Dark Domain - Part One - Synopsis

Eager to gain the position and prominence in demon society that she feels her due, Darla persuades Angelus to curry favour from a visiting archduke. Unfortunately for William, he's the vehicle for this petition. From the outset, Angelus is uncomfortable with the idea of his new childe being prostituted to this foreigner, but he puts his discomfort down to his abhorrence with the idea of a man having sex with another man. On the long journey north, however, he has to admit that his discomposure has a more dangerous provenance. Love, however, cannot be tolerated. It's a human emotion, a human weakness he cannot afford to admit. Only when they are both near death does he allow William's capacity to embrace this human emotion save them. From that moment on they become inseparable-lovers and friends. One of these, Darla could have tolerated, but she cannot bear to think of William being Angelus's friend and confidant. Clever and manipulative, she contrives to leave Angelus alone with a half-dead soldier; confident that Angelus's true nature will reassert itself. Sated with pleasure in the dying man, Angelus cannot help but crow his victory over the English usurper of his land. Discovering them together, William takes off. When Angelus eventually finds him, he has reinvented himself: Spike being born on the pain of betrayal. Although they stay together as a family, although William maintains his new persona flawlessly, Angelus cannot help but hope that time might force a crack in his mask. This hope keeps him in love's thrall for many years, but eternity is a long time to live on hope alone.

Dark Domain now continues in:

Dweller in the Land of Death

Chapter 1

‘If I were at all fanciful, I would say I’m having a Tippi Hedren moment.’ Wesley watched the circling dark shapes with some curiosity. ‘I had no idea gulls—any birds come to that—flew at night.’

Angel didn’t look up from his book propped up on the wheel. ‘They’re not real. They’re virtual gulls following me.’

Wesley turned his head to him and blinked. ‘Mindful of mixing my literary references, that’s a remarkably Ahab-like comment.’

There was a splat on the windscreen—a very realistic one for a virtual seagull. Angel lifted his eyebrow. ‘Just as well it wasn’t a whale.’

Wesley laughed dryly just as the rear door was wrenched open.

‘Oh! That’s bloody rich! I’m glad you can laugh, Watcher. I’ve been freezing my buns off out there keeping watch on an empty bloody street!’

‘It’s eighty degrees! And you’re wearing two layers of leather!’

‘Yeah, well. It’s still boring as hell.’

Angel closed his book. ‘Hell was anything but boring.’

‘Oh… here we go again… it’s Big Red Porsche time: my gonads are bigger than yours cus I’ve been to hell. Jesus, Mate, I survived The Trials—worse than hell any day!’

‘And I put up with you! Hell was a pleasant vacation compared—.’

‘I’ll take watch, Angel, if you don’t mind. Anything not to have to listen to you two bickering.’

‘We’re not—.’ They both shut up simultaneously, and Wesley chuckled softly to himself.

Angel started the car. ‘This is a waste of time. We’ve been set up.’

He pulled out of the deep shadow of the warehouse and drove slowly along the dock under the arc lights.

Spike fiddled with some switches for a moment then cursed, sat forward and pressed the buttons on Angel’s console to lower his window. He flung himself back in his seat and lit a cigarette.

‘Not in the car.’

Spike gave Angel the finger and continued to smoke.

Wesley glanced at Angel, but Angel was good at not seeing his slightly censorious sideward glances.

‘Stop!’

Angel reacted so fast the tyres left tread on the street. He assumed they’d hit something—a child perhaps—but Spike only stubbed out his cigarette and nodded at a lit window. ‘Offy. I need some beer.’ He climbed out nonchalantly then after a moment’s hesitation turned back and said, ‘Don’t even think about pushing off and leaving me, ponce.’ He lit another cigarette then sauntered off in the direction of the alcohol.

Wesley watched in disbelief as Angel turned off the ignition.

‘Is there anything he could do that would actually piss you off enough to do something about him? Have you given him some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card?’

Angel thought for a moment then smiled bitterly. ‘I’ve thought about giving him an Oscar once or twice.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Private joke.’

Wesley raised his eyebrows: Angel didn’t look as if he found it funny at all.

Spike climbed back in and thoughtfully offered them both a swig from the bottle of whisky he’d bought. ‘Bloody dive.’

When they didn’t move, he waved his hand imperiously. ‘Come on, then. Favourite show’s on tonight.’

Angel put the car back into drive and glanced in the mirror—as if he could see Spike. Spike was watching the mirror—as if Angel would see this.

Wesley, was frowning, polishing his glasses. ‘I’m convinced that that dreadful little man, Prescott, was telling the truth. People usually do when you threaten to bite them.’

‘So, where was the shipment?’

Wesley nodded. ‘Quite. Maybe he was set up, too.’

‘No one knows we have him.’

‘Who knows what people know these days?’

‘These people aren’t mystical, Wesley. It’s gunrunning: pure and simple.’

Spike leant forward and said with an almost unnoticeable slur to his words, ‘No reason gunrunners can’t be into all that mystical shit, too. I ran guns into Ireland—they loved the whole demon angle.’

Once more, Angel glanced in the mirror. ‘You ran guns for the IRA?’

Spike grinned and shook his head. ‘The other ones.’

They both ignored a faint groan from Wesley.

Angel flashed his absence another look. This one decidedly less friendly. Spike nodded happily. ‘God save our gracious Queen, Mate. Loved seeing those Irish bastards going down.’ He took a long swig of whiskey. ‘Huh. Bushmills. Now, that’s what I call a coincidence. Good Protty town that.’

‘Shut up, Spike.’ Angel gave Wesley a glance, and Wesley retorted, ‘Well, if you won’t shut him up….’

Spike leant forward again. ‘Angel likes me to talk, don’t you, Mate? Keeps you on edge, wondering what I’m gonna say next. What shall I say next, Pet? Got lots of interesting things I could tell ol’ Wes….’

Angel suddenly chuckled and said under his breath, ‘But then you’d have to admit that you remember them.’

Spike hesitated for a moment then flung himself back against the seat with a deep pull at the mouth of the bottle. Another few blocks on and he said curtly, ‘Let me out here. I’ll walk.’ If he noticed the complete absence of argument from either of his companions, he didn’t comment upon it.

Wesley relaxed slightly when they pulled back out into the street and opened his window to pointedly waft at a few lingering cigarette and whisky smells. ‘Why is he still hanging around, Angel? He’s alive again, so to speak, and he can go anywhere he wants and do anything he wants. Not that we can’t use the help. God, did I just call Spike help? Are we that desperate...?’

Although he had talked himself out of needing an answer to his original question, Angel didn’t offer one anyway. Unconcerned, he peered curiously at the dark, unwelcoming buildings that lined the street. ‘Where does he go? Is he renting somewhere? I wonder what he does for money; we’re not paying him. Are we paying him? I wonder if his soul precludes him from stealing. Is it unethical to steal if you can’t work legitimately? Interesting moral dilemma. Do you think he paid for that whisky?’

* * * * * * *

It did not take Angel long the next day to see that all was not well with Spike. He came out of his office to return some signed letters to Harmony to find the blond vampire morosely holding a cardboard cup from the cooler, swirling it to the hissing accompaniment of dissolving pills. He seemed oblivious to everything else but the painkillers and their slow dissolve, until with a curse he tipped the cup to his mouth, apparently unable to wait longer. The bits caught on his throat causing him to cough violently, which made him stagger and hold his head, his pale colour changing to a soft green hue.  As Angel had been at his desk for some hours and had spent the remainder of the night trying to force more information out of their informant, he had even less tolerance for Spike’s hangovers than usual. He handed the letters to Harmony without looking at her and said curtly to Spike, ‘I want you back at the docks—now.’

Spike lifted bloodshot eyes. ‘I want you to bloody disappear up your own bum—but we rarely get what we want in life.’

More annoyed by the snicker from his left than by Spike’s rejoinder, Angel turned on his heel and went back to his office. Spike followed and sat very slowly on the couch, leaning back and closing his eyes with some care. Angel stood watching him for a while.

‘What?’

Angel started slightly and returned to his desk. ‘I’m busy, Spike; what do you want?’

‘Well, seeing as I don’t have a sodding office of me own, I’m making free with yours. Me casa su casa, an’ all that. So…?’

‘So what?’

‘So, why do I have to go back to the bloody docks?’

‘Prescott claims he could have gotten the time of the shipment wrong, but it is coming in.’

‘Oh, yeah, like I’ll trot right down there then.’ He slumped some more and began to rub his temples. ‘Stop watching me.’

Angel flicked his eyes down to his papers and didn’t dignify the comment with a reply. He then sensed that Spike was watching him and wanted to make an equally barbed retort about this. Somehow, nothing he composed in his head sounded quite right. Finally, he heard a soft, dismissive snort of derision, and Spike rose. ‘Yeah.’

Angel lifted his head, angry enough to say without any rehearsal, ‘What do you want, Spike? Wesley asks me why you’re hanging around here, and do you know? I can’t answer him! Why are you? Big world out there; go discover it.’

Spike stared at him for a moment and flushed, though such a pale blood rush would only have been discernable to someone not relying on just one sense to discover it. He nodded, a curt gesture of agreement. ‘Okay then.’

Angel frowned. ‘Okay what…?’

‘Okay, I’ll go.’

‘Go.’

‘To the big world I apparently didn’t know was out there.’

‘You’re going?’

Spike looked back over his shoulder at the big picture windows. ‘Never did like this bloody city.’ With that, he walked out and did not look back.

* * * * * *

Angel consulted the scrap of paper as if he needed to read the address again. He frowned at the gloomy set of stairs then jogged down them, hammering on the door at the bottom.

‘Fuck off.’

He repressed a tiny smile and said into the thin door, ‘We need to talk.’

‘There is no we, in case you’d forgotten.’

‘Then let me in, and I’ll talk.’

Spike opened the door and leant in the doorway, preventing Angel’s entrance. Angel glanced into the bleak apartment and noted the evident signs of packing—if one old bag with a pair of trailing jeans constituted Spike’s preparations to leave. He dragged his eyes back to Spike. ‘I’m not talking in the hallway.’

Spike shrugged and moved to one side, turning his back on Angel and continuing to fold a shirt, which he then stuffed unceremoniously into the bag.

‘We have an important job to do here, Spike.’ He braced himself for Spike’s reply, having heard the derisive retort in his head all the way over.

To his surprise, Spike nodded. ‘Yep, you have.’

Angel was completely floored, all his carefully rehearsed rejoinders now useless. Spike turned to him, and for one very rare moment actually caught his eye. ‘I thought I was helping.’

Angel pouted for a moment and uncharacteristically said something to Spike that was actually true. ‘You are.’ He surprised himself by adding, ‘So I want you to stay.’

Spike contorted his expression for a while as if mulling this over as he folded another T-shirt—an elaborate process that seemed out of proportion to the value of the item. Then he stuffed that into the bag in a similar haphazard fashion as he had the shirt. ‘Did Wesley send you?’

‘No, of course—! Okay, he said it would be a good idea, but he doesn’t send me; I’m the CEO.’

Spike turned, and to Angel’s surprise, gave him a small, genuine smile. Angel sighed. ‘Look, I admit it wasn’t my idea, but it is now—my idea, that is. I agree with Wesley: we need you.’

‘What about what I need?’

‘Huh?’ Angel immediately regretted giving Spike any such opening and quickly added, ‘This isn’t about us as individuals, Spike. This is much bigger than you or me. There is no I.’

