meant she could not be allowed to win
it.
So, 'Leave them on,' he said as she tried to slip the glasses from her
face. Her look was wounded, uncertain but he didn't know he had won until
she slid them back on again, slipped her heated wetness down further upon
his hardness, thrust hard against him in something that mixed fury and
passion and nearly-hate and nearly-love until they burned.
They were Wesley and Lilah and what was between them was both the simplest
thing in the world and the most dangerous game he had ever played.
All he knew was that she could not be allowed to win, could not take him
into the dark and the cold of Wolfram and Hart (although he was no longer
sure that was even her goal). All he knew was that, if that happened, he
would never forgive himself. Then she thrust against him again, kissed him
with lips that burned and all he knew then was that he wanted her more than
he had ever wanted anything in his whole life, wanted to drown in her and
never surface again.
He kissed her back harder and felt himself falling to meet her as she rose,
darkness to darkness, lost inside each other and the night. He did not let
himself think about how much longer it would last, which lie, which
betrayal would be the one that broke them.
Because the thought of them ending was the one thought that he could never
forgive.
* * *