Just An Insubstantial Trick of the Light - Chapter 2

As it happened, however, the Scoobies were the amused recipients of most of the Spike and Angel roadshow over the next few days.

Angel had come to help them with a demon and would not renege on his offer. Spike was starving and needed their blood supplies, and seemed to have found an expedient way to cope with Angel. He ignored him... totally.. .as if he were merely that insubstantial trick of the light. He’d come to this brilliant ploy the night before whilst sitting outside the street cafe in which he had taken refuge, after being chased for five miles by Angel.

Now, Spike could run like the fucking wind when he wanted to. And he had wanted to. When he’d felt those soft, slightly dry, totally kissable lips, he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this Angel was the one and only Angel: his sire, his ex-best friend, his ex-lover. So, fuck, he’d flown out of there like the incredibly fit, strong, fast demon he was. Oh, yeah, he could run, he really could. But he couldn’t actually fly. A trick he swore Angel had acquired over the extra hundred or so years he’d had in demon form. Cus Angel fucking kept up with him. But Spike had one thing still going for him, he was unembarrassable, whilst Angel, he knew, was not. Angel was a much hated, poncey, fuck-up who would blush at his own skivvies, if he could blush.

So, Spike decided not to even try and out run him; he just let him run with him through town, cus no way would Angel try anything unseemly, like tackling him in the public high street of down-town Sunnydale.

Then Spike spotted the street cafe and stopped.

Brilliant.

If he’d taken Angel to his crypt, firstly he would be alone with him, and he was not going to let that happen any time this side of the next millennium and, secondly, Angel would see where, and more importantly, how he lived. Not good.

So, he stopped at the café and ordered hot chocolate.

Angel stopped, too, of course, and stared at Spike for a while, expecting him to speak. Well, that was Spike’s whole plan. It had come to him as he was running. If he had seen, talked to, kissed, and loved his insubstantial Angel, and it had seemed real, then this Angel, who he hated and who he had just made the most embarrassingly wussy speech to, was just going to be ignored. Yeah, treat him like the insubstantial trick of light, and the other one, his one, as real. Then this Angel might just go away. Good plan.

Made perfect sense to Spike.

Spike sipped his hot chocolate thoughtfully. He could hear a noise and took it to be Insubstantial Trick of the Light trying to talk to him. Well, light can’t speak; that’s just silly, and one thing Spike was not, was silly.

This hot chocolate was the bloody bollocks though.

Half an hour later and Insubstantial had gone quiet. He was still there, unfortunately, but silent, so,, thank God for small mercies. Spike tried to carry on home, but Insubstantial came along, too. So, Spike decided the best thing to do was to avoid his place completely and head back to the Watcher’s for his blood. As he intended to ignore Insubstantial completely anyway, it didn’t matter where he ignored him.

So, as it happened, the Scoobies saw the next exciting instalment of ‘Spike Behaves Like a Complete Wuss’ rather sooner than they expected: about an hour after the previous riveting episode.

Of course, they’d passed the time in idle, and totally inaccurate, speculation as to Spike’s strange behaviour. Only Giles thought he had the faintest inkling of what it might be about. He, of course, knew nothing of the extent of vampire sexual deviance - deviance in that they’d fuck anything, anytime as long as it didn’t want paying. No, Giles had a vague idea about Sire / Childe bonding rituals that just might be conducted... gosh, naked, but the idea of Spike having sex with anyone was frankly so abhorrent to Giles he tried never to think about it at all.

When Spike came back, seemingly his usual, irritating, loud, demanding self, they thought their fun for the night was over. They were delighted, therefore, to discover that Spike had now moved on from screaming Spike and jumping Spike and touchy feely Spike, to Spike being a bizarre 'I cannot see or hear Angel' Spike. And that was the best Spike of all. That was just hilarious. Didn’t matter what poor Angel did, Spike didn’t see or hear him. If Angel was talking, Spike would start up another conversation right over him... as if he wasn’t there.