‘There is in not interested.’

Annoyed now, Angel moved to one of the few pieces of furniture in the room and sat on the arm of an easy chair. ‘Stay.’

Spike looked down at his bag and then slowly around the apartment. ‘I want to go now. It was time, but I couldn’t see it.’ He looked down quickly as if afraid he might give the reason for this blindness away.

Angel rose. This wasn’t going how he’d expected, and he didn’t like the sense of things slipping out of his control. ‘We have souls now.’

Spike lifted his head sharply and held Angel’s gaze for a moment. They both seemed equally surprised at this strange comment that appeared to have no relevance to what they’d been discussing. Spike articulated this puzzlement for the two of them. ‘So?’

‘Things could be different….’ Desperate for something to do with his hands while he gnawed over what he meant by things, Angel went to the sink and poured some water into a chipped mug.

Spike appeared to find his use of language equally puzzling. ‘What are you saying, Angel?’

Not even attempting to drink, Angel swirled the water around, watching it as if it could somehow, like dregs in tea, predict the outcome of this conversation. ‘There’s no need for us to be enemies any more.’

‘I wasn’t aware we were enemies. Bloody hell, did I miss a memo?’

Angel looked up. ‘Stop it.’

Spike looked away. ‘Souls have nothing to do with it.’

‘They have everything to do with it—and you know it.’

‘What’s it?’

‘You used the word first.’

Spike closed his eyes. ‘I want to go, Angel. I’m tired of… it.’

Angel slammed the mug back onto the drainer, and the handle came off in his hands. He flung it at Spike. ‘Go then! See if I care.’

Spike watched the dark figure sweep out, his neck craned round to track his progress. His cheek stung where the handle had hit him, and he felt a warm trickle, which he told himself was blood.

* * * * * * *

They returned to the warehouse, just the two of them, but without Spike they felt unhappy in each other’s company for the first time in a very long time. Neither of them had realised just how much they relied upon the blond irritant to meld their relationship tighter. Tonight it was fragmenting. Wesley seemed his most pompous and English; Angel was being deliberately obtuse. He was chewing gum, too, a habit that so irritated Wesley he was forced to shield the sight slightly with one hand. It was just so… un-English. Angel popped a bubble then pulled a strand of gum out as he had once, with horrified fascination, watched Buffy do. There was nothing as much fun as winding Wesley up.

‘There!’

Angel lost control of the strand and struggled out of the car with gum attaching his fingers to anything he touched. Wesley had already begun to run stealthily toward the side of the warehouse they’d been watching. 

Angel leapt up to a fire escape and climbed swiftly to the roof. The original plan, now they were without Spike, had had to be modified. But as Angel had not really believed they’d intercept a shipment, and as he had been oddly distracted all day, he had not been too concerned about listening to the details of the new plan. The roofing material was fragile and fallen through in places, and although he often gave the impression that he could fly, he couldn’t. He was heavy, and his progress across the roof was precarious. And then he fell through. The flying impression then failed him entirely, and he landed face down on oil-stained concrete, bouncing slightly as the tails of his coat settled around him.

‘Fuck.’

There was a shout, and a shot rang out. He heard Wesley’s voice and levered up off the floor. Three men, clearly thinking him dead, had their backs to him and were advancing on Wesley. Wesley nodded that he was okay, and at this, one of the men turned to see what was behind them. He gave another shout just as Angel’s fist connected with his nose, so the sound emerged mushy and muffled. Angel heard another shout, just had time to register that it was Wesley this time and that he was shouting a warning, when exquisitely painful heat seared through his body. He glanced down in surprise and saw what looked like a long skewer emerging from his chest. If it had been wood, he would have turned to dust, for the spike had been thrust accurately through his heart. As it was, he fell to his knees, puzzled at the amount of pain. Through a blur of agony he saw Wesley, alone, facing the two remaining men, and he could do nothing to help. He couldn’t even summon his voice to cry out at the unfairness of such an easy job going so wrong.

The blurring became a dense fog as his body took him into unconsciousness to escape the pain. He thought he saw something descending through this fog, slowly, like a falling dark star, but it could have been a precursor of the stars that flicked across his vision as his forehead once more connected with unforgiving concrete.

Chapter 2

His dreams were always painful and confused, so it didn’t surprise Angel that he got no respite even in unconsciousness. He was being questioned about something for which he had no answers—or none that he wanted to give, but the remorseless questioning went on. Finally, too confused to separate dream from reality, he looked up at William and murmured, ‘You’ve broken my heart.’

Spike blinked and said calmly, ‘He’s awake.’

Angel saw Wesley’s face loom out of his fog and tried to sit up. Spike pressed him down with a small shake of his head. Angel had no intention of trying it again anyway. The pain was still intense.

‘Angel?’ Angel acknowledged Wesley’s concerned voice but didn’t open his eyes. ‘We need to pull that thing out of you. Spike….’ Strong hands held him in what, in his confused state, seemed like an unnecessarily loving embrace. The arms were so familiar Angel wanted to cry out, but he reckoned he’d said enough that night that he would regret. He bit his lip on the pain but passed out anyway and was spared embarrassing himself one way or the other. He came around in the car, where he’d been laid on the rear seat, but it was a mercifully short burst of consciousness.

When he next surfaced, he felt more rational. Rational enough to know he was hurt—badly. He was lying on the couch in his apartment. When he opened his eyes, he found Spike sitting next to him, spreading one cool hand over his heart—well, he was holding a cloth over a wound, but Angel wasn’t rational enough for semantics. Spike was watching Wesley, who was talking rapidly on the telephone. No one had noticed that he was awake. He coughed, and Spike flicked his eyes away from Wesley.  Instinctively, he pressed harder on the wound, whether to hold his patient down or because he felt he’d neglected his duty, Angel couldn’t tell. Their eyes met over his naked torso, the smell of his rich blood thickening the air between them. Angel licked very dry lips and said hoarsely, ‘You didn’t go.’

‘Your powers of observation are bloody amazing, Mate.’

Angel attempted a smile, but coughed and spat up some blood instead. After the slightest hesitation, Spike put his thumb to Angel’s mouth and wiped up the dark trail. Angel craned his neck down to look at the wound and wished he hadn’t. Spike adjusted the cloth. ‘You’ll live. Don’t worry.’

‘Who’s Wesley talking to?’

‘Some of the firm’s quacks.’

Angel’s eyes widened. ‘I’m not having one of those claw-toed freaks—.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m just humouring him—he was scared. You don’t need doctoring.’

Angel glanced down at the hand upon him. ‘Then what are you doing?’

Spike followed his gaze and seemed to be considering this. After a moment, he said deceptively neutrally, ‘I’m humouring myself.’

Very slowly and carefully, as if trying not to startle something wild and unsure, Angel moved his hand over Spike’s on the bloodstained cloth. As if their earlier conversation in Spike’s apartment had never ceased, he said quietly, ‘The souls change everything.’ When no response was forthcoming, he added with a catch to his voice, ‘Yours is destroying your carefully constructed façade.’ When this was still greeted by obstinate silence, he moved his fingers upon Spike’s hand, a gesture that could have been taken for stroking and said tightly, ‘The act is wearing thin… Will.’

That got a response. Spike stood up quickly, dropping the cloth. He stumbled back but collided with Wesley, who was saying something neither of them wanted to listen to. Unable to leave without appearing too obvious, or perhaps just unable to leave, Spike folded his arms tightly across his body, until he appeared to think a cigarette better defence and lit one urgently.

Angel had to give his attention to Wesley for a moment, reluctantly, but he returned his gaze to Spike’s face almost immediately. Expecting to see hatred or derision, even a carefully reconstructed mask of disinterest, he was taken aback by the look of concentrated puzzlement on Spike’s face. So intense was Spike’s study of him that Angel was sure the tense vampire had not even noticed he was being studied in return. They could have fallen into an impasse of confused, mutual inspection had not Wesley suddenly said, ‘Blood,’ and looked at Spike expectantly. Spike blinked and seemed to come back from a long way away. He looked so bewildered that Wesley reiterated with a tetchy edge to his voice, ‘He needs blood.’

Spike nodded and bent to retrieve his coat. Angel was taken aback how thin he looked. Then he was startled by the fact that he was noticing Spike’s body. That made him wonder that he could think this when he was feeling worse than actual death had made him feel. This lack of control pissed him off enough to get angry, and as soon as the anger hit him he knew he’d come full circle. Just like that, in that one instance of watching a bare bicep stretch to pick up a coat, his obsession with William returned. As he tried to surrender to unconsciousness, which now seemed safer than being awake, he realised that it couldn’t have returned because it had never really gone away. With the soft breath of the sound Will in his head, Angel admitted that he had been watching and studying and listening to and thinking about Spike every minute of every day since he’d betrayed him for a tiny, hairy arsehole. He’d merely called this obsession something else… anything but admitting what it was.

As unconsciousness accepted his offer of surrender and took him to a place where all the painful questions were in his imagination, he strained to hear the rustle of Spike’s clothes as they brushed against his cool, perfect skin.

* * * * * * *

Angel’s mind the following day, as he lay slowly recovering in bed, was consumed not by his own response to the strange incident on the couch, but by Spike’s. He could not get the image of Spike, frozen with indecision and staring at him, out of his mind. Was Spike having a similar epiphany as he? They had discovered desperate desire for each other at the same time; why not have it rekindled simultaneously as well? Was that what he had seen in Spike’s expression? Desire? Understanding this seemed critical to Angel as he lay hurt and bored and wanting to be where Spike was. Then depression of spirits and self-doubt assailed him, and he cursed and punched the pillow more viciously than it deserved (and he was fit to do). He had seen nothing in Spike’s expression—he was just having a severe reaction to having his heart eviscerated. For that is what he’d pieced together from the little Wesley had been willing to divulge. A hook, used on the docks to snag and drag the vast blocks of ice they used to cool perishables, had been thrust into his body with such force and accuracy that it had split his heart. When the vicious device had been pulled out, it had taken ribs and fragments of heart with it. It was no wonder he wasn’t thinking with his usual calm detachment about

‘Spike!’

Angel tried to sit up but was so surprised by his body’s instant and unexpected reaction to Spike strolling into his bedroom that he entirely lost the moment and sort of hung, half-sitting, half-lying, sweating, blushing and, most incredibly, stiffening. It had been a very long time since he’d been sexually aroused by anything other than his memories. Once, his own power had been his greatest aphrodisiac. Now, impotency flourished in his torment.

Angel drew his knees to his chest, desperate to touch himself—more desperate for Spike to. Spike was staring out of the window at the bright city day. Apropos of nothing, he murmured, ‘This is so wrong.’

Staring at Spike’s silhouette, hair alight as a bright ring of blond fire, Angel thought this random comment the most profound thing he’d ever heard. It was wrong: the world, them, the firm, LA, them, his wound, their lives… them.

He began to wonder if he was delirious and put a hand to his forehead, a gesture Spike apparently took for confusion, for he clarified, ‘Sunlight—for us. It’s wrong. Best to be condemned to the dark, to remember what we are—what we’ve done.’

‘Oh. You could close the blinds….’ Jesus! What a dumb fucking thing to say! And now he could smell his own arousal, which was so not of the good. Maybe he was light-headed from blood loss. He tried to regroup and went for the familiar. ‘What do you want?’

‘It was a demon—last night. The one that skewered you.’

