| After: The Girl in Question by Shiver |
| Pairing: A/S Spoilers: Up to “Power Play” (AtS: S5) Notes: This is going to be a multi-part leading up until the end of the series describing the slashy goings-on between Angel and Spike between the episodes, also with flashbacks. - - - - - Spike sprang up from where he was perched on the edge of the desk, roared, struck one of the tables with his fists and broke it into pieces. Angel watched him impassively, let him rage until, worn out, he sank to he floor. “Are you done?” Angel said. “No!” Spike replied petulantly, surveyed the wreckage around him, said more quietly, “…yes.” Angel touched the button on his desk that made the office windows obscure, crossed to crouch at Spike’s side. Spike dropped his face into his hands and sighed. “You couldn’t have done that five minutes ago?” he grumbled. Angel tipped his head forward and chuckled. After a moment Spike joined him. “What a pair we are,” Spike said. “Why does she always do this to us?” Angel said. “A few days ago it was all so easy. What is it about her?” “Well, she’s Buffy, isn’t she,” Spike said. Angel slumped down, resigned. “Yeah,” he said. They sat side by side, quiet for several minutes. “She doesn’t want us, you know,” Spike said at last. “I know,” Angel said. Another few minutes and Angel stood, held out a hand and helped Spike to his feet. “Remember what you said about letting the primitive brain take over?” Angel said quietly. “Yeah,” Spike said. Angel looked into Spike’s eyes. “You think you could show me how to do that?” Spike put a hand on the back of Angel’s neck, leaned his head forward until their foreheads touched. “Come upstairs,” Spike said, his voice low and husky. “Let old Spike take care of you.” - - - - - They undressed one another slowly, washed each other gently under Angel’s shower, laughed and teased. Spike brought Angel back to the bed and laid him down. “I think I still need to make good on a promise,” Spike said, then turned away nervously. “I mean, if you still want me to.” “Yes, I want you to,” Angel affirmed. Spike sat alongside him and delicately, reverently, stroked the side of Angel’s thigh. “This will be the first time I’ve ever been with you like this,” he said, his voice betraying his disbelief. “I… It’s a little… overwhelming.” Angel caught Spike’s fingers, held them a moment. “I want this,” he repeated. “We need to make this right between us. Bring us back.” Spike nodded, reached for the slick that now stayed on top of the nightstand, squeezed some out. As he lifted Angel’s leg and rolled him back, Spike seemed to realize something. “This will be your first time with any man like this, won’t it?” he said. Angel laughed. “No,” he said. Spike’s eyes narrowed. “Who..? Not the old bat?” “No,” Angel said. “But, Hell aside, let’s just say it wasn’t all alleys and rats during that hundred years.” Spike didn’t quite conceal his disappointment. “Oh,” he said. “I guess… it was a long time.” Angel’s expression softened. “But this will be the first time with a man who cared about me,” he said. “Someone who knows me.” He guided Spike’s hand where it needed to go. “Someone who I care about and want to be with.” Spike came out of his mood and began to prepare Angel to receive him. He laid down and positioned himself. “I’ll be gentle,” he said, and he pushed his cock inside. Angel arched up against Spike, wrapped one leg around Spike’s back, wrapped his hands around Spike’s torso and held tight. Spike gripped Angel’s biceps and groaned with pleasure, began a slow, easy rhythm. They moved this way until both lost their sense of time, of where they were, of everything but each other. Spike found he couldn’t help but stare at Angel’s face, his eyes, his mouth, wanting to impress this moment on his memory for when it was over. Angel began to pant, small, breathy cries that came at the apex of each thrust. Spike screwed his eyes closed, lowered one hand, wrapped it around Angel’s cock and began to stroke in time, a hard squeeze down, the lightest caress coming up. “William,” Angel breathed. “I’m… Oh, God…” “Angel!” Spike cried out as he came, every muscle so taut it trembled, and Angel followed with a gasp almost like a sob. Spike pressed his mouth against Angel’s, kissed him, marveling at how Angel’s lips were so soft, softer than a man’s ought to be. They collapsed into each other’s arms. Spike shook, partly from exertion, mostly from emotion. Spike opened his eyes, and Angel could see he was so overcome that they shone with unshed tears. Spike raised one hand, wonderingly, to touch Angel’s face. “Angel,” he whispered. “I…” Angel pressed his face forward, caught Spike’s mouth with his own, and kissed the breath out of him, leaving him unable to speak. - - - - - They spooned together, dozed, snuggled, unwilling to leave the bed and return to the demands that waited for them. Spike found himself unable to stop touching Angel, boldly, possessively. The boundary having finally been crossed he gave himself permission to explore a hundred other things formerly forbidden between them: the feel of Angel’s skin, like silk gliding over marble, the color of the veins in his eyelids, the shape of his mouth when he slept. Even when Angel fully awoke he allowed, encouraged Spike to continue. “After all this time,” Spike