It was even funnier as it was clearly getting to Angel and getting him… flustered. None of them had ever seen Angel... flustered. Well, they assumed Buffy had... right before Angelus came to fluster around some more... surely even Angel got flustered when he... you know... did it! But they hadn’t been there then, and they couldn’t catch Buffy’s eye and get her to one side to ask her now. But, given her avid studying of the Spike and Angel situation, she, too, was riveted.

This continued the rest of the night and the following day. Spike tried to go home once or twice, but Angel got up as if to follow, so he plonked himself back down and stayed. He was particularly pleasant and chatty to everyone. He even helped wash up. Anything, just to let Insubstantial know he was ignoring him.

Which is how he got hoist by his own petard later that evening. Trying desperately to let everyone, especially Insubstantial, know that he was ignoring said trick of the light, Spike got coerced into going on the demon hunt with them. Insubstantial said it was time to go; Spike immediately took up residence on the couch, seemingly intent on watching the TV. The Scoobies, desperate not to miss any available amusement from the bizarre blond vampire, challenged him that he wouldn’t go because Angel had suggested it. And that put Spike in a dilemma. If he stayed, he'd be admitting it was because of Angel, but Angel was not real. If he went, he admitted that they were manipulating him. As his obvious indecision only brought on more mirth from the surprisingly evil humans, he decided to take the lesser of the two evils and go with them. He decided that this would clearly show his position that Angel did not exist, without the necessity for him to have to say so

Having to sit next to him in the car, however, did not really add weight to this assertion. That was extremely difficult, especially as Red squeezed in next to him and told him to move up. Everyone looked at him. If he didn’t move and push his thighs right up against Angel's then, again, he was admitting that Angel existed. If Angel didn’t, as he clearly didn’t, then why wouldn’t he move up? Fucking humans were so going to pay for this. So he moved over. Why not? Only an Insubstantial trick of the light in that spot. Unfortunately, one that could in all probability smell his arousal. One that Spike could all too substantially feel against his leg. He tipped his head back on the seat, closed his eyes, and tried to think good thoughts. As he had very little experience of those, he ran out fairly quickly, and reverted to his favourite daydream: railroad spike meets human. He varied just which human was meeting his spike, depending on who was talking at the moment. Thus, he pleasantly passed a potentially awkward trip in the car to the demon spawning ground.

But the Scoobies weren't finished with him yet. They paired off for hunting and fighting, and paired him with Insubstantial. As Spike's ploy did not actually extend to telling them that Angel didn't exist, cus that would have just made him seem childish and would have left him open to accusations of being totally fucking insane, he could not protest this pairing on the grounds that he would, in his view, be on his own and vulnerable. He just had to give that impression that this is what he thought by his demeanour and actions. So, he walked on, without waiting for Insubstantial. He was incredibly impressed by his own tactic and walked around on his own for quite a considerable amount of time. Excellent tactic, until Insubstantial shouted a warning to him. Fuck it. He couldn’t let himself react, cus then he would be admitting that Angel was real, and that meant that he, The Big Bad, had made a passionate declaration of love to Angel, at the same time as telling him that he had been fucking an Angel fantasy in his crypt for two weeks: ie, that he was a total geek.

So, he ignored the warning and got punched through the stomach by a fence post swung by the ugliest looking demon Spike had ever seen. It didn’t look any better from his position on the ground. It looked slightly better on the end of its own fence post when said weapon was thrust through its neck. Funny how strong tricks of the light can be. Not funny when Insubstantial picked him up and cradled him in his arms. Even more unfunny when Insubstantial gently lifted up his T-shirt and inspected the gapping wound in his stomach.

But he thought he did the best thing, which was to pass out and not come round again 'til he was tucked up on the couch at the Watcher's. But when the trick of light brought him a mug of blood, he turned his head and ignored it, even though he was starving and needed it to heal.