Angel felt an absurd sense of relief and was desperate to ask if it was really, really big.

Spike smiled as if he had anticipated Angel’s egotism, so when Angel asked, ‘Did you get it?’ Spike replied with a fond quirk to his lips, ‘Nope—way too big and too fast for me.’

The conversation then seemed to be over. In desperation to keep him there, Angel asked, ‘Why didn’t you go?’ then blurted out quickly, lest this was misunderstood, ‘I meant what I said—I need you here.’

Spike nodded thoughtfully. ‘You did last night; that was very… evident….’

Angel flushed. ‘I was hurt, Spike! Not thinking straight! It’s kinda hard to freaking think when you’re missing ventricles. Don’t take anything I said or… did… out of context.’

Spike tipped his head to one side in a gesture so familiar it broke what was left of Angel’s heart and murmured, ‘I meant when you got skewered. Angel… is there something you want to tell me?’ 

The moment opened up before them. Looking back on it later that day, Angel tried to play out the version where he’d told Spike he still loved him and wanted him desperately. Sometimes, it played beautifully, sometimes not. It was immaterial though for he had not said that. He’d thought about mocking laughter; he’d remembered derision and being scared, and he’d said, ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ which was as trite and meaningless as it was hurtful. But he reckoned it had hurt him almost more than it had hurt Spike, which gave him some masochistic consolation in the morass of self-pity in which he wallowed for the rest of the day.

* * * * * * *

The next, however, he was in a conciliatory mood; well enough to be contrite, generous enough to try and repair some of the damage he’d done to their fragile working relationship. Seeing Spike descend upon them like an angel of salvation had made him realise just how much they did need the irritating, blond presence.

He was back at his desk (albeit not moving too quickly), and that alone made him feel generous to the world—and Spike. When he saw him chatting to (up?) Harmony, he buzzed and summoned him.

Spike grudgingly came as far as the door, his face a comic picture of confused expressions. Angel sighed and leant back in his chair. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I’d had my freaking heart ripped out, Spike….’

Spike flared up so quickly that Angel hardly saw him coming before he was leaning into his face, hissing. ‘Stop it! We didn’t have hearts—yours or mine—to be broken!’ He clenched his jaw and added desperately, ‘It was nothing more than fucking!’

Angel opened his mouth, stunned, closed it, then said weakly, ‘I meant last night… what I said… my heart ripped out on a hook….’

Spike pulled away. Angel stood up too quickly and staggered, catching hold of the desk to prevent himself falling. Spike hesitated then cursed softly and took his arm. ‘Go back to bed, Mate.’

Angel waited until his head stopped spinning and nodded, only setting it off again. He stared at his fingers, white on the edge of the polished wood and whispered, ‘I can’t go on like this.’

‘You’ll be all better in a day or two, Pet.’

Angel swivelled his head and stared at Spike.

Spike faltered. ‘Oh.’ He looked away.

Very slowly and very cautiously, Angel said, ‘At least fucking would be something.’

Spike’s head snapped back, and their eyes locked. Angel felt as if he were out on a fragile limb hanging precariously over a vast chasm of waiting humiliation.

Spike swallowed. ‘You must be totally off your rocker if you’ve just suggested what I think you suggested.’

The limb parted with a sharp crack, and Angel began to fall. He lowered his head to his chest, the darkness of his humiliation overwhelming him… until his gaze reached the top of one of Spike’s thighs. He stared fascinated for a moment then lifted his head and shook off the descent with a smug smile. ‘You were right, Will: You’ll never be able to hide it from me.’

Spike stepped back and folded his arms tightly across his torso with an expression that clearly showed he not only understood this comment, he wished he could fold his arms lower and to more advantage.

Angel got his balance and stepped forward.

With utter amazement and delight, he saw Spike reaching out to hug him… no…. Oh, fuck… to catch him….

Angel fell into the darkness of a dead faint toward the floor, but he sank with the total conviction that he had not actually been allowed to hit it.

* * * * * *

He came to in bed with a mug of blood held to his nose. Its rich smell had woken him.

‘You don’t bloody eat enough.’

Angel focused on the familiar chewed cuticles and replied softly, ‘And that from a well-known glutton….’

‘Yeah, well.’ Spike handed over the blood and stared at it morosely. ‘It don’t give me the same pleasure these days, ya know?’

Angel did. But the wonder of it was that he only then got that Spike did know this—that this slim man had long dark nights of the soul, too; that Spike was the only one in the world who could know how he felt. Everything he wanted from Spike seemed poised between them like a tiny, fragile wild bird, waiting to take wing or die from neglect. Friend, lover, companion…. He could have it all if he held out his hand and took it, nurtured it.

‘Spike….’ His tone betrayed which of these his body wanted to nurture first—there could be no mistaking such low, husky need.

Spike stood up, clearly agitated. ‘You’ve gotta be bloody kidding! I’m not going to… with you! Jesus! I don’t even like you!’

Angel darted out his hand, his fingers folding, for one longed-for instant, over a perfect, hard erection. ‘Your body likes me.’ Spike wrenched away with a force that would have broken steel bonds, the momentum carrying him to the door. Before he could escape the room though, Angel added slyly, ‘There’s only one reason you wouldn’t want to fuck with me.’

The hook was in. Spike turned his head, curiosity his undoing, and Angel reeled him in. ‘You don’t want to because it wouldn’t be just fucking: it would mean more to you.’

Spike struggled in the trap that had so effectively been set for him. Angel watched this internal battle and felt a surge of vindication. It would mean more to Spike.

But Spike would never admit it He couldn’t—the act had been too well perfected, the lines learnt by heart, the gestures now those of a master illusionist. He was aroused; he could not admit it for what it was; he had to dismiss it as something else—and so the trap snapped shut. Spike lit a cigarette, slowly, taking his time. Then he sauntered closer and blew smoke at Angel. ‘I’m not averse to some fucking around. Why not? ‘S not like I’ve had a better offer recently.’

Chapter 3

Saying it had been one thing, doing it proved to be something else entirely. There was too much baggage between them; so much so that Angel’s real plan, which had been to wear Spike down with the power of his tongue and the force of his need until Spike admitted the same need, had no room to develop. There were too many masks hiding the truth of Spike’s expressions, too many roles played and perfected for William, the one Angel really wanted, to emerge.

And it wasn’t as if Angel was his most persuasive or winning either; he couldn’t move without wincing.

Added to all this was the fact they were both dressed and it was the middle of the day.

Nevertheless, following through with his bravado, Spike came forward, aggressively unbuttoning his jeans.

It bewildered Angel for a moment that a century of pain was about to end now. There should be something special to mark the moment, some great disturbance in the universe. He was about to deconstruct Spike and find his William beneath.

It was all so clear in his mind, passion burned his belly, but then there was a cock thrust in his mouth; Spike was arching with pleasure, and Angel… just lost it—his self-control and the moment. He sucked and licked and moaned, and there was no time to say anything to make the moment mean more. There was no passionate declaration, no tearing apart of any of Spike’s constructs. It was just fucking, and he needed it. This was the cock he had fantasised over, dreamt of, missed until his own ached, blamed and hated and feared over the long years since he’d last tasted it. It bulged his cheeks, thrust into his throat and distracted his mind from the pain, which had wracked his heart long before an ice hook ripped it apart. He knew the dreams of endless questioning would now be over.

Spike grabbed his head and held him by the ears as he thrust, and whatever else he was faking, he wasn’t faking this intense arousal. Angel ignored the pain from his reforming ribs and turned onto his side, wanting to slow things down, now drawing the erection languidly into his mouth then releasing it, teasing, in and out, tasting the essence of male sex oozing against his tongue. Before long though, Spike’s urgency overcame him; he wanted more, wanted him. Kneeling, fumbling awkwardly to reach inside Angel’s pants, he left his own cock standing pale and angry against his dark shirt.

And when Spike’s mouth descended upon him, with no preparation whatever, Angel came.

It was as quick as that.

His body convulsed more violently than it had when skewered on a hook. He writhed to an orgasm that had been building for over a hundred years, memories his foreplay. Spike swallowed some of the release but let the rest shoot out onto the expensive suit, now concentrating on his own incipient release, pulling his cock, eyes closed, intent on some private fantasy. When he came, he kept his hand cupped over the squirting wetness as a man alone might do to prevent unnecessary mess. It was clean and clinical, and only the deep twitch of a muscle in his jaw gave away the pleasure he was experiencing.

He finished and backed away from the bed, wiping his hand on the shirt he pulled out to cover his softening penis.

Angel twitched up the sheet, feeling foolish lying exposed with his suit on.

There didn’t seem anything much to say, so neither attempted it.

Spike left, and Angel watched his retreating back, wondering if he’d unintentionally found the one thing that would finally cause Spike to leave LA. In some ways, at that moment, Angel almost wished he would. The thought of meeting him after this was so excruciatingly embarrassing he felt separation, even death, was preferable.

* * * * * * *

The next day though, he felt quite well. He’d woken with stiffness in his shoulder and groin, both of which he was able to work off quite efficiently.

He rode with some wariness to his office; the sense of having bitten off more than he could chew quite new to him. He relaxed when he saw that the lobby was empty but kept a watchful eye on it whenever anyone made an appearance.

Wesley seemed very pleased to see him up and about, and smiled as he laid out a few papers on the desk. ‘You look very perky.’

Angel nodded and hoped his blush wasn’t visible to human eyes. ‘What’s this?’

‘Shipping records. I’ve hacked into the records of the company that were receiving the so-called animal feed shipments, and they coincide with every date that bloody little man Prescott gave us.’

Angel glanced at the meaningless jottings. ‘If their operation is so slick that we can’t intercept the weapons when they come in, we need to find out how they are distributing them onwards to the local gangs and intercept them there.’

‘My thoughts exactly. And I think we ran across the buyer the other night.’

‘The demon?’

‘Demon? How do you know he—it—was a demon?’

Angel straightened his tie and said nonchalantly, ‘Spike mentioned it.’

‘Ah.’ Wesley suddenly leant forward and engaged Angel’s intercom. ‘Harmony, locate Spike will you and have him join us.’

Angel could have killed him.

Wesley, oblivious of the invectives being silently heaped upon him, unwrapped a toffee and sucked thoughtfully. ‘If we can get a reasonable description from him, we can circulate it to our contacts. Ah, there you are.’

Angel couldn’t decide which was worse: looking at Spike or not looking at him. He took the option that made him feel less defensive and looked. To his deep discomfort, Spike was giving him a similar, quick glance. They both looked away, but when Angel looked back, Spike did, too.

Wesley twisted in his seat and waved Spike to the one next to him. Spike sat, reluctance obvious in his studied nonchalance. ‘Angel says you think that his attacker was a demon. Can you describe it? Did you recognise the type?’

‘It was very big.’

Wesley gritted his teeth, annoyed. ‘That’s not a lot of help, Spike.’

Spike crossed one ankle over his thigh and appeared to find something of interest on his boot, but when Angel allowed himself this to safely study the bent head, Spike’s eyes lifted from under lowered lids. This time, neither looked away for some time, until with puzzled expressions they went back to whatever it was they had found to pretend interest in. Angel forgave Wesley his earlier blunder, for he was now filling the embarrassing gap nicely, chatting in a way only an up-tight Englishman who senses he is missing something can. Angel risked another glance at Spike, and this time there was no mistaking the look that greeted him. They were both clearly thinking the same thing. Angel shifted in his seat and saw Spike slowly lower his crossed leg to the floor and close his duster over his lap. Despite the relief he’d given himself only half an hour ago, Angel began to ache so badly it was like pain that needed anaesthetic, an itch that, unsatisfied, could drive a man wild. His clothes were not cut for erections; they were cut for elegance and the way they would drape on his substantial frame. Erections were an intrusion, and given the current situation, he could not say this one was welcome. He edged his chair closer to the desk. Suddenly, Spike said, ‘Maybe I could do one of those artist impression thingies….’

