Lessons of War and Death

There are those who teach only the sweet lessons of peace and safety;
But I teach lessons of war and death to those I love,
That they readily meet invasions, when they come

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Chapter 1

The dream began as it always did: the feel of cold slabs under his knees, a rough blanket pricking his fingers. These tactile details anchored him to this place where all else was blurred and indistinct: voices echoing as if in a tomb; shapes moving around him, pale yet shadowed. This time, however, instead of waking with the feel of dents in his knees, he stayed in the dream, lifting up and crawling into the thin bed, under the even thinner blanket.

He lay there, staring at the ceiling, knowing it was a dream and wanting to return to his own life.

‘Why are you here?’

He turned his head at the whisper, terror in the voice out of proportion to the age evident from the child’s face. This was new: the dream had never spoken before.

The pale face of a boy stared wide-eyed at him over an identical grey blanket to the one that covered him.

Aware that it was just a dream and willing to let it play out for a while, he replied, ‘Tell me where this is, and I’ll tell you why I’m here.’

The boy’s eyes darted frantically around then snapped shut. His hands trembled on the blanket. Hardly moving his mouth he moaned, ‘He’s coming.’

* * * * * * *

Spike sat up and looked wildly around, in a mirror image to the child, before he realised he was in his own dull room in the dull apartment that he’d gotten on the false pretences of being a hero. He certainly wasn’t feeling very hero like right now. Dreams didn’t usually bother him. He’d dreamt an eternity of dreams as a man, as a demon and now as a creature hanging uneasily between those two states. But this one unnerved him. It was the knowing it was a dream that threw him. Usually his dreams were more real than reality, and he came back, or woke up, with a pleasant start to find that reality could reassert itself over such potency. But this time, he’d known very well who he was and that he was not really there. Which rather led him to wonder if it had been a dream at all….

He lay back down but knew that sleep would not come again that day.

He was trapped by the intense light of a Los Angeles summer day. Unless he did the unthinkable… which, once thought, didn’t actually seem so bad…. So, he did it: he dressed and went back to Wolfram and Hart. The appeal of air conditioning and magical glass had won out over reluctance to hang out in a place he disdained. Just being there made him feel like a hypocrite. It made him feel as hypocritical as the humongous hypocrite himself.

* * * * * * *

Humongous hypocrite was at his desk, pretending to make important calls. Spike wasn’t impressed and sauntered in, flinging himself on the couch and lighting up. Angel put his palm over the mouthpiece and said venomously, ‘Do you mind?’

Spike waved his cigarette to emphasise his reply. ‘Yeah, actually, I do. I really do. I mind this deal you’ve made with the devil; I mind this bloody stinking city and its heat; I mind….’ Angel made a curt comment into the phone and hung up.

‘Go bother someone else, Spike—someone who gives a damn.’

‘Oh, Rhett, I’m blushing.’

Angel did what he increasingly did in these situations: he left.

Spike was bored and tired, so for once he made the effort to follow.

He nipped into the elevator just as the doors were closing, enjoying the roll of Angel’s eyes. ‘So, any interesting cases, Mate?’

‘I’m not your Mate. And it’s the middle of the day, Spike—why are you here?’

Spike blinked and turned his head once more. More terrifying than returning to his dream when he wasn’t asleep was the fact that he could now feel his heart thumping from that terror. He sat up, and the prickly blanket fell away from his… thin, pale, child’s chest. He cried out—it was not his heart; it was not his chest—and half a dozen voices hushed him fearfully. A deeper voice, though, one that made the heart that was not his heart falter rose above them. ‘What the devil?’

Angel’s hands were then on his arms. He wrenched away. ‘What the bloody hell?’

‘You spaced out….’

The door slid open, and Spike took the opportunity to get away from disconcerting brown eyes. He didn’t need them. Not today.

* * * * * * *

There was something he did need though: Fred’s brain. He hung around the lab until she had time to notice him, and her smile alone calmed him.

‘What ya doing?’

‘Can you run some tests on me or something?’

‘Tests?’

‘Well, yeah. With one of those probe-y things. Although absolutely no probing!’

‘What am I looking for?’

‘I don’t know. If I knew that I wouldn’t be here askin’ you to run bloody tests, would I? Something weird just hap—.’

‘Something weird just hap—.’

Angel skidded to a halt, and the vampires glared at each other for a moment. ‘What’s happening, Spike? You went spacey on me there. I don’t like it when you’re here—when you leave your body and go off someplace else, it’s freaking spooky.’

‘You left your body?’

Spike turned his attention back to Fred, keeping a rein on his ire—it kinda invalidated her tests if she knew what was wrong in the first place. ‘No. Well, okay, yes. But it was just a dream.’

Angel came a little closer, folding his arms over his chest. ‘You were standing up, talking to me!’

‘Well, there ya go, you boring git; you’re sending me to sleep now. And bugger off, will you? I want to talk to Fred.’

‘Fred works for me, Spike. This whole goddamned place works for me! You can’t order my employees about.’

‘Oh! What? So you can keep Fred busy with your little bit of werewolf fluff while I get sucked back into hell again!’

Angel unfolded his arms, an expression that could—in some lights—have been genuine concern. ‘You think you’re fading again? Back to hell?’

Spike hadn’t until he’d said it, but now he did. He wrapped his arms tightly around his torso, realised that this is what he used to do to keep that fear at bay so immediately unfolded them and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘It was just a dream. Okay, it might have been a waking dream, but a dream! Now, can you run some bloody tests and see if you can… whatever it is you do with all these very expensive instruments.’

Angel nodded at Fred, and she picked up a scanner, watching the readout with a slightly nervous expression as she ran it around Spike’s body.

‘Am I still hot then, Luv?’

She smiled faintly. ‘I’ll ask Harmony about that.’

‘Oh. She’s not my number one fan at the moment.’

Angel snorted. ‘You don’t have fans, Spike. You have a long string of acquaintances you piss off to varying degrees.’

‘Uh huh. Said by the man who has to shag werewolves.’

Angel ignored him and watched the readout with Fred as if he could understand it. She straightened. ‘Quite normal.’

Angel snorted again—more pointedly.

Spike felt relieved and gave Fred a wan smile. ‘Okay. No hell for the playing-nice vampire.’

‘Not yet….’

‘Oh, piss off, will you?’ He pushed past the smirking Angel and strode out to find something to cheer himself up.

* * * * * * *

Angel watched him go, dropped the smirk and turned to Fred. ‘Well?’

She pushed her glasses up and her lower lip out. ‘It’s hard to say. It’s not like reading a human, ya know? His readings are always so weird….’

‘Colour me surprised.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Huh?’

‘Well… you’re always so hard on him. It kinda upsets him….’