Insubstantial was clearly starting to take all this to heart. He was becoming despondent. Broody even, which was so un-Angel like, not, that no one even noticed.

He started to give up trying to talk to Spike. But he kept looking at him. Whatever Spike did, wherever Spike went, the trick of the light was watching him, like some spooky picture in a haunted house. It was really pissing Spike off. He could feel Insubstantial plotting against him; so, when Spike considered no one would notice, he left to go home again. Insubstantial didn’t follow this time, and Spike was able to get back to his crypt - after several long and devious detours to ensure he wasn’t being followed, one of which included a fairly lengthy stopover at the Bronze to spend some cash he had stolen from Giles on copious amounts of beer - happy in the knowledge he’d made a valuable contribution to destroying Angel’s life a bit more.

Eventually, he had to go home. He came in slowly, peering between his half closed eyes. He had no hopes of finding his Angel there at all. He'd been gone too long and had had to face the lunacy of his own loneliness. So, he was absolutely delighted to find his Angel, naked, and waiting for him on the tomb, exactly where he had left him. Spike gave him one of his very best smiles. The one he reserved for good thoughts of Angel and started to tell him all about the Insubstantial incident and why he’d stayed away so long.

His Angel was an avid listener just as before. It relieved Spike’s mind to tell his Angel just how hideous it had been finding out he had professed love to Insubstantial. Cus Insubstantial didn’t want Spike’s love, had never wanted Spike’s love. Spike enjoyed telling all this to his Angel again. He particularly dwelt on all the past evidence he had stored up in his own mind to prove that Insubstantial had never really loved him. He went carefully through his turning, through their time together, and thought, all in all, given he had a serious stomach wound and was tired, hungry and drunk, he gave a fairly accurate account of his miserable life with Insubstantial.

One of the things Spike was particularly keen for Angel to understand was why he loved him so much, but hated Insubstantial: why he'd made passionate love to Angel for two weeks and told him over and over how much he loved him, but at the first opportunity to tell the real Angel, he'd run like fuck.

Spike was clear on why this was so, but he felt Angel was still puzzled, so he took the opportunity to get it clear in his own mind by explaining it to his ever willing audience.

Talking to and loving his Angel was very easy, and he was very happy to lay his heart bare to him. Talking to Insubstantial had never been easy with or without a soul. But especially since that ghastly evening in the school hall, nothing had been the same for Spike, for Spike had realised that, far from Angel wanting to be his lover again, he didn’t, in fact, even want to be his sire or his best friend again.

Angel sat impassively on the tomb while Spike told him how miserable he'd been since he found out that Insubstantial was still around, but souled: that he was only a few hours away, but not bothered about his Childe. That all the longing and desperation he had experienced, for the hundred or so years that he had thought Insubstantial was dead, were for nothing.

Spike was particularly anxious that his Angel understand just what it was that Insubstantial was missing, cus Spike intended Angel, when he was substantial enough, to be the recipient and main beneficiary of his unique brand of loving. Cus if there was one thing he knew about, it was love. He was love's Bitch and not afraid to admit it.

Spike was scathing about Insubstantial's own self-knowledge. How could he have expected to be satisfied by a mortal girl? Insubstantial needed Spike. That was very clear to Spike, but he was not going to face humiliation and rejection by pointing this out to him.

He glanced over at Angel who was looking satisfactorily substantial. One look at Angel's red-tipped, weeping cock made Spike realise that Angel wanted him to go into specifics about exactly how much of a bitch he could be, and that was exactly why Spike preferred his Angel to the real one. His Angel was clearly getting excited by thoughts of Spike. The other never did apparently: the other one was pathetically trying to be a human male.

Spike walked up close to Angel and asked him the very reasonable question: if given the choice, would he rather pound into a fragile female body, or his, hard, cold, enduring one? To illustrate the answer he required from Angel, he ripped off his coat and shirt to expose his hard, lean body.