Wesley nodded. ‘Of course. Good idea. Can you draw?’

Spike raised his eyes to Angel. ‘No… but Angel can.’

Wesley rose. ‘Excellent. See what you can both come up with then.’

They hardly waited a decent amount of time for him to leave the office before they both strode to the elevator, and, had he seen their expressions, Wesley would have been pleased at their evident eagerness to explore what, exactly, they could come up with.

Angel seized him in the elevator. Spike allowed himself to be seized. Angel thrust one hand down the front of loose jeans, and with the other cupped Spike’s neck to pull him into a kiss. Spike jerked his head away at this and snarled, shoving Angel back against the wall. Angel felt a painful jolt of disappointment, but it was tempered by the enormous bubble of excitement deep in his gut. He desperately wanted to kiss Spike, but as he had said, fucking was at least something. It appeared it would have to be everything. He pushed his need for Spike’s reciprocation, his attention, his friendship and his love, deep into the recesses of his mind and took what was being offered. He pushed back, and he was bigger and stronger and could push harder. Spike’s stagger coincided with the doors opening. He fell out; Angel was on top of him, and they rolled, stripping and biting and using hands like weapons. Blood heated between them and spilled from bite marks, smearing sticky over their revealed bodies. Naked, other fluids added to the musky, ripe smells as they writhed in sunlight. Finally, Angel’s power won out, and he held Spike face down by the back of his neck, panting with victory and arousal. When he took him, it was hard to tell the act apart from rape. Only they knew that Spike’s desperate cries were not denial or fury or that his writhing attempted no escape. Angel rose over the imprisoned body and rode it mercilessly. If this was to be just fucking then it would be just that: fucking. It would bruise guts, tear internal walls and release them both through friction, blood and pain.

It would satisfy the demons inside them for want of satisfying something better.

Toward the end, Angel released Spike’s neck and spread his hands either side of the blond head. Any remaining indication that this might have been rape was immediately dispelled when Spike lifted his hips to receive deeper penetration. Angel groaned and caught him around the chest, hugging him close the closer he came to release. The thrusts were shorter and harder now, as the effort to come took on a jerky rhythm of its own. The unsatisfying nature of the fucking obsessed Angel: he wanted to nuzzle into Spike’s sweaty neck and say something dumb. He wanted Spike to laugh and wrap his arms around those embracing him. Working through this fantasy in his mind, Angel began to stroke his thumb over Spike’s nipple then teased it between thumb and finger. In his imagination, Spike lifted one arm over his head and pulled him in close, whispering something that made him swell inside the hot tightness embracing him. The fantasy alone was enough to tip him over the edge, and he began to tremble as his cock jumped and spurted into Spike. He could hear Spike’s delight, and revelled in the sound of his voice—until his orgasm was over and reality returned. ‘Fuck you, you bastard. Fuck you. Fuck you!’ Angel realised that, far from delight being in Spike’s cries, he was pinning the smaller vampire’s arms to his side so tightly he could find no relief for himself. This reality was so different from his fantasy that he fell back onto his heels, his cock leaving the tight rectum with an audible, wet plop. Spike rolled away to one side then punched him. It wasn’t very hard, but it was heartfelt. Angel caught at the arm and held it, his gaze raking Spike’s face. ‘Is this what you want? Is this all you freaking want, Spike? A sordid fuck on the floor?’

Spike yanked his arm away. ‘I’ve had worse, Mate. Trust me, I know sordid, and we’re not even close yet.’

He blinked as if he realised he’d said too much. Angel smiled maliciously. ‘Yet? What makes you think I’ll let this happen again?’

Spike laughed bitterly. ‘Yeah. I wasn’t the only one in that office not thinking about bloody sketching.’

The idea of Spike thinking about fucking him aroused Angel on some fundamental level, and for the first time it occurred to him that for Spike to maintain such a consummate act of disdain all these years, he must have thought about him almost constantly. His anger suddenly evaporated. Wasted years. So many wasted fucking years of loneliness. And it was all going to waste now, too. He stood up and stepped into his pants, fastening them as best he could. Spike stood up, too, and grabbed his arm. ‘If you can’t take the heat, you know what they say: don’t go into the sodding kitchen.’

Angel pulled his arm away. The gesture made Spike’s erect cock wobble. It almost looked like a wave of distress. Angel closed his eyes and put a hand to it. Once more, there was no refusal at all. It was warm and hard and filled his fist, and he explored different holds, just standing with his eyes closed next to Spike.

This warm intimacy could have finally been the start of something loving. He could cup his other hand behind Spike’s neck and pull him close for a long kiss. Spike’s smile would intrude between their lips—as it always had done. Spike, who always found life funny, even the things that weren’t; or perhaps expressing his emotions in humour, unable, as he was, to express feelings so deep in any other way. Angel felt something trickle down his cheek, a tickle so insistent it was impossible to ignore—but he did. He didn’t want to draw attention to the fact he was crying. It didn’t seem to go with the hand job somehow.

He stood closer and put his face over Spike’s shoulder. Only then, did he risk opening his eyes, letting the tears run free. He increased his work on the impossibly stiff cock, concentrating on the slurpy sound his palm made as it cupped over the fleshy knob. He hoped Spike was concentrating on it, too: his tears were private. Finally, Spike jerked in his fist, and for the first time, he put a hand gently, lovingly on Angel’s body. But he only needed a prop to stop himself from falling. Angel didn’t care. He took the feeling of Spike’s hand on him into his heart, and as the tears rolled down his face, he forced himself to find being Spike’s prop enough to take the pain away.

Even as the last few drops of Spike’s sperm were milking into his hand, Angel pulled away and went into the bathroom. He dashed his tears away and covered his eyes for a moment. Only then did he realise that he’d used the hand that was full of Spike’s come.

Chapter 4

To Angel’s intense surprise, Spike was still there when he emerged from the shower. He grabbed the towel tighter around his waist and stared openly at the silent figure that, dressed only in jeans, was drinking some blood, staring out of the window.

Without turning around, Spike said, ‘I thought we’d better do this picture thing—case the watcher gets suspicious.’

It was about the lamest excuse he’d ever heard, but Angel didn’t feel in the mood for examining it and picking it apart to make it fit his needs. He pulled on some loose drawstring pants and a T-shirt and went to fetch his sketchpad.

Engrossed in the not examining why Spike would come up with such a lame excuse to stay, he did not see the careless mistake he’d made in agreeing to sketch with Spike until it was too late. Very casually, he replaced the book. ‘Let’s do this later. I’m… we…. I have work to do.’

Spike twisted his neck around with a suspicious look. ‘What…?’ He strode over and grabbed the pad. Angel let him take it. It was too unseemly to struggle. And he could not deny the tiny part of himself that wanted Spike to see some indisputable evidence of his pain.

Page after page of the pad were filled with pictures of Spike—conjured from Angel’s heart-worn memory.

Spike turned the pages, slowly at first, then with increasing pace, as he seemed to want the discovery over, yet was unable to stop until he’d seen them all. The latter ones had been done in Sunnydale, the very last in LA. That one had Angel in as well. It was the one Spike lingered over longer than he’d looked at all the rest. Angel was chained, hanging from the ceiling, and Spike was standing behind him, his chin almost upon Angel’s shoulder. It was a clever picture. When you looked at it one way, Spike was taunting Angel, cruel in his vindictiveness. When you looked at it another, they were fucking, and the expressions on their faces were extreme from male pleasure, not pain or torment. Like the picture of a young woman, which could be turned into an old hag just by concentrating on it, so could this picture’s story be altered to suit the viewer’s perception. Angel knew why Spike lingered over this picture. As soon as he’d drawn it, he’d known that the obsessive study of his relationship with Spike, worked through in charcoal and velum, was over. This picture defined it. Agony or ecstasy, pain or pleasure, the sketch had succeeded in blurring the lines that divided these extremes. It was all a matter of perspective.

Carefully, Angel took the book from Spike’s hands and replaced it on the shelf. Spike still stared at his fingers as if something from the graphite had marked them indelibly.

Angel studied the lowered head for a moment then said gently, ‘Do you want to shower and stay for a while?’

Spike jerked his head up, his eyes flicking over to the steam emerging from the small room. He hesitated then nodded.

Angel hesitated too then cautiously put out a hand to the back of Spike’s neck—to hold? to pet? to bind them together forever? He didn’t get a chance to find out which: Spike sidestepped with a scornful look, scooped up his shirt and coat and strode to the elevator instead.

* * * * * * *

Very quickly it became clear to Angel that although just fucking had made sense to them both as a concept, it wasn’t so easy to play out in reality. Such a plan had never, perhaps, been designed for two people who already knew each other so well—who had already shared a loving relationship. Nor had it been designed for close working colleagues. They were sleeping together; by default they were intimates; yet they were not allowing themselves to play that intimacy to its natural conclusion. Nor, however, could they just part and forget—as people fucking on a one-night stand might.

And it wasn’t just him suffering this confusion. It wasn’t just him talking to Spike differently, reacting differently when Spike came into the room. He noticed Spike doing it, too. At the weekly staff meeting, Spike actually laughed genuinely at something Angel said—vampire humour that the others had clearly not appreciated. It was a tiny thing, followed up by an amused exchange of looks. But then their eyes had dropped, confusion reigning once more, silencing them both for the remainder of the meeting.

It happened again later that evening. Deciding to drive through some of the gang areas, looking for the weapons they were trying to track, Gunn, Fred, Wesley and the vampires met in the garage to split the search between them. Before the humans had begun to partner off, Spike and Angel chose a car and climbed in together. It was only when the humans went quiet that they realised how uncharacteristic this desire for each other’s company must seem to their colleagues. Changing, however, would have been more embarrassing, so Angel slid the car into drive and slowly pulled out of the garage. He glanced in the mirror at the group. ‘That threw them.’

Spike snorted with quiet amusement.

Angel glanced at him, thinking how easily intimacy could grow between two people, above and beyond the physical. It made him ache with the need to do or say more. He glanced at Spike’s profile once more.

‘Watch the road.’

Angel sighed and dragged his eyes back. After a heavy pause, he said somewhat morosely, ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Stop the car!’

‘Spi—.’

‘Stop the fucking car!’

‘I’m not going to—.’

Spike opened the door and began to climb out.

Angel swore colourfully and swerved to the side of the road, jerking to a halt. ‘Jesus! You moron! All right! You freak! No talking…! Happy?’ He pulled back into the stream, considering putting child-locks on the doors.

Spike lit a cigarette, and when it was burning to his satisfaction, he said, ‘I hate you.’ He took a long drag. ‘That’s why, if you want to know. I hate you, and I’m enjoying watching you suffer.’

Angel laughed and was still laughing even as he managed a more controlled stop. Spike slammed out of the car, and Angel climbed out after him. He tried to suppress his laughter, but it bubbled out. ‘Hate me?’ Suddenly, he sobered and said more distinctly, ‘It’s been a good act, Spike. You’ve kept it up for over a century. I’m impressed, I really am. But do you know what? I saw through it as soon as I got my soul. When you got yours, I actually began to find it funny.’