‘What?’ Angel didn’t know whether to laugh or punch the air with glee, but he felt chastened by her expression and gave her his sorrowful vampire look instead. It seemed to work for she softened and sighed. ‘Tell me what happened.’

‘I was talking to him, and then he just… wasn’t there.’

She made a face and said hesitantly, ‘He kinda always does that when you’re talking to him.’

Angel gritted his teeth. ‘This was different. He wasn’t pretending.’

‘Oh. Where did he say he’d been?’

Angel’s mouth opened slightly then snapped shut. ‘He didn’t.’

‘He wouldn’t tell you?’

‘I didn’t ask.’

‘Oh, well, maybe…?’

Angel cursed and went in search of Spike.

* * * * * * *

Spike, it appeared, had left for the day.

Angel pictured him travelling back to his apartment through the tunnels and… spacing out again.

If he had not been there in the elevator, Spike would have fallen. He imagined him toppled over in the slime and muck of the sewers, prey to any passing demon low-life. Every so often, life threw him little treats; he hadn’t felt so chipper in weeks and celebrated with a mug of blood as he toyed with various scenarios of Spike being staked whilst lying in human shit.

With his feet up on his very large, very luxurious desk, in his very large, very luxurious office, he contemplated the fuck-up that was Spike. It was glorious.

* * * * * *

‘Where ya going, Boss?’

Angel cursed inwardly and stopped at Harmony’s desk. ‘Out.’

‘Okey-dokey. Contact number?’

Angel cursed outwardly. ‘Spike’s.’

‘Cool….’

‘He could be dangerous! That’s the only reason….’

‘Well, okay.’ Shaking off her way-too-much-information expression, she added puzzled, ‘But… dangerous? Blondie Bear?’

Angel debated fleshing out his rationale for following Spike after all (something to do with the danger Spike could represent in his spacing-out state), but it wasn’t substantial enough to stand fleshing… and on the odd images that popped into his mind at that thought, he just glared at Harmony and left.

* * * * * * *

Spike was relatively easy to track: nicotine and annoyance trailed in the air after him. He hadn’t gone back to his apartment but had veered off into a north-running tunnel, which emerged into an alley in a part of town Angel didn’t know.

The back door of a building stood open. Casting a look around to see if anyone observed him, Angel went in.

It was a strip club.

He couldn’t have been more embarrassed if he had discovered Fred patronising such a place. The thought of Spike and sex so freaked him out that he nearly left—let Spike slaughter who he would.

Better notions surfaced, and he pushed through the beaded curtain and made for the bar. He could see Spike’s blond head close to the stage, facing the show.

The show.

Angel cast a quick glance at the gyrating woman. She did nothing for him. He needed a certain modesty and decorum to attract or arouse... and was he blushing? He cursed Spike to the heavens for forcing him to have to endure this but went closer and slid into a chair at the same table.

To give Spike his due, he looked equally embarrassed as Angel felt. He half-rose, cursed, sat back again and then leant forward angrily, hissing, ‘What the bloody hell are you doing followin’ me?’

‘You are out of control, as usual—and this is my city!’

‘You arrogant sod!’

‘Maybe you’re killing in this dream state… wouldn’t be the first time.’

Spike jerked his head back and bit his lip. He swallowed nervously. ‘You think this has something to do with the First again?’

Angel looked away. It was the first time in over a hundred years that Spike had ever asked him a genuine question for which he wanted a genuine reply. One hundred years, and the animosity just dropped—as easily as the bra, which had just hit the stage.

In a similar spirit of honesty, he replied, ‘I don’t know, Spike. It was just a thought.’ He frowned. He had the absurd need to know: to solve this, to be the big hero, the all-knowing… sire. And that was just preposterous, so he added more tetchily, ‘I don’t know, but you can’t run around the city until we do know. Spike? Shit. Spike?’

* * * * * * *

He had not been there when he’d played with the First—no conscious memory of what the First was doing to him at all.  He was all here now, though. Once more, he knew who he was just not where he was—other than being in a classroom of some kind: that much was pretty obvious. He was staring at the thin, pale neck of a child in front of him. There was a large bruise on the boy’s skin the exact shape and size of a thumbprint. Spike was being slow for it took him a while longer to get that it actually was a thumbprint. He wondered at the cruelty that would have to be practiced on something so fragile to mark it so.

He didn’t want to do it, but he looked down.

They weren’t his hands. Once more, he confirmed that it wasn’t his chest; nor was the beating heart within it his. He glanced under the desk and rummaged for a moment. Nope, not his either….

He appeared, once more, to be in the body of a young boy. It wasn’t even his body when he had been human and a boy. Some things you didn’t forget.

He leant forward and poked the other boy in the back. ‘Hey, you.’

The boy cowered low and glanced furtively toward the front of the classroom. Spike craned around his thin form and looked, too. A fat man dressed as a priest was writing laboriously on a blackboard. Spike cursed under his breath. Of all the luck: a fuckingly realistic dream, but he ends up in a bloody classroom learning bloody Latin again! Sometimes, his life just sucked.

He poked the boy again. ‘Where is this?’

‘Shhh. Father’ll hear ye!’

‘Well, he will if I shout, yeah!’

‘Shhh! Please….What do you mean?’

‘Just tell me what this place is.’

‘It’s St Francis’s.’

‘Ah. Light dawns. Where the fuck, or what the fuck is St Francis’s?’

The boy turned, the same pale face Spike had seen in the bed, blood draining from his face and making him even paler. ‘You said…. You said… the bad word!’

‘Kavanagh!’

The boy cringed and put his arm up as if to deflect a blow. Spike watched the fat man pushing his way down the aisle toward the small boy and muttered, ‘Yeah, like not.’ He stood up and placed himself between them, ready for a fight. He was dismayed by only coming up to the man’s waist.

The Father ignored him and said icily to the other boy, ‘Stand up.’

‘Hey, you fat prick! He didn’t fucking do anything!’

The entire room swivelled and focused on Spike, which disconcerted him for a moment. The priest leant down very close to his face, his breath reeking. ‘What did you just say, Kelly?’

He felt as if he was being lifted bodily like some apocryphal ascent to heaven. But he was only being picked up from the floor… which was odd in its own right.

Podgy, greasy fingers became strong, beautiful ones—ones that he’d have known even if blinded: Angel’s.

Spike lashed out on the memory of the impotent fury of childhood and caught Angel an uppercut to the jaw.

Angel reeled back then punched him, too. ‘You moron. You fainted!’

Spike pushed him off furiously. ‘I did not faint! Jesus!’ He was on the floor, being stared at by a woman with enormous bare breasts. Another time he’d have enjoyed this. Not now. He leapt to his feet, shook out his shoulders and stomped toward the door.