'Come on, Angel, tell me; how many hours could you pound into me?'

Angel was clearly impressed by Spike's argument, cus his eyes were dilating, and his hands had strayed to his cock. Spike was pleased by this response. He felt, in some perverse way, that he was getting his own back on the Insubstantial git he'd embarrassed himself in front of. Quite how he'd have explained this logic to anyone, he wasn't sure, but he felt it was so, and that was good enough.

But Spike didn’t want his Angel to see him in just a sexual way, although that, clearly, was critical, too. No, he wanted Angel to be something more than that. He wanted to stop being lonely, and he wanted Angel to do that for him. He wanted Angel to be his best friend again.

He stopped pacing and shouting, and looked at Angel. Angel looked back at him.

Spike knew he could tell him everything, even this. After all, his Angel had the uncanny knack of reacting to anything Spike told him exactly how Spike wanted him to react. So he told him. Told him how lonely he was, how scared being chipped made him, and how confused he felt about everything most of the time. He even told him that he felt like a wuss most of the time, cus he had this ridiculous reputation as the Big Bad to maintain, when now he felt neither Big nor Bad. He'd rather watch TV quietly, have a few beers with some mates, and do the odd spot of recreational sex.

By this time, Spike was getting quite angry with the Insubstantial one, who he saw as the main cause of all his current unhappiness. So he told Angel a secret. He knew by Angel's reaction that he promised to keep this secret. Spike put on a dramatic and mysterious pose, as he felt befitted such an important secret, and told his Angel that he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Insubstantial was as lonely as him.

He expected a shocked look from Angel and was not disappointed. So, he told him, sadly, how Insubstantial seemed so bloody miserable all the time. No one understood him, no one loved him; whereas he, Spike, understood him completely, and loved him beyond his ability to speak of it.

Angel never spoke; Angel listened to him but, most importantly, as far as Spike was concerned, his Angel was loving him at that very moment, just as much as Spike wanted to be loved. And that was a lot. He told him this, too. He could tell his Angel anything.

Spike told his Angel about his ploy of ignoring Insubstantial 'til he went away. And looking at his Angel now, it seemed as though he had indeed gotten more substantial in direct, inverse proportion to Insubstantial being ignored.

Spike desperately wanted to touch his Angel, but he knew he’d only pass right through him, and he didn’t need that right now. Couldn’t cope with that right now, not after having had Insubstantial's arm wrapped around him as he carried him to the car. Insubstantial who seemed to have the strongest, best, most substantial arms he had ever been held in. He put that paradox to his Angel but, as usual, Angel had no answer for Spike; he only continued to sit on the tomb, but he did seem particularly thoughtful. Spike appreciated that. He thought his sorry situation deserved rapt attention and deep thought.

By now, Spike was so wound up, he knew only a good shag would calm him down. However, he was not likely to get that from Angel, who was doing his best to look real, but had very little other than Spike's over-active imagination to go on.

So, Spike decided to settle for a hand job or, if he could muster up enough imagination, a blowjob.

At last, Spike invited Angel to bed and hoped that if he drank enough alcohol in one go, at least he’d feel those lips again. Spike took out the brandy, whisky, and vodka bottles he half-inched from the Watcher’s and started on the Smirnoff. He drank it like water, propped up on his pillows, watching Angel, who was lurking in the shadows of the crypt. By the time he made it to the brandy, he was sure Angel would be substantial enough for at least one, eyes-closed kiss. So he lay down, got his hand just right on the pillow alongside his face, bunched up the spare pillow, and closed his eyes. After a few minutes, he was delighted to find cool, quite substantial feeling hands on his back, rubbing from his neck down to the base of his spine, and on over his arse to slip in and fondle his balls.

He turned over onto his back but, to make sure he didn’t look, he clamped his hand over his eyes. He promised Angel he would keep his eyes closed but, oh, please, don’t stop, please be real for me.