Spike thrust his face forward aggressively. ‘You are such a complete piss-artist, Angel. Yeah, I have got a bloody soul, and I know what that means. It doesn’t turn you into a mind-reading fucking seer. It’s just a sodding soul—hello?’

Angel looked down at his feet and scuffed a small pattern in the dust. ‘I didn’t mean that. It wasn’t until I was cursed with my soul that I got how much I hurt you.’ He looked up. ‘I didn’t think it could be an act—how could it be over something so… trivial. Then it was soul-time for Angelus, and it wasn’t trivial at all—nothing was. Nothing I’d ever done. And in not having you, I suddenly got how you must have felt… not having me.’ He waved his hand, dismissive of the words he’d used, angry that he couldn’t find better ones. ‘You know all this. You’ve always had a soul of sorts, Will. Always.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘Why not? If it’s not an act, why should you care what I call you?’

‘Stop twisting me up, Angel! Stop playing with my sodding head! You’re a dumb oaf that I hate! That’s all!’

Angel shook his head almost regretfully. ‘I’m not dumb, Will. I’ve outlived everyone I’ve ever known—and not by clean living either. I’m not clever like you, I know that, but I’ve got more street-smarts in my fucking pinkie than you’ve got in your whole damn body.’

‘Oh, this is just peachy: it’s back to dick-measuring time again.’

‘You wear your heart on your sleeve. You may be clever, but you sacrifice yourself for love. It’ll be your undoing.’

Spike stepped forward. ‘No! You are my undoing. You plague me! You took my life; you took my bod—.’ He stopped suddenly, as if realising that for a demon that supposedly didn’t give a shit, he was about to give far too much away.

Suddenly Angel grabbed his arms and flattened him to the ground.

Caught totally unawares, utterly outraged, Spike brought his knee up into Angel’s balls. Angel gasped but panted out, ‘Stay down.’

‘What the—?’

‘Red light. On your forehead.’

Spike blinked then said slowly, ‘And we are vampires? Bullets no kill?’

Angel frowned then said defensively, ‘Have you ever been shot in the head by a high-velocity sniper’s rifle?’

Spike contorted his face with varieties of scorn. ‘Oh, bloody hell! I don’t believe it! Big gonads time again! No, Wanker, I’ve not been shot by a freaking sniper—okay?’ He struggled to get out from Angel’s grip, but Angel held him down.

‘Even vampires can’t recover from the brain damage of a bullet to the head!’ He shrugged and loosened his grip slightly. ‘On the other hand, when you can’t tell the difference….’

Spike narrowed his eyes.

Angel smiled and fought with every ounce of self-control not to kiss Spike’s nose. ‘Come on.’ He rolled off and in a low crouch ran for the shelter of the building. Spike followed suit, followed himself by a very telling trail of small dust explosions.

‘Bloody hell! Someone’s bloody shooting at us!’

Angel pulled him in, and they stood with backs flattened to the wall.

‘How did they know we’d be here?’

‘What do you mean?’ Spike leant around the corner for a look then flung back as a bullet chipped the brickwork next to him. ‘You think this is aimed at us? That they know us?’

Angel turned his head. ‘You think this was just an unlucky coincidence?’

‘Yeah. Sure. We didn’t know we’d be here—how could they? You were the pillock that pulled over!’

Angel pursed his lips. ‘There were half a dozen M40A3s stolen from Quantico last month. Wesley reckoned they were in the last shipment we tracked.’

‘Well, okay, I have no idea what you just said; it’s a very big coincidence, but it’s just that—a coincidence.’

Still pursing his lips, Angel was staring at the car. ‘Fuck. It was bugged.’

‘Huh?’

‘There weren’t already here—they were following us.’

Spike digested this slowly. ‘Oh.’ Suddenly, he began to shrug off his coat. ‘Bollocks to this!’ Unencumbered, he took off across the space that separated them from the would-be assassin. Angel shouted after him then gave chase. They both came to a halt by the car. No shots. It seemed incredible, but their senses told them that the killer, whoever he was, was not going to shoot them. Spike lifted his face to the building, scanning the windows. Angel frowned, doing the same.

‘Why did he stop now? He’s got a clear line of sight….’

Spike looked equally puzzled. He jogged back to get his coat and then followed Angel over to the main door of the building.

They broke in and located an office on the fourth floor with a smashed lock. They entered cautiously, even though their senses told them there was no danger of finding anyone. The only sign that something untoward had occurred in the dingy room was an open window that looked down onto the space where Angel had left the car.

Spike went to the window and leant on it. ‘Smells like a demon. Dunno what sort. Could be vampire.’ He got no response and turned to find Angel watching him through hooded lids. Spike rolled his eyes fractionally and turned away once more. ‘Don’t even think it.’

Angel came closer. ‘Why not? All that adrenalin…. Don’t tell me you’re not hard….’

‘Fuck off.’

Angel came up close, close enough to touch Spike if he’d wanted. ‘I make you hard.’

Spike was silent for a moment then he replied neutrally, ‘Lots of things make me hard. Don’t flatter yourself.’

Angel stepped closer so their clothes touched. ‘I make you hard.’

Spike tried to move away, but Angel closed upon him, pinning him to the window. ‘I make you hard.’

‘Yes! All right! You do!’ He banged Angel’s arm away and went to stand by the desk, hunched, hands in pockets. ‘You do. Is that what you want to hear? Don’t mean anything.’

‘You want me.’

Spike looked even more miserable if that were possible. ‘Yes. God help me, but I do.’ He glanced around and almost groaned. ‘I want your body, but that’s all.’

Angel began to unbutton his shirt. ‘You want to touch me.’

Spike closed his eyes, but his face betrayed intense alertness, as he if were following the progress of the buttons in his imagination. Suddenly, Angel thrust his shirt against Spike’s face, grinding it around. ‘Smell me, Spike.’ Then he pulled it off and stared as Spike opened his eyes. ‘No.’ He brushed a finger over Spike’s cheekbone. ‘I want soft and gentle this time. I want to kiss you.’

Spike brought his knee up, but Angel had anticipated this, and he just stepped forward, forcing Spike to sit back on the edge of the desk. He pinned him there, hands flat on the desk, arms rigid. ‘Kiss me.’

‘Fuck off, you ponce!’

Angel lifted one hand, imprisoned the back of Spike’s neck and forced him into a kiss. It gave definition to the expression kiss of life. Wide-mouthed, Angel tried to kiss the life back into their love. The kiss was like the pull of the moon: an irresistible physical force upon Spike. Spike could not have kept his mouth still if he’d been a statue, and before either of them knew it, his thighs had parted to admit Angel, and his fingers were deep in Angel’s hair, scrunching it like a cat kneading a cushion for pleasure.

Standing so tight between Spike’s legs, Angel could feel the jeans-clad bulge against his own hardness, and for that moment it was as good as sex.

Pulling back slightly, he hung his mouth over Spike’s and whispered against the saliva-slick pinkness, ‘Accept what I have to offer, Spike—all of it: together, lovers again….’

Spike lifted his face—accepting?—then replied distinctly, ‘Accept what I’m willing to give or I’ll take that away, too.’

There was total impasse as the two powerful demons waited tensely for the other to capitulate.

Angel was the one to finally close his eyes and nod. Then he stepped back and picked his shirt off the floor. ‘Okay. You win. Let’s go.’

Spike hesitated, fiddling with a stapler. ‘I thought you wanted to….’ He let the implication hang in the air.

Angel shrugged. ‘So did I.’

Spike caught his arm. ‘So?’

Angel looked down at the hand. ‘I’m suddenly not in the mood.’

Spike hesitated then wound his arms sinuously around Angel’s neck and kissed him, taking his mouth with a skill honed over many decades. ‘You do make me hard, Angel. See? I’ll admit it. I want your body—can’t help it. Love those sodding muscles. Christ, touch me. Yeah… like that… stroke me….’

Helpless as a child being offered a parent’s love, Angel groaned as his body betrayed him.

Spike suddenly pulled away and laughed. ‘Poof. You’d fall for any old romantic shit.’

There was an audible crack and Spike looked down, shocked, at a hand on a broken wrist.

Angel shoved him back onto the desk, ripped the shirt off the smooth chest then tore it free completely. ‘You want just fucking?’ He heaved Spike’s hips into the air, yanking down his pants, finding him with angry fingers. Spike gasped and arched, his body a pale bow over the scattered items on the desk. Angel moved in, releasing his cock from his pants. ‘You were right. We can go more sordid. We’ll fuck on this desk—then what? Wanna be taken in the john?’ He rammed his fingers in deep, hard and fast, finding a savage rhythm. ‘Tell you what….’ He swept the desk clear, heedless of the breakages or the mess and pressed Spike down. ‘Let’s do it on the copier next.’ He dragged Spike’s legs up to his shoulders and heaved his ass closer. ‘You like my muscles? Try this one.’ He powered deep into the slicked rectum, utterly immune to Spike’s pleasure or pain. He watched the mixed expressions ripple across the mobile features then leant low and held the blond head still with one hand so the smaller vampire could not escape a stare that was as penetrating as cock. ‘You want to fuck? Then that’s what we’ll do, Spike. And it will be like this every time: I’ll get off, and you’ll lie beneath me being fucked, and it will mean nothing to me. You mean nothing to me—a pretty fist, a hole that begs to be filled. You’re just a cunt that doesn’t whine and want to talk afterwards.’ He put his mouth to Spike’s ear. ‘Sometimes, I’m not even sure I have a soul. But you? Oh, Will, yours burns so white and noble and pure. Romance? There’s only one of us who wants that. So, guess who’s gonna suffer the most, Spike. Not me.’ He finished off with a deep shiver, digging his fingers into Spike’s shoulder until tiny red crescents appeared. ‘Nice.’ Pulling out, shaking off like a man at a urinal, he hitched his pants and tidied himself away. ‘Why don’t you walk back? Give us both a break.’ He took the keys out and swung them cheerfully around his finger as he sauntered out.

* * * * * *

He was a good actor, and he had no doubt he’d fooled Spike. He was almost convinced that he’d fooled himself. And he probably would until the first time he tried to close his eyes to sleep. Then he knew the truth would burn. He wondered if Spike’s truths burnt him or whether, over time, the acting became easier.

He had just eased behind the wheel of the car when the passenger opened, Spike climbed in, and the door was slammed. ‘Ponce! I’m not gonna bloody walk! This is the U-nited States!’ He glanced at Angel’s stormy profile. ‘Jesus—everything is so black and white with you! Fucking—loving. Why do you have to be so bloody pedantic? Haven’t you ever met a total stranger, fucked their brains out then gone your separate ways without a look back? Fucking can be fun, Angel!’

‘You’re not a stranger. You’re anything but. I sometimes think I know you better than I know me.’

‘Oh, where’s my sodding violin? You know jack-shit about me.’ However, this last was said in a tone far less strident, less demanding of an exclamation mark, and with a hint of genuine sadness adding poignancy that was absent in some of his more colourful tirades.

Angel put the car into drive and turned back the way they had come. After some suitable time had passed for them both to reflect on Spike’s assertion, Angel murmured, ‘You okay?’

Spike was in the process of lighting a cigarette and waited until he’d taken a first drag. ‘I’m not planning to ride a bike for a while.’