said quietly. “The things I never saw before.” Angel smiled, but it was sad, and he turned his gaze to the ceiling. Spike stretched across him, watching his face. “What are you thinking about?” Spike asked after a few minutes. “Us. This place. How we got here. The price we paid.” Angel put an arm around Spike, stroked his hair absently. “You were right. This is a deal we shouldn’t have taken.” “We made our choices, Angel, for our own reasons. We all roll the bones.” “I thought I could do good,” Angel said. “With the resources here, I could make up for all of the evil I’d done as Angelus. But everything that happens depends on something else. Fred wouldn’t have died if we hadn’t come here. We wouldn’t have come here if we didn’t defeat Jasmine. Jasmine wouldn’t have been born if… Back to Sunnydale, back to China, back to the curse, back to you, to Dru, to Darla in that alley. All of it.” Angel’s expression turned hard. “How do we even it out? How good is good enough?” “Doesn’t work that way, love,” Spike said. “There’s not some cosmic ledger book where you balance your accounts.” “Is there even any point at all, then? Is there a final reward, or does it all just end?” Spike gave a small shudder. “We both know it doesn’t,” he said. “Then it all goes back to the beginning,” Angel said. “Were we irrevocably damned when we swallowed our first taste of blood?” Spike sighed. “So it’s all hopeless because we’re vampires, then?” “I don’t know,” Angel said sincerely. “Maybe.” Spike, rolled onto his back to stare upwards, as well. “Do you ever think about that? What your life would have been if you hadn't become a vampire?” The long pause clearly said Angel hadn't. “I'd have drunk myself into an early grave, I guess,” he said. “Either that, or grown up and taken over my father's business. Could have gone either way.” “I know exactly what my life would have been like,” Spike said. Angel looked over at Spike expectantly. “I know exactly what my life would have been like,” he began again, his voice taking the tone of one relating a well-known tale. “Having been burned, like Icarus, when I tried to touch the sun that was Cecily, I'd have plunged back to earth and into despair. Monday morning, I'd have returned to my miserable position as clerk for a linen importer, where I'd have scribbled numbers into columns while dreaming of real love and sneaking a line or two of poetry onto a scrap of paper I kept hidden beneath my ledger. “This would go on, day in and day out, for years, most likely, until a friend of my mother's with a spinster daughter decided I was better than nothing, and the three of them--- my mother, her friend, and the girl--- would trap me as surely as any spider netted a fly. “If I was lucky, the girl would merely be plain and uninteresting.” Spike's voice lowered conspiratorially, “but believe me, I was never lucky. Therefore, I expect she'd be a shrill and demanding harpy, who would spend me to the brink of debtor's prison while doing her best impersonation of a marble statue in bed.” Angel grinned at this image, and Spike joined him. “Somehow this loveless and joyless union would produce children,” Spike went on, “mewling brats we couldn't ship off to boarding school fast enough. They would see their father as a distant and somewhat pathetic figure, dominated by his overbearing wife, and hiding in his study whenever he could. “When I died, they would find in the bottom drawer of my desk a stack of copybooks, filled with poems of love and longing, and all of them would laugh at their foolish old father. My wife would wear her widow's weeds not one day longer than required by propriety, and my name would be no more than a line in the church role book to be discovered and dutifully jotted down by a great-great-grandchild researching the family tree, and a small marble stone lost in the brush at Highgate.” Spike fell silent, and after a moment crept over to Angel and touched his fingertips to the older vampire's cheek. “Look at you,” he said gently. “Crying over the death of someone who never was.” Angel squeezed his eyes shut, and the tears ran down his face. “Yes,” he said simply. Spike leaned forward and very gently touched his lips to Angel’s eyelid, tasting the tear. “Don’t,” he said. “Not for me. I regret the killings, but I don’t regret dying. Our lives have been great adventures, even when we were evil. There were prophecies about us, powerful forces aligning all around us. It’s a big picture, and we’re both part of it.” Angel reached out, pulled Spike back into his arms. “But am I the subject, or the painter?” he mused. “Make your choice and find out.” Angel stroked Spike’s hair again, an action that was comforting to them both. “Go to sleep,” he said. - - - - - Spike woke nested again in the blankets, but the warmth seemed somehow absent. He rose, but did not go to the kitchen right away. Instead he washed and dressed, prepared for whatever work he’d do today. He found Angel, too, fully dressed, the newspaper untouched, drinking his coffee as he stood by the sink. “Big day today?” Spike asked. “Do you still have that apartment you were living in before?” Angel said, ignoring the question. Spike turned wary. “Yeah…” “I need you to go there tonight.” Spike stood still, not trusting his tongue. Angel stepped