So, Angel was. Angel’s cool hands continued their loving of Spike. They moved to his cock without even Spike’s hands being there.

This was the best Angel had ever been. He was slowly becoming real. Spike had known he’d only have to be drunk enough and this would happen.

He was surprised, however, that only three bottles of neat alcohol could make him actually feel Angel’s cock in his arse. He'd have thought this much hardness, from a trick of the light, would have taken a lot longer to induce. He wished he'd tried this mixing drinks thing before. Cus this was very, very nice.

In fact, this seemed too good a fantasy even for Spike, who’d been able to fantasise a Master Vampire living in his crypt for two weeks.

But he could feel that huge, thick cock pushing slowly, inexorably, into his near-virgin entrance. A hundred years closed-for-business made it a virgin ass in his book any day. And then, only this cock had been in it anyway. And it seemed to remember and respond to its favourite cock, cus Spike’s whole back passage started throbbing and contracting to the feel of Angel’s penetration. It was like a fucking orgasm in his ass. He could actually feel Angel's true weight on top of him now, not just that light pillow-like feeling he had felt before. He had always particularly liked being underneath Angel - being crushed by Angel.

The sensation of Angel's cock was good as it was, but it got even better when that insistent strong, rhythmic pulsing in the muscles of his hole caused Angel to groan.

The first sound Angel had made in two weeks.

Spike’s eyes flew open, and he took his arm away and stared at Angel.

Angel stared back at him.

This time, Spike’s scrutiny of Angel did not make him less substantial, as it had done so many times before. If anything, the look of rapt attention on Spike’s face only made Angel’s cock swell more in Spike’s tight passage, and Angel's face soften to one of almost believable love.

Something was not right here but, as almost everything else was, in fact, totally right here, Spike sent up a small prayer of thanks to the God of alcohol excess and didn’t question it too much. Or at all in fact.

Clearly he was now totally insane.

But if this was insanity... fuck, bring on those white coats, bring on the Big Nurse, cus he liked it.

He took a risk and kept his eyes open. Angel responded to this daring move by not only starting a deep, hard, thrusting rhythm but by pumping Spike’s cock all by himself. Without Spike’s hands being there first.

Not only that, just as Spike was coming to his explosive orgasm, and his cock was swelling in Angel’s hands, the blue veins standing starkly out from the cool white skin; just as he came, Angel bent over and swallowed him, as Angel's own cold flood filled Spike’s body. And that was the weirdest thing that had happened all night. Cus Trick of the Light Angel, as Spike knew his Angel to be really, had now become so real that he was producing cold, Trick of the Light cum and, even stranger, he actually swallowed Spike's… without it passing through him. Spike’s seed did not cascade uselessly and unwanted to the floor. It was clearly wanted very much and swallowed by this alarmingly substantial Angel.

Spike put out his hand again to Angel’s lips and laid three fingers lightly on them.

He was never sure in the weeks to come - the weeks when he shared a lot more with Angel than his small box of treasures, his heart, and his sticky porn mags, in the weeks when they were all in all to each other and no amount of penetration could bring them close enough together - in these weeks he was never sure whether it had been Angel’s lips that had again confirmed to him that this was the real Angel, or the fact that this Angel smiled at him, told him that he was a complete pillock, but that he loved him, too.

Spike always maintained the first; Angel swore it was the second. But it gave them something to argue the toss about, funnily enough, usually when they were tossing.

Angel, sometimes, took the opportunity of these enjoyable, mutual wanking sessions, which they indulged in when too spent with thrusting, licking, biting, sucking, howling, laughing, and teasing to do much else, to maintain that Spike had really known all along that the very, very substantial Angel he’d found on his return to the crypt had been the real Angel.

After all, as he said, there was no way a cock that big and hard, that red and weeping, that enticing and alluring as his had been at the sight of Spike, could have belonged to anything that was merely an insubstantial trick of the light.

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