Angel glanced over at him. ‘You could have stopped me.’

‘Didn’t say I didn’t enjoy it.’

Angel felt himself stir. Spike liked having his cock inside him. Spike was feeling that throb and stretch now. Worryingly, the arousal spread from Angel’s cock to his arsehole, which began to ache, too. He frowned as he drove through the night, his thoughts companions even more annoying than Spike. Angelus had been more than willing to submit to his childe. Angel was not. Emotionally, that was. Physically, he could not now get the thought out of his mind. He glanced at Spike again more than aware that only one of them had come in that brief explosive sex on the desk. Spike was still hard… hard enough to…. His anus gave another anticipatory spasm. It wasn’t going to happen though. Everything they had or were, this fragile relationship, was based upon the fact that he was superior in every way and Spike was a fuck up. He was CEO of the LA branch of the most powerful law firm in the world. He was wealthy. He was successful. He had cool clothes and serious vehicles. He had saved the world. Spike, on the other hand, had only just become solid. Spike was destitute and reliant entirely on him. Spike had accidentally saved the world in his place because he had been generous enough to let Buffy play it her way.  There was more inequality between them now than there had been when Spike was his newly turned childe. Angel nodded brusquely, happy with this conclusion and refusing to acknowledge the tiny voice in his head that whispered that any inequality existed only in proportion to his own fragile ego.

‘What?’

Angel jumped. ‘What?’

Spike ground his cigarette out on the dash and lit another. ‘Thinking, thinking, thinking. You bloody wear me out with all your thinking!’

‘Me! Jesus! You never shut down! I never knew what you were going to come out with next. What is God? Where are our souls? Why do we get hard if we’ve no pulse? Why don’t we need to piss? How come—?’

‘And you never had any answers for me, did you Sire?’

Despite the scornful tone in which the last word was said, Angel glanced over and said sadly, ‘It’s been a long time since you called me that.’

‘It’s been a long time since it meant anything.’

‘But it did—mean something once?’

‘Sure. You murdered me—sired me.’

Angel didn’t rise to the deliberate provocation, his mind having moved onto another tack. ‘Have you? Ever sired anyone?’

Spike hesitated, staring at his cigarette. ‘Once, ‘parantly.’

‘Apparently? You don’t—what? Remember?’

‘Nope. I was being made to do things—couldn’t remember them afterwards. Didn’t want to.’

‘How do you—?’

‘Buffy told me.’

The familiar Buffy tension crept into the car with them, a third person, invisible but every bit real.

‘Male or female?’

‘Who?’

‘Your childe.’

‘Childe…. Jesus, that sounds weird.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, what?’

‘Why don’t you want to tell me?’ He took another glance. ‘It was a man.’

Spike pouted. ‘So?’

Now Angel had badgered him to this point he wasn’t all that sure what the so actually was. It had something to do with everything, but he was a little confused what everything actually was between them—what it had been for a hundred years. He steered the conversation onto safer ground. ‘We’ll need to get the car de-bugged.’

Spike roused from some deep thought of his own and said off-hand, ‘Might be useful to keep it on.’

‘Huh?’

‘Well, they don’t know that we’ve discovered it.’

Angel nodded. ‘Clever. I’ll have the others swept though.’

Spike chuckled. ‘That’s the first nice thing you’ve said to me since you fucked me over in a school hallway.’

‘No, it’s not….’ Thinking hard and trying to find another example of when he’d said something nice to Spike, Angel missed their exit and swore.

Spike snorted in amusement. ‘Told ya.’

Angel hesitated for a moment then said, staring resolutely ahead, ‘I think I told you that I want to spend the rest of my life with you and that I love you. Does that count?’

Once more, Spike laughed, but it was less sure than his other, bitter amusement. ‘No.’

Angel felt a surge of anger and gripped the wheel tighter. ‘Am I going to be told why?’

‘Do you really need to be told why?’

Angel came to an exit and pulled the car so viciously onto the off-ramp that Spike was flung against the door. ‘Yeah, I do, Spike. I really do.’

Spike looked uncomfortable. He gave a dismissive wave. ‘I’m not talking ‘bout this like… this.’

‘Trapped in a car where you can’t escape the truth?’

‘Stop being so bloody melodramatic, you great big queen.’

‘Tell me.’

‘No!’

‘Tell me, Spike.’

‘No.’

‘Tell me, or I stop the car and we end this now.’

‘Oh, what? You’re gonna stake me? Yeah, I’ll believe that….’

‘No, I’ll dump you out and go back on my own—and I will deny you the next time I see you. For the rest of eternity I will deny that I know you.’ He turned his head. ‘I don’t make idle threats. You know that. Tell me.’

Spike fiddled with his lighter, clicking it on and off. ‘Because I don’t trust you.’

‘What?’

Spike lifted his head and stared out of his window. ‘I don’t trust you. I wouldn’t survive the pain this time—not with this damn soul.’

Angel eased the car over to the side of the street, now quiet in the early morning. He swivelled in his seat to face Spike. ‘It was a mistake. It meant nothing. If I could go back and not do it, I would. You cannot base a whole life philosophy on one tiny, meaningless incident.’

‘It was meaningless to you.’ The words were forced out, as if Spike’s whole body had held the truth in so long that letting it go was as hard as giving up life itself.

Angel lowered his head. ‘What a mess I’ve made of everything.’ He rubbed his hand wearily over his face. ‘I have a soul now, Spike. Doesn’t that mean anything for trust?’

Spike turned to look at him. ‘I don’t know. Does it? I seem to remember you telling me—when you were ten inches up my arse—that you didn’t have one.’

Ten inches?

‘Yeah, well. Two can play dumb games. I lied.’

‘You’re very good at that.’

‘I’m not lying now.’

‘You weren’t lying back then, but you can’t control your nature—your urges.’

Angel laughed suddenly, the sound disturbing them both. ‘There haven’t been any… urges… until you made your spectacular comeback. Urge-free zone here, Will.’

Spike almost cringed. ‘Don’t do this. I won’t go through this again.’

‘Things are different now! I’m not Angelus! Nothing could make me hurt you now!’

Spike put his hands over his ears and dropped his chin to his chest. ‘Don’t.’

Angel pulled one hand away. ‘Let me prove you can trust me.’

‘You gonna get castrated?’

Angel inspected a nail then said slowly, ‘And would you really want that?’

Spike sighed. ‘No. Christ, I think I’m addicted to you. Otherwise I’d get out of this bloody car and just bugger off.’

Angel hesitated for a moment then lifted his hand and stroked Spike’s hair. ‘If you let me prove it, then all bets are off, Spike. I’ll do anything, use any devious tactic: cheat, lie or steal if I have to—to get you back.’   Spike stared ahead for a moment then leant lightly against Angel’s hand just for the time it took Angel to register the uncharacteristically loving gesture. ‘Okay… have it your way—but nothing has changed. I still hate you. I still don’t trust you. I’ll still just use you to get off when I feel the urge.’

‘And I still think you are lying and that you are dying inside to love me again. And I’ll make you admit it.’

Spike batted Angel’s hand away, seemingly tired of the caress or the arguing. ‘You can try.’

Angel laughed and patted the slim, hard thigh. ‘I intend to.’ 

Chapter 5

Wesley and the others had arrived back at the firm many hours previous, having had none of the distractions of the vampires—pleasurable or otherwise.

Angel immediately ordered a sweep of all the vehicles, but left instructions for anything found to be left in place.

They discovered Wesley, the only one left in a darkened office, reading. He looked up slightly myopically when they came in. ‘Bloody hell! What happened to you two?’

They hadn’t given the torn state of their clothing much heed until then, so Angel replied carefully, ‘We were attacked,’ glad that Wesley would be unable to smell the more erotic truth.

Wesley stood up and came around their side of the desk. ‘Vampires?’

Spike leant forward and said importantly,  ‘An assassin.’

Wesley perched and took of his glasses to clean them, ignoring Spike and speaking directly to Angel. ‘Did you know them?’

Angel sat on the arm of one of the easy chairs, suddenly feeling weary and fairly sure it wasn’t anything to do with being shot at. ‘There was only one, and he shot at us from some distance. Missed, fortunately.’

‘Ah. This can’t be a coincidence.’

Spike huffed.

They both ignored him, and Angel said, ‘Have any other weapons from the Quantico raid turned up?’

Wesley paled. ‘You think those damn things are loose on the streets? I was hoping they’d been sold to some anonymous third world country and we’d never hear from them again.’

‘We heard from one tonight, Wes. And damn close.’

‘But how did—?’

‘Tracer on the car.’

Wesley rubbed his stubble thoughtfully. ‘We could use this.’

‘That’s what I said.’

Still ignoring Spike’s contributions, Wesley twisted around and pulled his telephone closer. ‘Let me get some people down to the site for some detailed forensics. What’s the address?’

Angel’s expression remained fixed. ‘I’m not sure. We were lost.’

‘Damn. Okay, I’ll have my team working on the weapons—see if any others have turned up.’

Angel shook his head. ‘Go home, Wes. It’s practically morning.’

Wesley nodded, albeit reluctantly. Spike lit a cigarette and said casually, ‘I’ll walk out with you.’

Angel toed the ground and said even more casually, ‘I thought we were going to… work on some… issues… compare notes.’

‘Nah.’ Spike grinned with his own humour. ‘You’re always so sure your version of everything is right. What’s the point?’

‘Because I’m going to… convince you?’

Spike leant closer. ‘Kinda hard to do when I’m not here, bets off or not….’ With that, he nodded at Wesley and sauntered toward the elevator. Wesley frowned with that nagging feeling he was missing something again and wished goodnight to Angel.

* * * * * * *

It wasn’t until he got up to his apartment and he was calm enough to think about anything else but hurting Spike (inventively and for a long time) that Angel got it was now Sunday. Whereas he’d been planning to shower, rest for a short time and return to work, he now faced the worst day of the week. Alone, shut up like a freaking princess in a glass tower, he would see no one and speak to no one for twenty-four hours—unless he made the effort to go out and seek some companionship. Which he almost felt bitter enough to do. He wondered idly if there were any soldiers in scarlet pants in the city and, knowing LA, guessed there were.

He was weak and he was evil and he didn’t deserve to be loved anyway.

There was only one thing to do.

He stripped, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, went down through the empty building to the training room and took his angst out on a punch bag for a few hours until his self-hatred had been thoroughly sweated out.

Wiping his face and bare chest on a towel, he went slowly back up through the still empty offices to his apartment.  He leant on the floor length glass of his living room, looking out at the gradually rising sun. All over the city, people were waking up with people. Perhaps they didn’t want to. Perhaps they longed to have peace and quiet and that deep sense of self that could be lost in the hurly burly of family living. Perhaps they would envy him, so alone—envy his space and freedom. Envy all the time he had.

Suddenly, as if the building shuddered to a heave in the earth, Angel felt an overwhelming sense of vertigo. He closed his eyes, but it wasn’t the height he was falling into; it was the past. For a moment, it had been the dream that he had dreamt in another lifetime. A dream of sunlight and the sadness that came from knowing that Spike did not love him.

He swallowed hard and gritted his teeth against the self-pity that threatened to swallow him from the inside.

He heard the elevator and started, clutching the towel to his chest with an uncharacteristically anxious grip. The doors slid open to reveal Spike, leaning on one wall, smoking. He could not help but see Angel’s changing countenance—read the flicker of confusion. He shrugged. ‘I got bored.’