Angel jogged to his side and accompanied him out. ‘Bugger off.’

‘You were out for about five minutes that time.’

Spike came to a halt, his hand on the back door of the club. He pouted. ‘Yeah. That’d be about right. I was there about five minutes, too.’

‘There? Where?’

Spike made a face to cover the fact he was mad at himself for admitting this much, then dashed out to the sewer and dropped inside. But then he actually waited for Angel, knowing the poof would follow him; for once Spike wanted it to look as if he were in control of one of their confrontations.

They walked along silently for a while until Angel said patiently, ‘I might be able to help.’

‘I don’t know where it was, okay? It was weird. A school, or something.’

‘A school? You went back to school?’

‘It wasn’t me. Well, it was, inside, like. But I was a little kiddie.’

‘You went back to your childhood?’

‘Oh, get with the programme here, Ponce! No! I was in someone else’s body. A kid, in a school called St Francis.’

Angel stopped. He was staring at something on one of his shoes. Very casually he flicked it off and echoed, ‘St Francis?’

‘Yeah. It’s been happening on and off for a couple of weeks now. I go there in the body of this kid. I was always just kneeling by a bed with sore knees, but then last night there was this other kid; he spoke, and it’s been gettin’ more and more real since then. Vivid—ya know?’

‘Describe it to me in detail.’

‘I’ve just bloody told you! A school. A kid. Some beds. A classroom.’

‘Did it look…?’ Angel glanced at his watch, checked his nails, pursed his lip and finished, ‘Old?’

‘Huh?’

‘Was it… were you in the past?’

‘Oh. I’m not… yeah. I guess. It was all pretty dark and grim, so I guess….’

‘What were you wearing?’

‘Huh?’

‘Fucking hell! That’s a simple enough question, isn’t it?’

Spike stopped and put a hand on Angel’s arm. ‘What? What’s it to you?’ He jerked his head back. ‘You know something about this, don’t you? Hey! What are you not telling me? Are you sending me there? You bastard! You right bloody bastard!’

‘Shut up! Shut up, will you? I didn’t know anything about this until you freaked out in the elevator. But I—.’ He ran his fingers viciously through his hair (far more viciously than any human man would risk doing). ‘I went to a seminary school called St Francis. You freaked me out for a moment, that’s all. It’s just a coincidence.’

‘You went to school? Well, what a waste of time that was!’

Angel gave him a wry, grateful smile at the familiar banter and replied in kind, ‘And that from the moron.’

They walked companionably side by side until they came to Spike’s exit, both deep in their own thoughts. Then Spike frowned, glanced up at the sewer cover and offered, ‘You wanna come in for a beer?’

Angel didn’t appear to have heard and said, ‘Describe the classroom again—in detail.’

Spike grinned. Angel wanted to come in; Angel wanted a beer; but Angel was totally unable to admit either of these simple things.

Spike sometimes surprised himself by how much affection he felt for this creature he abhorred.

Chapter 2

‘It was just a room. Big. Gloomy—.’

‘Where were the windows?’

‘Huh? I don’t know! In the wall?’

Angel swigged from the beer bottle. ‘Were they high up?’

‘Oh. Yeah. I guess. I didn’t really notice.’

‘Describe the man again.’

‘Oh, God. How many times can I tell you? Fat. Dressed in a dress. Big cross dangling from this rope on his non-existent waist. Greasy hands. Oh, oh, go me… and a ring.’

Angel licked his lips, staring at the bottle. After a moment, he said in a small voice, ‘The stone was green like suppressed hatred.’

Spike watched the lowered brow, unable to see or read Angel’s expression—but he’d heard all he needed to hear in that small voice. Softly, he confirmed, ‘It was an emerald, yes.’

‘Oh.’

Angel abruptly put down the beer and left.


* * * * * * *
 

They met on surprisingly friendly terms the next day—for them. Angel actually ended his call when Spike came in and went to join him on the couch. ‘Did you dream again? Did you go there again?’

Spike shook his head. ‘You okay? You kinda did your own spacing out last night.’

Angel faltered, and for a moment, his carefully constructed mask wavered. Then he recovered and said brusquely, ‘We need to get Wesley in on this.’

Spike shrugged, too fascinated by this glimpse of a vulnerable man beneath the abhorred demon to argue.

* * * * * * *

Wesley was chatting to Fred, and from their expressions, Angel saw that he would not have to start at the beginning with his tale. Spike sat to one side of the room on the arm of a chair, as if implying that the conversation didn’t concern him. Angel’s gaze kept sliding off to him as he spoke. Wesley listened in his usual way—astute questioning and encouraging silences—until he had the full story. He tapped his pen against his lips thoughtfully. For wont of somewhere to sit, Angel sat in the chair that Spike perched on.

‘Tell me again about the moment when you swore to the priest.’

Spike cursed, nicely illustrating his tale, then said exasperated, ‘How many more bleeding times? This kid, oh, I think his name was Kavanagh—whoa!’ Angel had stood so quickly that the chair tipped, sending Spike sprawling.

Angel bent low into Spike’s face. ‘That’s a new little detail, Spike! You doling them out now—like candy, for your own amusement?’

Spike pushed him away. ‘Fucker! I just remembered! The priest called him Kavanagh. Big deal.’

Wesley nodded to himself. ‘Kavanagh—face of an angel. I always wondered where you got the name.’

Angel turned abruptly on Wesley. ‘It’s a very common name in Ireland! How many freaking Kavanaghs do you think went to schools called St Francis?’

‘I have no idea, but it seems more than a coincidence. The name of the school I could have accepted as being coincidental—as you point out, lots of schools named that in Ireland. But someone with your name, being visited by your childe? That’s design, not coincidence.’

Spike looked uncertainly between them. ‘What are you on about?’

Angel pursed his lips then said quickly, ‘It was my human name: Liam Kavanagh.’

‘Oh, my God! That was you? That pretty little kid with all the bruises?’

Angel didn’t reply, but his angry pouring of whisky, and drinking it in one sort of gave Spike his answer anyway.

Wesley studied Angel for a moment then said softly, ‘Tell me everything that you’ve thought about Spike since he emerged from the amulet.’

Angel slammed the empty glass down. ‘I’m not going to—.’

‘Angel! If we don’t know what’s causing this, we can’t stop it. I’m sorry, but you do seem to be the catalyst.’

Angel gestured angrily, sticking up a finger for each point he reeled off. ‘I think he’s a moron. I feel like he’s haunting me. I want him as far away from me as it’s possible for him to go. I don’t like his—.’

‘Ah. I thought as much.’ Wesley pouted and found something interesting on his desk.

Angel glanced at Spike’s carefully arranged, neutral profile and said less vehemently, ‘What do you mean? Thought as much about what?’

