Chapter 4 - Spike's Night

He hadn’t meant to tell Angel anything, especially not about hell and fear, and most definitely not about the flames that creep over his flesh when he loses his concentration.

But now’s he’s made his heartfelt confession, the least he could have is a little… sympathy… a little… being taken seriously. Spike has the annoying thought that Angel isn’t taking any of this seriously enough. 

Because being kissed again is all very well, but it isn’t going to alter the price of fish, or any other dumb commodity, and why is he thinking about fish when Angel is kissing him… when Angel’s tongue is in his mouth, exploring… when Angel is leaning on him hard and heavy, and other things are hard and heavy… down there… heavy and hard….

Oh… fuck hell…. 

Spike kisses back, and things get even heavier and harder; it’s all flesh and saliva and hot tearing at clothes until….

‘Let’s do this thing, Spike. You want it; I want it. Let’s do it and get it over with and get on with saving the frigging world. I’m too distracted like this!’

Huh!

The huh is about to get a verbal airing (with something stronger), but Spike suddenly hears what Angel actually said… underneath… where the real communication between them has always been.

With a stab of wonder – a prick in his bubble of anger - Spike realises that Angel is scared.

Surfing in on this release of anger, comes the awareness that this man is not who Spike thought he was. This is not Angelus, or Angel as he was in Sunnydale. This is another man—a man who’s had experiences that have made him afraid.

They’re teetering on a precarious edge: Angel’s fragile ego.

Spike nods. It’s such a delicate balancing act—being on this edge—that if he upsets it at all, they’ll both fall off.  He doesn’t fancy the drop all that much.

He wants to reach out and reassure Angel that at least he is still what he ever was, but Angel is moving too fast, keeping control, setting the pace of this thing so he doesn’t have to stop and think.

So he doesn’t have to admit that he has needs.

Having needs makes you weak.

Angel doesn’t want to admit he’s weak.

When Angel comes out of the shower, the fragile balance gives a sickening lurch to the left as one false memory bites the dust—he’s never seen Angel’s erection before. That, he would have remembered!  He watches the defying of gravity with a sick fascination.

‘Get undressed.’

Should he be doing some kind of length comparison? Or thinking about rosebuds? Where’s the need to sniff man-scent? He knows he reads the wrong books, but it’s all coming badly undone, and he can’t keep his mind on track.  Getting naked is just about the worst thing he’s ever done. He’s too thin, too pale, too fucking….

Jesus! That’s different.

There’s something extremely odd about being turned over. It’s not something that’s ever happened to him before. Not much a girlfriend could do with his other side (even Dru, who had some interesting habits).

This is just going to be one of those things that you can’t describe; you have to….

Pain explodes in his body.

He’s the bloody king of pain, but this is different. This is a part of his body that has a hidden agenda for its pain. It’s telling him that something is fundamentally wrong and that, as a man, he should fight.

His backside spasms with pain, and it’s only just started. His preternatural body resists the intrusion as bitterly as it’s resisted every other threat over the last hundred years.  Inch by inch, he’s invaded, a minor country capitulating to a conqueror that will subjugate for a lifetime of misery.

The worst is still to come.  Pushing in was bad; thrusting almost makes him cry. 

Every single one of his victims is lying in the bed with them, watching him experience their pain. They’re not bitter, just curious, as if the truly dead can’t be bothered with anger. Maybe death’s too short to store up such pain.

Another trusted memory kicks a very large bucket—he’s never heard Angel having an orgasm before, either.  This, he would have remembered.

It’s almost worse when it’s over because then there’s nothing to distract him from the pain. Except maybe the dribbling…. Oh, bollocks, that’s just nasty. Clenching isn’t much use at all….

He curls onto his side and sends up a small prayer to the God who’s on duty for sodomite vampires that Angel won’t ask if it was good for him. 

Only he knows how fragile Angel really is.

He wanted to take Angel’s place in hell? Trust him to forget that some things are worse than hell.

‘I should have done that a long time ago.  It would have made things simpler between us.’

He’s not going to regret any of it. He’s not.

Oh….

Not now, anyway…. Not now Angel’s arm is tucked tightly around him, and he’s pulled into such a perfectly aligned spoon that even their feet fit.

This memory is real. This, he does remember. 

If sleep takes him now, he’ll curse the heavens and everything good. He’ll renounce redemption and every sodding thing he’s ever wanted, for all he wants now is to stay awake in Angel’s sex-sated arms. To miss one minute of this would break him. It’s what he’s wanted for over a century, and it’s his now.

He tries to fix every inch of Angel’s touch in his memory: hair on legs scraping his calves; bony knees prodding him; cock, semi-hard, prodding too; belly soft and warm to lie against; chin on his shoulder, as if Angel fell asleep wanting to tell him something; and breath, sweet and even in his ear, human frailty from this invulnerable body.