towards him, took his face in his great hands as though Spike were a child. “You need to separate yourself from me,” Angel said. “It isn’t safe anymore.” Spike shook his head. “It’s never been safe,” he said. “What’s happened? Did one of your humans..?” “No. It’s bigger than that. I’d tell you to trust me, but I don’t trust myself. You just have to go.” “How long?” Spike felt like the ground was sliding away beneath his feet. His voice was touched with desperation when he repeated his question. “How long before I can come back?” “William!” Angel spoke sternly. “Do as I say!” Spike laid one hand over Angel’s where it still touched his cheek. “How long?” Angel turned his head, a little left, back, a tiny gesture of helplessness. “Please, little one.” Spike jerked back, out of Angel’s hands. “I haven’t been your little one since the nineteenth century,” he said. “Something’s wrong, Angel. I know you…” Angel shook his head again, harder this time. “Then you know what I’ll do to get you gone,” he said. They stared each other down, Spike turning away first. After a moment he looked up again. “I’ll go,” he said. “But I’ll be back.” And he left the apartment. - - - - - China – 1900 Drusilla stretched her arms above her head and rolled her neck back and forth. “My Angel is back,” she cooed. Spike, to his credit, only gave a momentary pause where he lay atop her, thrusting inside. “Yes, I heard,” he snarled, and began again. “I was afraid we’d never see him again.” Spike curled one hand into a fist. He wouldn’t hit her, but he wanted to. “Dru,” he said. “Do you think you could attend to the task at hand for just a few more minutes!” The last came out as a shout. She seemed to become aware of his presence. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said sweetly. “Do carry on.” He grunted in frustration, then began pistoning more quickly in and out. He came with a cry, his head thrown back, his eyelids fluttering. She made a tiny, “oh,” so close to nothing that Spike doubted it had any connection to him at all, and was more likely some stray fancy about cuttlefish or steam engines or the color yellow. He pulled away form her, snatched for his clothes. “I’m going for a drink,” he announced, knowing his words were for no one’s benefit but his own, and he stomped out of the room and down the hall. In the darkness of the interior hallway, he nearly collided with Angelus, who was creeping out of the room he shared with Darla. In an instant, the older vampire had one arm around Spike’s torso and the other over his mouth. “Not a sound,” he hissed in Spike’s ear, and the younger vampire went utterly still. With a tilt of his head, Angelus indicated the study, and released him. Since Spike was headed there anyway, he followed. Angelus poured himself a tumbler of liquor, another for Spike, and the two sat down. “I didn’t want to wake Darla,” Angelus explained unnecessarily, and Spike grinned. “It’s just as well,” he said. “Since I haven’t had a chance to welcome you back personally myself.” Angelus came out of a distraction. “What’s that?” Spike slid off his chair and moved forward to crouch at Angelus’s feet. “Well, Drusilla, lovely as she is, left me a bit unsatisfied,” Spike said coyly. “And I’d wager there are still one or two things Darla can’t…” He licked his lips and laid one palm over Angelus’s cock, feeling it begin to twitch. “*Won’t* do for you,” he amended. He reached to undo Angelus’s trouser buttons, found his hand yanked away. “Get away from me.” Angelus’s voice was low and furious. Spike looked up at him in confusion. “Don’t you..?” “You’re disgusting,” Angelus went on. “You come to me, smelling of smoke and blood and… and… *death,* wanting to pollute yourself…” He stood up, covered his face with one hand. “How can I do this?” Spike stayed on the floor, stunned, and when Angelus finally dropped his hand, Spike concealed his hurt behind a practiced sneer. “Fuck you, then,” he said, and fled the room for more private quarters. The next night Spike killed his first Slayer, and with Angelus’s congratulations he believed things had come back to normal, but by the morning Angelus was gone for good, and Spike’s hurt became resentment. It would take nearly a century for Spike to learn the context of that meeting, to know that Angelus had already had his soul when he rejoined them in China. It would take a few years longer for him to learn what that meant, the self-loathing that the sight of his “family” only made sharper. But by then, Spike was going slowly mad in a high-school basement and had enough loathing for them both. - - - - - Spike entered Angel’s empty office, still dark and quiet, though around him the rest of the building had reached its usual mid-morning level of activity. Spike frowned; even when he and Angel lingered in the morning, they were out and down by now. Spike ran his fingertips along the edge of Angel’s desk, wondering if he should wait, when he heard voices above him. Just for a moment, due to a quirk of vampire hearing or a vagary of the ductwork, Angel and a woman. “You’re not perfectly happy, are you?” she laughed, and Spike shook his head, bitterly amused. He stepped back into the hall, leaned against the doorjamb, watched the lawyers come and go, waited for distraction until Angel came for him. |