‘Well, it’s only a pet theory of mine, but it’s possible that when we wish for something that seems straightforward in our conscious minds there are layers of wish behind that in our subconscious that, clearly, we aren’t aware of: codicils to the wish, if you like.’

‘Huh?’

Wesley smiled patiently. ‘Unconsciously, as far away from you as possible might be—to you—your own childhood, which you might feel, and rightly so I suppose given Spike’s description of you there, that you’ve left far behind.’

‘Bullshit. I never think about that time. I didn’t the day after I left it. I didn’t when I was human. Angelus didn’t, and I sure as hell don’t. If I have a subconscious wish it wouldn’t be of St Francis: I’d be human on a desert island with my hockey team, and we’d be winning the goddamned series!’

There was an interested hush in the room until Spike said amused, ‘That one of those desert islands with ice then, is it?’

Angel glowered at him. ‘I am not causing this. If I were, you’d stay there—permanently.’

Spike stood up and stretched deceptively nonchalantly. ‘Yeah. Love you too, you bastard.’

‘Calm down—both of you. We need to—.’

Angel came closer, and Wesley sat back into his chair, not completing his homily. ‘You need to get everything we have onto this. We need answers!’

Spike flung his arms up angrily. ‘Oh, that’s just peachy, isn’t it? Now it’s your ass involved, you move heaven and earth to help. When I was being sucked into hell….’

‘Get over it, Spike! I didn’t help because I don’t like you!’

Spike strode over and poked him in the chest. ‘Is that so? Well, maybe, next time Father Fatman takes a pop at little-bitty you, I’ll take a step back!’

‘What?’ Angel glanced nervously behind at Wesley then ushered Spike out of hearing.

Spike grinned, lit a cigarette and made pretence of waiting.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I said: next time the old Father comes lumbering down that aisle—. Hey! Angel?’

Angel pushed Spike’s hand off his arm.

Spike took a furious drag on his cigarette. ‘You went totally pale then.’

‘You’re pathetic, Spike.’

‘He really scared you!’ Spike’s eyes widened. ‘My God! He still scares you! Jesus, Angel!’

Angel caught him by the lapel then let go as a startled lawyer walked past. He leant in and hissed, ‘I don’t want you there, Spike. My life is nothing to do with you. Do you understand?’

‘I’m not too sure a little kiddie I know would agree with you.’

‘You weren’t there! You being there didn’t happen! There was no one; no one came to help me! As much as I prayed, no one answered me!’ He stopped abruptly and turned away as if realising he’d said too much.  Spike caught his arm.  ‘Bloody hell…. It’s not you sending me back there; it’s him, calling to me.’

He didn’t even see the punch. He felt it—even though it wasn’t one of Angel’s best: wearing a suit and standing outside his CEO’s office seemed to curb some of Angel’s ferocity. It was hard enough though—hard enough to knock out some of Spike’s residual memory of wind and to give him a painful bang when his head collided with the wall.

He watched Angel retreat to his office and slam the door. He grinned nastily and shouted after him, ‘You’re not such a bully when you’re only three feet tall, Mate!’

* * * * * * *

Despite his earlier eagerness to confront small, proto-Angel and point out the errors in his personality, Spike was reluctant to actually go to bed and sleep. It was a bit too much to take in: that he could enter Angel’s memories. For that’s what he’d concluded he was doing. The place had a dreamlike quality of memory. It seemed the most likely explanation. He ignored the major flaw in this theory: seeing things from a third person; observing proto-Angel from the outside. Tapping into Angel’s memories was less worrying somehow than actually being transported back into a boy’s body three hundred years ago. That, Spike concluded, was just daft.

He drank some beer, watched a mindless detective show on TV, procrastinating and prevaricating so he would not have to close his eyes.

He welcomed the knock at the door, therefore, and opened it with rare enthusiasm—until he saw Angel leaning on the opposite wall. He was about to point out (without raised fingers ticking off points) that, firstly, he didn’t like Angel; that, secondly, Angel didn’t like him… and so on, until he reached the hundredth excellent point he could have made to explain why he didn’t want Angel here when the gloomy figure said simply, ‘I’m sorry.’

Spike’s eyebrows lifted in almost feigned shock at the rare apology. Angel waved his hand dismissively. ‘You pissed me off. Don’t come over all hurt and innocent.’

Spike grinned at some inherent admittance of their long, familial relationship in this accusation and stood to one side. ‘Long time since I’ve been innocent about anything. What do you want, Ponce?’

‘Not to be called that would be a start.’ Angel pushed off the wall and came in.

‘The start of what?’

Angel nodded in confirmation that Spike had reached the nub of the matter. ‘Start of us working together on this thing.’

‘Hmm. I’m not sure what’s worse: the word work or together.’

‘It’s not my choice either, Spike. I don’t like you—never made any attempt to hide it.’

‘No. You haven’t. I have to give you credit for that, Angel. You’ve been a consistently miserable sod toward me since—oh, when? Ah, yes—since you murdered me.’

‘Give it up, Spike. That’s ancient history.’

‘Not as ancient, apparently, as a seminary for very naughty little boys….’

Angel paled. ‘I wasn’t nau—. I was—.’ He sat down. ‘I came over here tonight because you could go back there and I—.’

‘Not now I won’t.’

‘Huh?’

‘Nah. I’ve decided if I’m gonna pop up in your memories then I want a nice, ripe, juicy one, not when you were—.’ He bit his tongue on what he had been about to say.

He was in too much pain to continue.

A flare of pain brought tears to his eyes. Before he could react, it came again. He shouted, but the protest emerged as a whimper. A paddle came down on his bare buttocks again. ‘You have a foul mouth, Kelly. You offend our blessed Lord. But never no mind: I’ll beat the devil out of ye.’

Spike realised he was naked from the waist down and bent over the fat man’s lap. He struggled to be free and, covering his nakedness, screamed, ‘You fucking pervert!’

The paddle then caught him to one side of the head, and he went down, out cold… his body, anyway. Inside, he was still there, hearing, feeling… hands… feeling him, touching him. He was unconscious and couldn’t move. He couldn’t stop the hands as they played with him, rubbing him…. He screamed obscenities, but they only bounced around inside the skull, unspoken. He could hear grunting and the furtive sounds of cloth. He was a man and knew what that sound portended. He fought unconsciousness with everything he had in his demon arsenal. He swam up from the depths of the boy’s mind and repossessed control of his body. He broke the surface of the paralysis and lashed out with his foot. He connected with something squishy and heard a different kind of grunt.

Before he could be caught, he grabbed his trousers and fled.

He was then completely lost; his backside felt as if it were on fire, and he was crying—or his body was. He switched to screaming curses, only now he reckoned the whole school could hear him.