If he could, he’d turn and eat Angel to preserve this moment. He can’t, so fixing it in his memory has to suffice.

Angel’s fear taints the bed as palpable as the smell of cum, and Spike would take that away, too, if he could.  His sire seems to hang uneasily between his two personas: Angelus and Angel—Angelus fearing nothing, irreverent, no excess too repugnant for his devious imagination; Angel, cautious, fearful, reverent, seeped in the mysticism of the soul. Spike doesn’t have any answers, other than that this feels good, and he never wants to sleep alone again. Is it wrong? And if it is, wrong in whose narrow definition of what is right? They’re wrong to begin with. It seems kinda dumb to feel guilty about fucking flesh that shouldn’t even be there. He’s not sure why it’s a sin.  Is this worse than murder? Does it sit uneasily on some heavenly scale where they will be judged, not for the great good they’ve done, or the undeniable evil, but this: this sharing of their bodies?

Is pleasure the sin? Or is it the sharing? Is God so jealous of his children that he can’t bear to have them love each other more than him? For that’s what this is. Spike knows he would sacrifice all of God’s mercies for one fuck from Angel, and that seems wrong—fundamentally, where his new soul leaks its poison into his resilient body.

If they were men, this would be… unlikely. Demons, they don’t have a chance to sort it all out.

Although he believes in God—hell, he believes in Brittany Spears despite that concept being almost too disturbing to contemplate—he doesn’t feel bound by God’s strictures. Why should he? Where was God when his life was being sacrificed against a brick wall by something that shouldn’t exist? He’s really had only one deity, and lying in the arms of God takes on a whole new meaning when you’re stuck together with dried cum.

The ache in his butt has subsided to a dull throb, which isn’t unpleasant at all. It reminds him of something, but he thinks it’s probably best not to probe this memory too much.

For all that he lay down and let Angel fuck him, he doesn’t feel less than he was. He doesn’t feel demeaned.  

It was the ultimate giving, the ultimate sacrifice. It wasn’t womanly, which surprised him.  (Okay, if he was put over a rack and stretched unpleasantly for a while, he’d admit that the turning over was kinda demeaning, but not the rest. Not the rest at all. The rest was… sublime.) It was the noble ideal—the feeling that you must get in war when you lay down your life.  He doesn’t often feel noble, but he did once, when he’d lain on a bed and not loved someone the way he wanted to love, but the way she needed to be loved.

It was bloody holy, and that’s pretty incredible for a demon.

He wonders what Angel is dreaming—if he dreams—and tries to enter his sleeping state. He has a sense that the dreams would be chaotic and painful. Like balm, he wants to soothe. Angel’s body is soothing him now; it seems the least he can do.

For all he wanted not to sleep, he wonders why sleeps eludes him now. If he could sleep, he might have some power to go into his sire’s sleeping realm as fully as he intrudes on his waking hours. But it does—elude him. Like a phantom just out of reach, he cannot tip over into its welcome embrace, so when Angel stirs and lies awake alongside him, Spike feels his thoughts soft-stroking over his body.

Once more, he’s turned over, but this turning isn’t demeaning in any way at all. It’s revelatory—for them both. He knows what he wants, and he has the distinct impression that Angel is now sure about it, too. They’re both erect—Angel’s sleeping body leaving nothing to the imagination, pressing forcibly into him all night, demanding his compliance, even in sleep.

When the real taking begins, what happened against that brick wall becomes nothing but a prelude.  Angel plays with his slim, sleep-warm body.  Like a cat, his sire teases him until his survival instincts, which fought so hard against intrusion yesterday, ache for surrender. He wants to surrender entirely. In his imagination, he’s fulfilling a promise made by all men to a companion they only dare to want in dreams.

This is what flesh demands. It goes on for a lifetime: teasing touch, flesh on flesh, and then the entering, which now is all pleasure.

Is Angel smaller? The glistening shaft doesn’t look smaller. Spike can only conclude that he’s adapted. He does it for Illyria, so doing it for Angel’s prick doesn’t seem so unlikely.  Like a piston in a well-oiled shaft, Angel takes him again. 

They’re all limbs and noise and hot scent. He can’t separate individual pleasures or remember sequence and event. There’s just him, his body and Angel—all of his sire: lips, cock, vast presence, and blood.

It’s just tumble and touch, bite and blood, and the world coalesces to whether Angel is in or out.  All he wants is for Angel to fill him. He hadn’t realised just how empty he’d been.

Then Angel is out, and the emptiness hurts as much as the filling had before.  He lies waiting, his heart pumping wildly in his memory, just as real as if it were pumping now. Like a consecration, Angel’s offering comes close again, a hard tip brushing his hole, seeking entry. He opens his mind and his heart just as fully as he opens his body.