Angel laughed mirthlessly. ‘Should I be flattered that you find me slightly less boring than being bored?’

Spike stepped out. ‘Nope. I find you so boring that by contrast I’ll come to appreciate being alone in a dingy flat.’

This cheered Angel up immensely—so transparent was Spike’s lie. He chuckled. ‘Hungry?’

Spike flung himself onto the couch. ‘What you got? Virgin?’

‘You wouldn’t touch it if I had.’

Spike ignored him. He was watching Angel thoughtlessly rub under his arms with the towel. Angel laughed again and threw the sweaty towel at him as he went to the refrigerator. He could not believe the change in his mood in such a short space of time. Spike was here, and the trail of thought and action that must have led to that being true made Angel’s whole body sing with pleasure when he reflected on it. Spike must have been thinking of him continually since he left—perhaps his body had betrayed him, too. Thinking must have led to desire and then need, his image powerful in Spike’s conscious mind. Had he thought about sleek muscle and how it felt under his hand? Was he remembering a time when they had shared so much more than their bodies? Was it that that had finally made him curse and stomp around his apartment (Angel could actually see this happening as clearly as if he’d been there to witness it) and give in to the need to be here?

They would end up in bed—that was beyond doubt. But for now Angel was experiencing a delicious sense of power and anticipation; his whole body tingled with it. How long would he let Spike dangle, wanting that explosive, sexual relief? It gave a whole new definition to the word foreplay, and he chuckled as he handed Spike a mug of blood. He started to draw out the agony of expectation…. ‘Seeing as you are here now, there’s something I want you to do.’

Spike’s eyes flashed with a sparkle of lust he had no control over whatsoever.

Angel crowed inwardly but said maturely, as he fetched his sketchpad, ‘I’d like to do a drawing of you—with your soul this time.’

Spike’s confusion was obvious. Whether it was mingled with thwarted desire and disappointment wasn’t quite so obvious. Angel told himself that it was—it was his game, and he could play it to any rules he wanted.

Spike watched, incredulous, until Angel actually sat down on the other end of the couch facing him, his legs drawn up and crossed. ‘You’ve gotta be bloody kidding.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not sitting here, posing like a poof.’

‘I don’t want you to pose. I just want you to sit still.’

‘No!’

‘Why…?’ The pause was perfect. ‘Did you have something else in mind?’ Angel was well aware that Spike would not admit the sexual need that had brought him here; he waited with some amusement to see how he would wriggle out of this latest trap.

Spike swirled the blood around for a moment. ‘Haven’t you got enough bloody pictures of me?’

Angel almost felt guilty it was so easy. ‘I want to see if the soul makes a difference.’

Spike contorted his face, his prelude to something scathing, then seemed to give up the effort. He gave a dismissive wave. ‘Do what you bloody like—poofter.’

Angel bent to his task, well aware that he was still only wearing thin sweatpants and that although he had dried the sweat on his chest, the occasional residual drop still fell from his forehead to roll seductively off sleek muscles that Spike had admitted to admiring. Spike, however, was staring morosely into the mug, deep in his own thoughts. That wouldn’t do…. ‘So, what do you want to do today? I thought about going to a museum…?’

‘Huh?’

Angel lifted his head innocently. ‘Today? Do? You and me?’

‘You’re a bloody riot, you are, Mate.’

Now, however, Angel had a whole fantasy Sunday-self—museums, culture, living like a real man—in his head, and this new persona began to take shape. ‘I need to get out of this place sometimes. It’s important, you know, to stay real. Have hobbies.’

To his surprise, Spike didn’t reply in the flippant, annoyed way he had been expecting. Instead, he looked slowly around the stark apartment, unconsciously chewing his lip. ‘You need to get out of here full stop.’

Slightly disconcerted, Angel drew for some minutes before he asked tersely, ‘And that would be why?’

‘Because.’ Spike encompassed the whole building in one wave of his hand. ‘Heat rises, and so does whatever it is that’s being pumped out in this damn edifice of evil. You’re sitting right at the top of it, Angel, sleeping with it seeping into you. You’ve changed.’

Angel felt disproportionately annoyed by this comment. If he had changed from some unspecified previous time, then the catalyst for that change was sitting right opposite him making the accusation. Nevertheless, his curiosity was piqued enough to ask, ‘How so?’

Spike frowned—usually a sign he was trying to appear mature—and said, ‘You’re allowing yourself to be used. That’s not like you.’

‘I’m minded to comment that you know jack-shit about me.’

Spike laughed dryly. ‘Touché.’

Angel was silent for a while, maliciously removing some of the beauty in Spike’s cheekbones and making his eyes more closely set. When his equilibrium returned he glanced up and asked, ‘If what you say is true, then why are you here, too? No one is making you stay….’

Spike pouted with a slightly self-deprecating half-smile and murmured, ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’ More loudly, he added petulantly, ‘Come on…. I’m bored. Let’s do something else….’

Angel was very well aware what Spike wanted to do: he’d smelt his arousal for some time. However, he was much more interested in picking over Spike’s murmured comment. ‘You think someone is forcing you to be here? You’re corporeal now—free to go where you want.’

Spike put the empty mug on the floor and rummaged in a pocket for his cigarettes. ‘I’m fine right where I am.’

‘In the house of evil.’

‘Yeah, in the house of evil.’ He paused then added in a fond tone, ‘’Sides, you need someone around who knows from personal experience that the sun don’t shine outta your backside.’

Angel felt so instantly and absurdly happy that he ripped the vandalised picture of Spike off the pad and screwed it up. Spike, though, look panicked. ‘What? You can’t see the soul?’

So uncharacteristic was Angel sudden surge of happiness that he did a very uncharacteristic thing, leaning forward and ruffling Spike’s hair. ‘I see it well enough, Childe.’

There was a moment when this intimate gesture could have gone either way—and they both knew it. Spike was on the verge of jerking away like a defensive animal kicked once too often. Then, need for something—reassurance? affection? touch?—overcame this initial reflex, and he pushed into the caress. They groaned at the same time, and as Angel was already half-naked and kneeling over him, it was a very, very short step from a ruffle of hair to a frantic, lip-crushing kiss, with hands gripping so hard over straining muscles that they bruised where they touched. Spike pressed his face to Angel’s neck and breathed in deeply. ‘Christ, you smell so good.’

Angel flushed at the thought that he had not showered and then flushed some more at the thought of Spike relishing his musky male scent. He tipped Spike’s neck back and kissed him, long and hard, no prisoners taken, until they tasted blood between them and had to withdraw. Spike lifted up, Angel shifted, and somehow they were on the floor, rolling, tables and chairs victims of their furious lust. Angel found it hard to focus on one desire; he wanted every pleasure all at the same time. Anatomically impossible to do more than one, however, he did the easiest, pushing Spike’s head down to his crotch and grinding the angular face against the soft, damp cotton. Spike yanked the pants down so hard that Angel’s cock, caught on the elastic, bounced free with a tautness that caused drops of clear fluid to flick off. Thinking—hoping—that Spike would go straight for his cock, Angel gasped in pleased surprise when urgent fingers fondled his scrotum, pulling the skin until it was stretched and tight and revealing its concealed delights. Hard spheres, exposed, were then teased and probed with a hot tongue, causing Angel to arch his back and pull wildly at Spike’s hair. Spike ignored him and sucked the balls into his mouth, keeping the sac stretched so their sensitivity made the mouthing more torture than delight. He was merciless, no pity offered, even as Angel begged—whether for release or for more he wasn’t sure. Then a finger pressed hard against his perineum and began to track inexorably downward.  After all this time, the sensation of being penetrated was so extreme that Angel was about to fight Spike off when the insistent finger found his nub of pleasure. And pressed. Simultaneously, Spike sucked both balls into his mouth and released his hold on the loose sac. He sucked and pressed and sucked and pressed, until with a scream, Angel’s balls shot their load into his cock, and he emptied the lot over his belly and face as he lay helpless to Spike’s power on the hard floor. Neither of them had touched his cock throughout the whole experience, nor had Spike even undone a button, but Angel lay prostrate on the floor, as quivering and as helpless as the mess upon his stomach.

* * * * * * *

Spike rose lazily up the long, lean body, licking as he went, slowly extracting his finger from its hot containment, trailing it back up Angel’s perineum and into wiry hair.

Angel tried to remember the thoughts he had mulled over on the journey back about dominance—their relative positions in the scheme of things. Whatever his views then had been, they seemed fairly meaningless now—now that his anus throbbed, as if with pride, at taking such a critical part in his intense release. If a finger could achieve this level of pleasure, Angel was very sure what he would soon be encouraging to follow it.

He lowered his eyes to look at Spike, and before the expression was whipped off the familiar features, he saw that Spike was inordinately pleased with himself. Angel nodded in recognition that, in this moment, he’d been totally mastered. 

* * * * * * *

Eventually, Angel eased his pants up and climbed slightly shakily to his feet. Spike rose too and eyed him warily. ‘I’ll be off then.’

Angel nodded and tried to look bored.

With amusement, he noted a bitter look flick across Spike’s face before the blond vampire had time to hide it. He chuckled inwardly. Spike’s I-hate-you act was definitely not at its best.  He waited until Spike tried to push past him then, in a rush of immense power, wrestled him to the bed, where they fell in a tangle. He stopped Spike’s cursing with his mouth, sucking the invectives out of him, thrusting his tongue in hard to take their place, licking the places they’d touched, replacing bitterness with sweet saliva—and Spike responded like an addict craving sugar. His mouth tasted erotically salty from Angel’s fluids, and it opened wide, inviting Angel in. The only sounds in the apartment then were wet ones: slapping and slurping of careless, greedy kisses. Gradually, Angel began to undress Spike, button-by-button, item-by-item, until he possessed his skin. It still wasn’t enough. He wanted to be inside the hard body, enjoying Spike from within, where he was hotter, wetter and tighter. He pushed the elastic of his waistband below his cock, then lower, so his balls hung out, heavy and swinging. There was a pause, and Angel filled it by learning Spike’s body, stroking flank or belly or thigh. ‘How do you want it?’ His voice shocked him with its husky arousal. Spike’s eyes dilated fractionally then, very slowly and explicitly, he half-turned, propped up with one hand so he could see every move that Angel made upon his body. Angel nodded and stood at the side of the bed, pulling him closer. With an almost clinical concentration that was in such contrast to the wildness preceding it, and all the more carnal for that, he worked his erection into Spike’s body. Each inch caused Spike’s neck to stretch back further, each inch his spine to bow. The final inch eluded them until Angel pulled out fully and Spike lifted to his hands and knees, offering his hole spread like a sacrifice. When Angel slid back in they fit together as perfectly as a sword in its scabbard. With wiry hair scratching stretched cheeks, Angel circled, feeling his cock lengthen to the stimulus of being so entirely pleasured. Unconsciously, he began to stroke the small of Spike’s back in similar circles, not allowing himself the intense delight yet of pull or push.

Although this was nothing new to them, every time it happened, Angel was in awe that Spike was willing to give him his body in this way. As he stroked the bony spine and enjoyed the sight of Spike stretched tight and pale around his thick, blood-flushed cock, it seemed incongruous to him that Spike would do this, yet resist emotions that must give rise to the desire for it. Angel had never given his body in this intimate, almost feminine way to anyone else, and he could not imagine doing so. He gave it thus to Spike because he loved him. Why was Spike willing to do this incredible thing, open himself up so utterly to him, when he would not open one chink of his heart?