Chapter 3

A cool hand on his forehead was removed. Spike opened his eyes and discovered he was lying on his belly on the couch, Angel sitting alongside him—the source of the cool, comforting hand apparently.

‘You fainted again.’

‘And again: I do not faint.’

Angel smiled wanly. ‘You’ve been gone about ten minutes.’

Spike struggled to sit up then frowned deeply. He twisted around and tried to peer at his backside. With a curse, he undid his jeans and peeled them off a fraction. ‘Take a look at my bloody bum!’

Angel jumped up as startled as if Spike had asked him to do something less visual to his bottom. Spike swore at him and wrenched the jeans lower. ‘Look!’

Angel peered over as if into a particularly unpleasant specimen jar. He frowned and came closer, holding Spike, turning him more, pulling the jeans lower. ‘You’re red! Burning…. What the hell?’ Angel dropped him as if the skin was actually burning and backed away.

‘I got bloody spanked, that’s what!’

‘This can’t be happening. It’s a dream! You said it was a dream!’

‘Tell me ‘bout it! Weren’t you that got bloody paddled!’

Angel licked his lips nervously. ‘Not… this time… no.’

‘Oh.’ Spike coloured. He’d suddenly remembered the other, even more unpleasant side of his ordeal. He narrowed his eyes at Angel, but Angel wouldn’t hold his gaze.

Instead, Angel murmured to the ground, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Huh?’

‘Seems you took that beating for me.’

Spike stood up, fastening his jeans. ‘Oh, yeah! I’d forgotten that! You bugger.’

‘We have to find out how this is happening. We have to stop it.’

‘Oh, no argument from the blond vampire, Mate. Jesus. A master vampire being bloody spanked. What the bloody hell is the world coming to?’

He heard an odd noise and looked up suspiciously. Angel was suppressing laughter—badly.

Spike gave him his stupid nonce look. He had the sudden and startling thought that Angel would not be finding anything amusing in his predicament had he known all that Spike now knew. It became obvious to Spike that Angel had secrets. But Spike also wondered if his taciturn, closed-off sire was actually aware that he had these secrets. It was amazing what a seven-year-old mind could choose not to remember.

He knew that from experience.

As reluctant as he had been to close his eyes in case he dreamt, he now felt overwhelmingly drained—as if he’d left something of his energy in the other place. He’d brought back a sore arse, so this exchange didn’t seem all that unlikely a prospect.

‘What’s up?’

Spike sank back onto the couch and put his head in his hands.

‘Spike?’ Angel sounded worried, but Spike couldn’t summon the energy to reassure him. He felt the couch depress, and then a cool hand returned to his forehead. That made him feel better—even though it was Angel, whom he detested. When the hand went to the back of his neck and began to rub gently, he felt better all over. He turned his face and said softly, ‘I think part of me is still there.’

Angel frowned, staring deeply into his eyes. ‘When did you last feed?’

Spike tilted his head. ‘Feed?’

‘That thing we have to do with blood?’

‘Ponce.’

‘So?’

‘I—. I don’t remember.’

‘Uh huh.’ Angel got up and went to the refrigerator. The examination of the empty interior didn’t take him long. Without thinking, he murmured, ‘All these years, and I still need to look after you….’ Suddenly, he caught himself and said more brusquely, ‘I’ve some back at my place.’

‘Good for you.’

Angel waited patiently.

‘What if I have another… episode?’

Angel shrugged, which could have meant many things. Spike took it as a so what? and stood, shakily. ‘This does not represent a truce of any kind.’

‘Agreed.’

‘We are not working together on this thing.’

‘Sure—you’re just gonna feed.’

Spike walked stiffly toward the door. ‘You ever been… spanked? As an adult, that is?’

Angel quirked up a lip. ‘Why?’

‘Cus, bloody hell, this hurts!’ Angel held the door as Spike limped through. ‘Do you think he hit something vital?’

‘Do you have anything vital?’

‘I’ve always valued my healthy dose of cynicism.’

‘Does it feel… damaged?’

‘Poof—and don’t think I didn’t notice that you didn’t answer my question.’

‘I’ve spent a hundred and twenty years avoiding embarrassing questions from you, Spike. I’m getting good at it.’

Spike gave him a sideward glance and huffed. He stopped to light a cigarette. Angel waited, watching him. Only when it was lit and Spike had taken his first puff did Angel say, ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

Spike lifted his eyes. ‘I think you know anyway.’

Angel lowered his gaze to the filthy floor of the sewer. ‘He hurt you… another way.’ That this was neither a statement nor quite a question did not escape Spike’s notice. It was as if Angel suspected something but could not clearly say what that suspicion was based upon.

Very carefully, he clarified, ‘It didn’t actually hurt, no.’

Dark eyes flicked to his and away. Angel began walking again.

‘You gonna maybe tell me what’s going on here, Angel—so I’m not walking in blind next time?’

Angel regained his confidence. ‘There’s nothing to tell. I wasn’t there long.’

‘And why’s that then?’

Angel pursed his lips, the hesitancy returning. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘That’s helpful.’

‘It’s the truth. I don’t remember. I was there, and then my father came for me, and I went home. I never went to school again—I had tutors.’

‘Oh, remind me not to apply for that job!’

He thought he heard a soft snort of amusement before Angel murmured, ‘There’s not a thing you could teach me, Spike.’

Something in Spike’s belly fluttered, and before he could stop himself he replied equally softly, ‘Is that so?’

‘I just said it.’

‘I might have to take that as a challenge.’

‘Take it anyway you want.’

* * * * * * *

Angel nodded at the man on the desk, and they rode up in the elevator together. Every so often, Spike sent a quick glance to Angel, only to find himself under a similar scrutiny. He was distracted, therefore, and not prepared for Angel’s next question. ‘Did he say why he was spanking you?’

The doors slid open, and as they make their way toward Angel’s office, Spike replied offhand, ‘He didn’t need to. I was a bloody pillock, that’s why. You can’t go round effing and blinding like a soddin’ demon in one of those priesty places, can you?’

‘You said the F-word to Father Michael?’ Angel removed the seven-year-old’s awe from his voice and repeated, ‘You said fuck to him?’

Spike stopped just inside the threshold of the office and folded his arms. ‘Michael? Details beginning to emerge are they, Angel—from that fog of memory? Or are you doling them out—like candy… to amuse yourself?’

Angel blushed faintly at this jibe. ‘I just remembered. Father Michael.’

‘Well then: yes, Father bloody Michael got his ears burned.’ He sighed. ‘It was dumb though. I’ll be more…circumspect… next time.’

Angel waved his hand vaguely at the elevator, something that seemed to make it work. ‘Maybe there won’t be a next time. Spike! Not again! Shit!’