But the benediction is withdrawn.

Angel stares down at him, a glint of humour in his eyes. For the first time since he obeyed Angel’s command and undressed, it’s just them in the bed: no history, no memory, no substitute Gods, no ghosts. Angel is just Angel, and he’s just Spi…. He’s just pissed off, that’s what he is! Spike laughs. ‘You bugger.’ 

Angel grins and tries to withdraw some more, but Spike wraps his legs around the broad back with a cheeky raise of one eyebrow. 

With a moan, he feels Angel inside him once more, his sphincter muscle quivering from sudden intrusion. It’s the kind of quiver that’ll build to orgasm if he’s lucky, so he lifts his hips, trying to force Angel further in. 

Angel chortles and pulls right out.

Once more, they roll and tumble and bite, but there’s no sense of the ethereal. They’re sparring just as they always have—only now they’re not using words.

Somehow, like falling cats, they end up the right way: Angel prone on his supine willingness. 

With a stab, Angel embeds deeply, and this time, the quivering shoots all the way through Spike’s rectum, setting him on fire. 

They’re just getting into it again when Angel pulls out. Spike’s not sure whether to laugh or cry out. He twists around… and there it is: Angel’s prick.

Face to face, nowhere to duck and dive or evade scrutiny that will expose his heart to anyone, it seems to Spike, as he straddles Angel, that they take each other, blurring distinctions that have kept them separate for too long.

As if Angel feels a dilution of something he ought to be, he bends and bites Spike’s neck, but it’s with human teeth, and just a gesture, so it only reinforces Spike’s strange feeling that this fucking has levelled them somehow.

Muffled, Spike hears a ragged, ‘Fuck, that’s good, Spike.’

Something hitches in his throat. Something clenches inside his arse—one more rung up the ladder of pure pleasure that is Angel’s cock.  ‘You feel good inside.’ It’s so inadequate. Angel makes him feel good inside his heart, but he has no words for that.

Angel doesn’t seem to find anything lacking the reply. Before Spike knows it, they’re kissing again, and he’s climbing so far down Angel’s throat that their bodies separate, a wet slurping as slick cock leaves clinging tightness.

He’d forgotten he knew how to kiss this well. There’s nothing but saliva, tongues, and teeth clashing, until they’re joined once more. The shuddering orgasm that began inside his sphincter muscle an hour ago crests to a huge surge of release as Angel’s cock strokes him hard from the inside. With the taste of Angel still in his mouth, his whole body goes rigid, spasms of come arcing out, rivers of come spilling out as Angel fills him. Overloaded with sperm, like a leaky vessel, he sinks beneath the waters of Angel’s overwhelming presence.

Spikes wakes groggily to the simultaneous delights of Angel’s lips and warm blood oozing over his tongue and down his throat, coppery, mouth-watering, cock stiffening.  It’s the best wake-up call he’s ever had.

He hungers for the next mouthful, salivating and aroused.  Angel lifts one eyebrow, comes tantalisingly forward then… swallows. All the mysticism surrounding Angel vanishes: no God, no deity of any kind, he’s just a very sneaky, very annoying demon that… deserves to be punished. 

Laughing, he pulls Angel down but he knows it’s not particularly punishing. It’s exactly what’s he’s always wanted from Angel—his fantasy: rolling around naked with lots of blood.

Except… in his fantasies, he was the one—and he remembers this distinctly, having worked on this fantasy for many years, creatively building it and adding interesting things to it when needed—doing the fucking. He was the one doing the fucking, and Angel was the one getting fucked.  Kinda hard to get that mixed up. But that’s what he must be doing, getting things badly mixed up, because he murmurs, ‘Take me again,’ and he’s never wanted anything more.

He’s mixed up because Angel inside him, Angel kneeling to his backside, is just about the best thing he’s ever felt. He never wants this to stop; it brings his insides alive with pleasure.

He tries to keep Angel talking—about anything—so the pleasure won’t stop. You can’t come to orgasm if you’re being talked at—he knows this. (He’s fucked Harmony, after all.) He needs his concentration and knows Angel will too.  But he’d no idea Angel was this skilful. Angel uses his cock like a weapon, attacking all his defences, finding places that make him with weep with the need to orgasm. So, he lets it come and tries to make it good for Angel, too, clenching and pushing back.

By the intense shudder behind him, he knows they came together.

Being fucked is mixed up enough. Wanting to keep Angel inside him is too freaky to contemplate.  But he does—want that stretch, want that slight twitch—want Angel lying on him like a blanket of domesticity.

He’s very mixed up. No point denying it really.

A soft quietness descends on them, the kind of quietness where they can talk and be honest for once.