Spike suddenly pushed off from his hands and leant back against Angel’s broad chest. With a quiet sigh, he said gently, ‘Stop thinking so much.’

Angel wrapped his arms around Spike’s chest and rested his chin on the bony shoulder. If either of them got the reversed similarity of the pose in Angel’s final sketch, neither remarked upon it. Ambiguity shimmered between them though and it caught on Angel’s vocal chords, making him husky. ‘I can’t help it, Will. I want things as they once were between us.’

Spike didn’t comment on the use of his given name, only replied, ‘It can’t be. That’s… broken.’

‘Mend it.’

‘Can’t. Don’t you get it, Luv?’ Still his tone was gentle, almost wistful. ‘That bitch knew exactly how to separate us. No histrionics, no ultimatums or threats of violence, just your insatiable appetites and your total inability to love anything more than your own dick.’

If it seemed odd to Angel to be having this conversation whilst that dick twitched and ached for the off inside Spike’s hot rectum, nothing of this thought was evident in the way he replied in an equally low tone, ‘I have a soul now! I’ve changed.’

Spike lifted one hand over his shoulder and ran his fingers into Angel’s hair. An observer of the scene might have confused this for a very loving gesture. It confused Angel. ‘Maybe. Maybe you have. But, see, here’s the rub: I have too. I’ve kinda had it with love over the last few years. Love almost finished me off for good. I’m spoiled goods. Empty. I want this,’ he clenched his backside, making Angel hiss in a very good way, ‘cus I’m still a man, and I still crave your body, but there is nothing more. You are fucking a corpse, Luv. Souled or not, love ain’t gonna blossom in this barren soil.’

Angel heard the words, understood their literal intent, but he heard something else, too. It wasn’t the time or the place though to examine the subtler undertones of Spike’s confession; that would come later. Angel only knew that in some strange way, he had just been given the hope he needed to continue this seemingly hopeless cause. His body responded to the surge of relief in his heart by surging, too: swelling and lengthening, twitching and hardening. Spike clearly felt this too and groaned. Angel lowered his arms to the hard abdomen and tightened his hold.

With swift jerks of his hips, Angel began to fuck Spike hard, giving him what he’d so readily confessed to needing. They both needed it. He watched over Spike’s shoulder as Spike added to his own pleasure, fondling heavy balls, stretching and kneading them harder than any human man could withstand.

Unattended whilst the balls were played with, his cock stood erect, swaying each time Angel rammed home. The one flushed eye pulsed with a steady flow of tears, which made Angel’s mouth water to taste salt. He took his hand off the flat abs and ran his palm over the sticky head. Slowly, with great anticipation, he brought the wetness to the tip of his tongue and licked it.

Spike seized his fingers and brought them urgently to his lips. Greedy, like a baby, he sucked them into his mouth, and the unexpectedly erotic sensation brought on Angel’s orgasm. Sperm surged up his cock from pulsing balls, shooting high into Spike’s body, negotiating his tight coils then falling weakly back, soaking the still thrusting obstruction, everything then loose and slurping and noisy as they continued to fuck. Neither heard nor cared; the sensual sounds were drowned out by grunts and curses and the slap, slap of flesh on flesh, as Angel’s chest slammed against Spike’s rigid back.

Spike beat his cock as if frantic to come before the surging inside him ceased.

Finally, an arc of white leapt free. It rained down on Angel’s bed, followed by another and another. Eventually, the arcs trailed off like a fading stream of piss. One last spurt welled into his hand, and Angel, waiting and equally greedy, seized it and fed from it as their fused bodies convulsed with aftershocks of pleasure.

This one moment—come on his tongue, his cock twitching wet in Spike’s body, Spike limp and spent in his arms—Angel knew could be enough. He could swap a lonely and celibate eternity for this, if this was all he could have. But then Spike leant back on the sweat-sticky chest and wrapped his arms over Angel’s, murmuring, ‘Christ, I love… that,’ and Angel knew that his previous thought was a lie: he wanted that unguarded confession to expand and fill all his eternity. Sex, as good as it was between them, only made him want the elusive but essential rest. He wanted Spike to say that again, only this time he wanted him to finish as he had originally intended.

* * * * * * *

They collapsed useless to the bed. They weren’t in bed together, just… both on the bed and not going anywhere else for some time.

Naked, on his belly, stretched, pale and unembarrassed, Spike lay over to one side, an arm trailing off onto the floor where he was following the path of a tiny splash of sunlight, which, reflected off something in the room, was dancing like an elf on the polished wooden floor. Angel lay nearer the middle of the bed on a damp patch, which was drying and sticking pleasantly to his back. If he didn’t mention that they were lying side-by-side and naked in a bed together, he was hoping that Spike would not notice. Arms folded behind his head, his body just as stretched and decadent as Spike’s, cock and balls a strangely incongruous nest of ill-disciplined dark shapes on the otherwise hard, flawless body, he felt a sense of peace that rarely came to him. The only thing marring his happiness was the thought that now any refuge he had found in this bed was entirely lost. He would forever miss the presence of the one who had graced it so briefly this day.

‘So… no trip to the museum then? No little educational excursion for Spike?’  Angel started then blushed faintly at the unexpected, low amused tone, and Spike laughed knowingly. ‘Yeah. Like you weren’t planning to do ‘xactly what we’ve just bin doing….’

Angel chuckled, surprised but somewhat pleased that his plan had been so easily sussed. He slid a hand closer then closer still, and then laid it on the small of Spike’s back. ‘We could do a museum—if you’d prefer.’ 

Spike did not reject the hand. Far from it: he wriggled slightly, making it caress his sensitive skin. ‘I’m learning stuff just fine here, Poof.’

All went quiet for a while. Angel felt himself drift pleasantly then shook himself awake, angry that he’d missed a minute of something that was so soon to be withdrawn from him. Only when he realised that he’d been awake for well over seventy-two hours, with some considerable physical exertion in that time, did he forgive his need to sleep. He craned his neck to see the clock on the nightstand then stretched to turn its face to him. His movement woke Spike from a light sleep. He blinked for a moment as if trying to get his bearings in the unfamiliar territory then said, more to himself than Angel, ‘I can’t do this.’

Angel did not try to prevent him leaving—exactly. He just very slowly and very precisely drew up the exquisitely soft merino wool blanket, which lay scrunched and discarded at the foot of the bed. Spike twisted his head over his shoulder and gave Angel a very direct look. ‘I’m not staying. I’m not sleeping with you.’

Angel hitched the seductive blanket over his shoulder as he turned his back to Spike. ‘Stay awake then.’ With a private grin, he allowed himself to fall in into oblivion.

Chapter 6

Inevitably, sometime during the day, their sleeping bodies came together as eagerly as parts of their waking ones did. And fit just as well, too. Angel woke from a deep and restful sleep to the forgotten sensation of being embraced, consumed by another. Somehow, like a second blanket, Spike lay draped across him, sprawled and loose-limbed, warm and pliant. Breathing deeply, his breath tickled the short hairs on Angel’s neck.

There were many ways that it occurred to Angel he could wake Spike for some more interesting activities, and each one made him smile in anticipation of the reaction should he try it. Finally, moving one arm only, he brought his wrist to his mouth, sloughed off his human features and bit, tearing open an artery with the practice of three hundred predatory years. Grinning, he laid the spurting wound over Spike’s open mouth.

Spike did not even wake before he changed, his demon emerging even in sleep. He lifted his mouth, shark-like from below, and fastened onto the meal. Angel watched him with the fascination of a mother watching her newborn suckling: deep and abiding. He had forgotten this. Somehow, incredibly, in the effort to be human, to walk and talk like a man, he had forgotten this essential part of themselves—this part of Spike. With a grunt of power he wrenched Spike from his wrist and plundered the blood-wet mouth with his. Spike responded as eagerly to this savage kiss as he had to the blood, and they began to roll with the sticky fluid smearing across their bed-warm skin.

The sex then was totally uncontrolled, and afterwards, each would have been hard pressed to say who did what to whom or how often. It was all tangle of limbs and opportunity. Holes were used and abused, bodies battered, souls forgotten. Blood flowed so freely that the next day, in the bright, magical light, Angel found arcs of the dried substance across the walls over ten feet away. He never could explain them or remember the exact the moment when he and his childe had shed their fluids as freely as their inhibitions. He just left them there, a reminder.

By the time they were finished—a state only admitted when both were limp and sore and shrivelled—they were laughing. What held them apart as men, what seemed to create nothing but competition and friction in their human selves, was absent in their demons. Demons should have no need of talk or bargains, no self-analysis, no tiptoeing around fragile history, no regrets and no promises. It was intensely liberating, and before he knew what he did, Angel licked Spike’s belly and said, like an intimate acquaintance, ‘Shower?’

Perhaps before he realised what he was doing, too, Spike yawned and nodded. ‘But who’s gonna carry me?’

Angel made to try; Spike fought him off, and like the centuries-old, uninhibited demonic family that they were, they chased each other to the bathroom before more sober human awareness in them returned.

It did return though. Blood-curdling embarrassment suddenly hit them both—for the things they had just done to each other as well as for this intensely vulnerable joint shower. Bodies entered, explored and known in sex were one thing; standing shrivelled in a shower with soap stinging your eyes was quite another. A desperate politeness overtook Angel, and he found himself trying to play the generous host, offering Spike his products in a desperate attempt not to have to think about the implications of what they were doing. Spike looked as if he would rather be anywhere but where he was: sharing a cosy shower stall with Angel and rubbing coconut exfoliate on his cheeks.

The ill-thought-through shower could have broken for good something that was tentatively mending. But then in earnest desperation, thoughtlessly, Angel held up a loofah and offered it politely to Spike.

Spike’s eyebrows lifted, a smile quirked his lips, and suddenly he was laughing. It shook his whole body, making water flick off in a second fine shower. Angel watched him and realised that for the first time, he was actually seeing Spike. Under this powerful stream of hot water, scrubbed away perhaps on coconut and palm oil, the masks had peeled off. Spike wasn’t angry or bitter. He wasn’t acting, and he didn’t appear to hate him at all.

And on that sparkling laugh, Angel had something of a revelation—which didn’t often happen in his shower. He suddenly got that he didn’t want William back at all.

He wanted this one.

He wanted Spike.

So, regardless of ignoring Spike’s unspoken rules on how things would be between them, Angel dropped the loofah and seized the back of Spike’s neck. He pressed him to the wet tiles and opened his mouth upon him. He kissed gently and lovingly, wide and wet and seeking deep into Spike’s laughter-sweet mouth. And just in case Spike missed the difference between this and what they had been doing for the last few hours on the bed, he breathed, ‘I love you,’ into the hollow he explored. Giving Spike a small shake, just to fix this declaration in his mind, he extracted his tongue and stepped from under the water, selecting a towel. Without turning around, he held another out for Spike, which was eventually taken. Wordlessly, Angel padded to the kitchen to heat some blood. When he turned around, Spike was sitting on the end of the bed, wearing nothing but his jeans, examining some recent wounds with a distracted, thoughtful air.

‘Sundays could always be like this.’ Angel had not planned to say this but was glad that he had.

Spike pouted and dabbed at some blood that was still seeping from a deep bite. Suddenly, he lifted his head and said with some bitterness, ‘I’m