Angel caught Spike as he fell, death-like toward the carpet. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much to him—far less than the damage he’d inflicted over the Cup of Perpetual Torment would suggest. He hefted the light figure over his shoulder and rode up in the elevator, shrugging him off onto the couch and going to the refrigerator.

By the time he got back, Spike was awake and staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. Angel sat alongside him. ‘What?’

Spike pouted. ‘Lightning tour that time. I was in the dormitory again. In bed.’

‘And… that’s good, yeah?’

‘Hmm. Could’ve been worse. Only….’ He looked at Angel. ‘Little you wasn’t in ‘is bed, and given what I now know, that’s kinda worrying.’

Angel flushed, put the mug of blood down and stood up, going back to the kitchen. ‘He probably went to piss.’

‘Probably.’ Angel could hear the doubt in Spike’s voice but ignored it.

‘What now?’

Angel turned. ‘Now?’

‘Well, yeah. I’m here; I’ve had me whistle-stop tour of the Angel brain; I’ve drunk me blood—now what?’

Angel had no idea how to respond to this. He hadn’t thought further than getting some blood into Spike, which would, hopefully, stop the visions—or whatever they were.

Spike sat up. ‘I’ll be going then.’

‘No.’ Angel pursed his lips, his brow lowering. ‘I think you should stay until we find out what’s causing this.’

‘Stay? Here? How’s that gonna bloody work? We hate each other!’

‘We can do that just as well here as anywhere else—I’ve find you eminently easy to hate wherever you are.’

Spike smiled softly and replied with a raised finger. Angel smiled too and went to the closet, rummaging for some blankets. Chucking them at Spike, he said, ‘Wesley will have this solved by tomorrow. We can not kill each other for one night.’

‘How come you get the bloody bed?’

‘Because it’s mine?’

‘Well, exactly: you get it all the time. ‘S only fair to offer it up to me!’

‘In your dreams, Spike.’

Spike gave him one of his best head tilts. ‘I might hold you to that.’

Angel turned away then turned back, his face a mask of cold neutrality. To an observer, his words might have seemed incongruous after Spike’s flirtatious remark. ‘Remember what I told you: there was no one—no one came to help me.’

The comment didn’t seem to confuse Spike, and he replied seriously, ‘Maybe cus I hadn’t been born.’

Angel hesitated, the mask slipping once more. ‘That’s... dumb.’

Spike shrugged. ‘It’s all dumb.’

Angel had no argument for this essential truth, so he turned and went into the bedroom, pointedly shutting the door.

Spike sighed, stripped off his boots and coat and, after a moment, added his shirt to the pile on the floor. He wanted a shower. He wanted a nice comfortable bed. He wanted other things, too, but he couldn’t see how, given the current circumstances, he was going to get them.

* * * * * * *

The couch was uncomfortable, and it became increasingly so as the hours ticked by. It also became more and more ridiculous that he was here at all. What could Angel do anyway? He was unforthcoming about what was happening; he denied his past; and he conveniently forgot details that might be useful…. Spike became increasingly angry that he’d allowed some spark of connection between them to blind him to the fact that there wasn’t a connection: never had been and never would be.

Finally, sometime after midnight, he shoved the blankets off and strode to Angel’s room.

He was about to launch into a tirade about the couch, in which he was also going to make it patently obvious that he wasn’t falling for this concerned-Angel act, when he realised that Angel wasn’t asleep either—that he was sitting up, his knees pulled up tightly and his arms wrapped around them as a child might do after waking from a fearful nightmare. Dressed only in thin, black cotton pants, his hard, bare torso reflected coloured lights from the window like an eerily flicking mosaic.

Spike went closer and murmured hesitantly, ‘Angel?’

Angel turned his face away, wiping it briefly on his knees. ‘What?’

‘I was going to ask you that. What’s wrong?’

‘Go back to bed, Spike.’

‘I can’t sleep.’

Angel turned to face him, and the streaks of tears were evident on his face. This threw Spike so badly that when Angel asked, ‘Another dream?’ he forgot what he had come in for and, without thinking, sank onto the edge of the bed.

Realising that Spike was staring in horrified fascination at his face, Angel rubbed it again, slid his legs flat and adjusted the sheet a little higher, saying irritated, ‘Go back to bed.’

The dark eyed child gave the answer Spike would have done to Angel. ‘I don’t want to.’

Spike said what Angel should be saying, ‘You have to.’

The boy shook his head. ‘I’m scared’

Spike sighed and accepted that he’d fallen hard into the dream.  They were squeezed together into one of the narrow beds, their hearts beating against each other. He whispered, ‘If they catch you in here, you’ll have something to really be scared about.’ The boy’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I want to go home.’

‘Yeah. I kinda have to agree with you there.’

The smaller figure sniffed and wiped his nose on Spike’s chest. ‘You talk strangely.’

Spike snorted. ‘I think you’ll still think that in three hundred years, pet. Mind you, you’ll be talking weird then, too.’

‘You’re funny.’

‘Mr Hilarity, me. What’s your name?’

‘You know what it is—Kavanagh.’

‘Nah, your real name—Christian name.’

The boy’s eyes widened. ‘You know we’re not allowed!’

‘Indulge me.’

‘Liam.’

‘Oh, bloody hell, so it is you. Look: you really need to go back to your own bed.’

‘I—I can’t.’

Spike heard something in the voice, saw the blush of shame and looked fearfully at the empty bed next to him. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

Liam shook his head sadly.

‘Oh, fuck.’

Angel was leaning over him, shaking him anxiously. ‘What?’

Spike debated telling him that his smaller self had wet the bed but, once more, felt that strange stab of affection for this hated creature, which had driven so many of his choices recently—certainly the ones that had led him to be here, in bed alongside the evil git. Besides, it was such good ammunition he wanted to savour it for a while. ‘I was there again.’

‘I got that.’

Spike suddenly got that he was on the bed, lying with his head on the pillow, Angel sitting cross-legged next to him. For some reason, he now wanted to drag out his tale: make it last long into the night. But it had been such a short visitation that he could not make it longer to tell than: ‘He was scared of something. It was night time again, and he was very scared.’

‘They were scary times, Spike. We were all scared: of devils, witches—God even.’

Spike rolled onto his side and propped his head up on his hand. ‘Nah. This was something more… tangible.’

‘Did he say what?’

‘Did you say what?’

‘You don’t know that—.’

‘He said he was called Liam.’

‘Oh.’

‘What were you so scared of, Angel?’

‘I’ve told you: I don’t remember. I remember nothing about it.’

‘Except for emeralds and the feel of greasy hands on you and hatred so bad that when you say the name Michael you pale?’

Angel made an angry, dismissive wave of his hand. ‘You take plain facts and make them sound romantically sinister.’