It feels good, talking with Angel’s prick buried in him.

But then mixed up becomes freaky….

Spike could swear that Angel said he had a child. A human one.  He rolls them, dislodging the hardening prick inside him—some things you really do need to concentrate on.

He watches Angel’s face and the sorrow is tangible. It’s worse than sorrow.

So he listens. He’s good at doing that now, having had some considerable practise with Buffy.  He sits on a bed, and he doesn’t fuck; he listens. It feels so familiar it makes his heart ache.

For someone so rooted in his memories, it’s frightening discovering that there is no ultimate truth and that memory can be as flawed as the world is: huge holes in both that you don’t know about.

But his fear is nothing compared to Angel’s pain, and now some of that pain is his. He feels Angel unloading it onto him, through the tiny touch of his thumb on Angel’s thigh, which his sorrowful sire doesn’t appear to notice, but must—somewhere in his grieving heart.

He’s not sure when the idea occurs to him.

It doesn’t come to him like a cold, clear plan. It seeps in on pity that bruises his soul, making better feelings—a burn of need. Then it floods out, drowning his rational brain under an ocean pure lust. But when the idea does come, he hardens on its truth: if he makes Angel his, he’ll dictate what the truth is for them now. If Angel becomes his, then reality can’t be altered again; it will be just that: reality. If Angel becomes his, there’ll be no more sorrow, or loneliness, but a chance to make a new, good life—for them both.

Angel seems to be waiting for something, some reaction to his story.

There’s really only one Spike can make. 

Very slowly, he pulls Angel toward him, not for a kiss, but letting him tip face down on the mattress. He stills the inevitable protest by running his finger down the strong spine, making it appear less invincible—making it shiver with need. 

But he doesn’t stop his finger, like he knows Angel expects. He lets it continue, down through the shallow valley.  He knows now how good this feels, Angel’s finger feather-light in his memory. 

Still Angel resists, his body tensing as the touch becomes too intimate.  Spike only touches him some more—his tongue trailing over his shoulder and into the hollow of his neck, where he nuzzles, not feeding, but close enough to that intimacy to distract Angel from the other.

Angel is distracted; he turns onto his back, stretching his neck, pulling Spike closer.  Spike just rolls them again so Angel faces away from him and he curls into the perfect form. 

With agonising slowness, he licks down smooth, bed-warm skin to the base of Angel’s spine, where all the nerves sit, waiting, dormant.

Angel puts his hand down to pull him up for a kiss, but Spike pushes it away and parts the hard cheeks.

Before Angel can stop him, he fires what is dormant, tonguing Angel’s hole, feeling Angel writhe beneath him. He knows the writhing is half in fear, half in denial, but both of these will go. They did for him.

His tongue fits into the indentation, his lips grazing the soft skin around.  He breathes lightly on the wetness, rewarded by a suppressed groan. It’s okay—this suppression. There are a lot of lines being crossed—new beginnings: for his tongue, for Angel’s ass.

It takes him over like feeding. A first bite and the feel of hot blood squirting into his mouth… first lick and then the need to mouth wide and wet and push in through the tightness, taste Angel from the inside again. It’s been so long since he tasted Angel’s heat. It’s better than blood now. He’s done that, wants this. People change.

Angel’s so tense Spike can almost hear his heartbeat too, a subtle counterpoint to his, which still beats in his memory.

He matches his tongue to the beats, flick upon beat, swirl to drumming.

Then Angel opens his legs fractionally—two inches but a huge journey as well.   

With a moan of pleasure, Spike kneels in between them.

He runs his finger through the saliva-wet valley once more. 

The air is thick with expectancy.

The phone ringing makes them both jump—so uncharacteristic for both of them—and the tension dissipates, amused glances flicking between them.

Angel reaches over and picks up the handset, but before he speaks into it, he rears up and cups Spike’s neck, pulling him down so he can listen, too.

Spike narrows his eyes defiantly, but Angel cuffs him and the defiance turns swiftly into a kiss, which muffles Angel’s, ‘Yeah?’

‘Angel? Is that you?’

Angel disentangles their tongues, but keeps his eyes fastened on Spike as he replies, ‘Yeah, what’s up, Wes?’

‘I think you should come down.’

‘Have you settled things with Illyria? Has she agreed?’

‘She did more than agree, but I think you should come down and see for yourself.’

‘I’m kinda into something here.’

‘Ah.’

‘Wes?’

‘I rather thought Gunn and the coming apocalypse were things you were into… here.’

Spike cups his hand over the handset and murmurs, ‘Go.’

Angel looks relieved, He nods and pulls the phone, speaking decisively, ‘Five minutes.’

They stare at each other for a few moments longer, and Spike shrugs. ‘What you do is important.’