Spike hesitated but countered softly, ‘I wasn’t the one crying.’

Angel unfolded his long legs and climbed off the bed, going to stand by the window, looking out over the city.  After a moment’s hesitation, Spike rolled off, too, and stood alongside him. He debated saying something, but for once, the silence was remarkably comfortable. It was a pretty view—for a city. He suddenly had a longing for rolling hills and moors and bracken warming in the sun… which was spooky really as he’d never lived anywhere like that. He swallowed and said hesitantly, ‘Was the school in the country?’ Angel glanced over. ‘Everything was in the country then.’

‘Huh.’

‘Tell me….’ Angel looked down at his bare feet. ‘What did I look like?’

Spike felt a tremor of something deep in his gut, which was hot and pleasurable. It felt familiar, like something he used to feel in Angelus’s company—in Angelus’s favour. ‘You were excessively cute. Pale and kinda weedy but… cute.’

Angel twitched aside the blind, seemingly engrossed in what he could see outside the room. ‘I don’t remember my face at all.’

‘I don’t wanna remember mine.’

Angel glanced at him and smiled as if in some pleasant memory. ‘Go back to bed, Spike.’

Spike pouted. ‘I’m scared.’

Angel laughed. ‘Yeah. Like that’s convincing.’

Spike laughed, too. ‘Good try though. ‘Night.’

Angel nodded. ‘I would say sweet dreams, but I don’t want to be responsible for what that might mean.’

Slightly confused at this and needing to be on his own to puzzle it out, Spike went thoughtfully back to the unwelcoming couch.

Chapter 4

It seemed inevitable to Spike that he would return to the dream. Could Angel not see that his close proximity would precipitate whatever was happening: this plundering of memory—this altering of it?

The malnourished body lay naked in his arms: they’d spread the soaking nightshirt under them for their body heat to dry. Before dawn, he would rise and turn the thin, straw pallet dry side up. Both inadequate blankets covered them, and now they lay shivering gently in his bed, waiting for some warmth to be generated between them. As he pressed around the thin form, he felt its life surging under his hands: a belly rumbling faintly, snuffling sounds of breathing, warmth from the blood just under the surface of the hollows. Lying like this, so close, so tight to the child’s body, Spike had something of a revelation—something he had never thought to feel. An almost paternal need to protect the boy crept upon him. He tried to shake it off. He’d never had any contact with children, except for the occasional ones he’d eaten—and he’d always been glad to hand those back to Dru when they’d started crying.

Now, however, he wanted to bundle Liam up in the blankets and take him away from this place—this life. The boy seemed inexpressibly vulnerable and innocent, and when Spike considered all that was yet to come for this little scrap of life, his heart wept with pity. He would save Liam from that if he could, even if that inevitably meant he would not then exist. He shifted uneasily in the narrow bed, alarmed by yet another emergence of his odd, self-sacrificing obsession.

They were beginning to warm up. Liam had stopped shivering and was sleeping, worn out from the cold, lack of food, and fear of the nameless thing that they had yet to unravel.  Spike felt his own body relax, tension draining from him. His limbs became heavy, his half-sleeping thoughts confused. Soon, it was oddly comfortable on the thin, straw mattress; the blankets seemed heavier and warmer now, the sleeping body incredibly comfortable to cuddle. Suddenly, Spike opened his eyes and with a jolt of shock found himself staring at Angel’s sleeping face, inches apart on a pillow.

Angel’s arm draped over his waist, pulling them together, pinning them in this astounding embrace. Spike knew that he had not walked—asleep or awake—into Angel’s room, shed his clothes and climbed into bed with him. It was impossible that he would have forgotten that or that Angel would have tolerated it.  It occurred to Spike that perhaps he wasn’t shaping reality in the dream but that that reality was shaping them.

He had no idea what Angel would say or do when he woke to find them so. It could play out a number of ways, but none of them—as far as Spike could see—would be good. He tried to extricate himself without waking Angel, but as this attempted escape consisted only of thinking “I’d better go” it wasn’t particularly useful. Angel continued to sleep as if the exhaustion of the child affected the adult. His eyelids fluttered their long lashes on his cheeks.

Spike wondered what it was that this hated enemy dreamt.

Asleep, however, Angel wasn’t so easy to hate….

Asleep, Angel didn’t seem such of an enemy….

Desperate, Spike suddenly knew what was coming. He wrinkled his brow and fought it with every part of his powerful brain… to no avail. The intense surge of paternalism he’d felt for the child now spread over to embrace this sleeping man.

Spike now wanted to protect Angel.

Spike now wanted to take Angel away from this life.

Very carefully, in a mirror of Angel’s position on him, he lifted his arm and placed it over the muscular waist. It was a small claiming but a significant one: it was the first time he’d ever voluntarily touched Angel in anything other than anger. He closed his eyes to concentrate on the feel of their skin touching, and it wasn’t long before Spike came to the conclusion that these feelings were anything but paternal—although he did acknowledge that his experience of fathering wasn’t exactly extensive.  But the feelings he’d had so unexpectedly for the child hadn’t included a sudden surge of blood to the groin. They hadn’t made his balls clench. The touch of Liam’s skin hadn’t made his cock rise wetly, seeking some elusive satisfaction. But all of this was happening now.  His body felt more alive than it had since his return to corporeal form—as if it were sparking off the energy of Angel’s powerful life force. He was concentrating so hard on their bodies, in the darkness behind his closed lids, that he actually heard the moment Angel woke. He heard him open his eyes. He heard him thinking. He wished he could hear the outcome of this deliberation, but however tense and alert he was, however he strove to anticipate Angel’s reaction, he could not. Spike tensed some more, a powerful flight or fight response surging adrenalin around his body. Adrenalin and testosterone—a potent aphrodisiac of male chemicals pumped into the hot bed between them.

When Angel finally reacted with a hard, unmistakably sexual thrust of his hips, Spike was so wired all he could do was grunt: an exhalation of air that brought a reciprocal sound from Angel. Then Spike thrust back, and before they knew it, they were a tangled, hot mesh of hands and cocks with images of flesh flashing briefly before their eyes, before incredible, tingling, explosive releases.

They fell apart, panting.

Angel suddenly swung his arm and thumped Spike, hard.

Spike sat up and thumped him back.

Angel swung his legs off the bed and hissed, ‘Get out.’

Spike spat back, ‘Already got, Mate,’ and he had, stomping sticky and cross toward the couch to find his missing jeans.

They were nowhere to be found.

Angel watched the hunt from the corner of one eye then glanced around for his missing pants. They, too, had gone.

This somehow took all the responsibility for what had just happened off their shoulders: as Spike had suspected, he had not just left the couch, stripped and climbed naked into Angel’s willing arms; Angel had not been awake, naked and waiting for him. Somehow, their reality was being affected by the other place and thus, they both reasoned most satisfactorily, all events here could now be said to be magical and out of their control.

Angel grunted with the air of a man shedding all responsibility for something he didn’t want to think about anyway and pulled on some pants from the closet, grudgingly throwing Spike another pair. They watched each other cautiously, with tiny, hidden glances, circling each other metaphorically and sizing up some perceived threat.

Eventually, handing Spike a blood bag with as much grudging enmity as he had the pants, Angel snarled, ‘I could have easily staked you then instead of—.’ They both filled in the blank quite easily with words and phrases learnt over centuries of being male, sexual predators, contemplating the tangible evidence, which even now glistened on their naked chests. When Angel recovered, he added less vehemently, ‘We have to stop this—whatever it is.’

Spike nodded. He was having difficultly concentrating on anything Angel was saying or doing. Because, of course, this wasn’t Angel—or, at least, the Angel he detested so much that he could sometimes taste the bitterness of his loathing. This was his new Angel who had been birthed on a hot swell of paternal feeling then fed and reared on their potent fluids.

‘Spike?’

Spike wrenched himself back to the matter in hand and replied tetchily, ‘No argument here, Mate.’

‘And we don’t need to mention—.’ The blank again. It hadn’t lost any of its punch: it still screamed skin and hair and salty, shuddering release. It even smelt of male sex. Angel coughed and continued, ‘It was this damn dream thing. That’s all. There’s no requirement to discuss this with Wesley. It’s nothing to do with this… situation.’

The logic of this was so flawed it actually impressed Spike. He didn’t want to point this out though, because he was working hard to resist going up to Angel and kissing him. He merely nodded and reiterated, ‘Again: no argument here.’

‘I’m thinking maybe this was a bad idea—you being here. So close to—. I mean….’

‘Yeah. That’s what I thought.’ He waved vaguely toward the door. ‘I’d best go.’

Angel didn’t reply, a silent man with a great deal on his mind that he was unwilling or unable to say.

* * * * * * *

As Spike couldn’t decently wear the pants Angel had given him, he was forced to return to his own apartment. He didn’t want to. Crossing the threshold would challenge his new feelings for Angel. Perhaps, back in the real world—which his apartment represented—real feelings—hatred, disdain and a slight edge of fear—would return.

They didn’t. He stood for a while, listening for them, testing himself by conjuring images of Angel in his mind. They only made him grin shyly. Then they made him stiffen.

It was a vast emotional crisis. On top of the slipping-out-of-reality-and-into-an-eighteenth-century-Jesuit-school thing, it was all a bit too much. He slumped on the couch, unwilling to admit that thinking about Angel made him hard. Suddenly panicked, he conjured a favourite memory of Buffy to see if that now had the opposite effect. It had little effect at all: he stayed stubbornly uncomfortable on an Angel-induced hardon.

There was a better test though. He fished his erection out of the very loose fly of Angel’s pants and with his eyes closed, began to play with it. He kept his mind deliberately blank and waited to see which way his fantasies swung. Getting hard to thoughts of Angel was one thing; actually wanking off to images of his body was… a crisp work shirt falling off broad shoulders… quite another… pants sliding down smooth, muscled thighs… thing… Angel’s… thing… hidden and heavy under his shorts until… peeking out of a leg as he sits… just the head, slit wide and wet… adjusting himself… pausing… his hand playing… playing together… watching each other… fast and hard… a male challenge to come first, hardest… some other, more subtle challenge to come together…altogether.

He exploded with a shaky fist, milking heavy shots of sperm to splatter over the borrowed pants.

Spike’s head tipped back on the couch in complete resignation.

Here or in a dream, it didn’t matter: either way, he was entirely lost.

And it really pissed him off!

He opened his eyes and swore loudly. You didn’t just change an abnormally long lifetime’s hatred into intense lust with one vague thought about pretty eyelashes. It wasn’t possible. If he’d read it in a book, he’d have laughed and tossed the crap aside. It smacked of the plot contrivances of a bloody soap!

Suddenly, a grin spread across his face. He shook his head ruefully. It was all part of the magical influences from the dream. He didn’t really like Angel. He didn’t really love him. He certainly didn’t dribble embarrassingly at the thought of Angel’s hard cock spewing over him. None of it was for real. This was a liberating thought for it allowed him to strip, climb into a hot shower and beat off once more to the fantasy of Angel standing alongside him and soaping him down, without feeling one moment of confusion or guilt.

* * * * * * *

Angel watched Spike depart. He, too, stripped and showered. Then, unlike Spike who returned to bed for a few hours kip, he went down to work. He didn’t actually do any though—work. He was too preoccupied. He was beginning to remember, and although this was startling in itself, it was not the thing that preoccupied him the most: he had remembered whilst inhaling the intense smell of Spike’s potent release.

He didn’t have a sharp memory—far from it—but snatches teased and tantalised his mind: the smell of burning, the intense lustre of an inlaid gold letter.  And a feeling of fear that made his gut lurch these three centuries later. He needed to explore these memories. He feared nothing (except himself) and would defeat this new (or ancient) fear if given the opportunity to face it straight on. But to jog the memory, he apparently needed… Spike. Spike and his… potency….

As the long day wore on, Angel came to the unpalatable, unthinkable conclusion that, somehow, he had to persuade Spike to move back in with him—not into his bed! That thought—Spike and sex—still made Angel gag, and not in a good way… he just needed the body around…. There was no chance whatsoever that anything else would develop between them again. What they had done together on waking was the result of a magical influence so powerful that it could disappear pants. He focused on this thought and almost believed it. He knew, however, that it was given a subtle lie to by his memory of waking alongside the sleeping Spike. He had heard his soft breathing, felt the warmth generated between them, and his hard, urgent thrust into a reciprocal hardness had been entirely premeditated and deliberate. But premeditated and deliberate could be due to magical influences…. He clung to this tiny spar of hope and concentrated solely on how to get Spike back into his… apartment.

This, he knew, was not going to be easy. Spike, justifiably, would now hate him more than ever, and Angel had never been unaware of just how much Spike did hate him. Not only did Spike hate him, though, he now had some real and powerful ammunition against him (besides the murder thing). Worse than the power to destroy him, Spike now had something that could humiliate him. When would Spike start to insinuate about the things they had done? Twisting and turning them to his own advantage….

He could not ask Spike.

He had to.

He needed to know what he didn’t know. Somehow, intuitively, he sensed that it had something to do with his current predicament… situation… vocation.

His hatred for Spike notched up in direct proportion to the number of ways he could imagine Spike refusing his proposal. He could hear the laughter, taste the derision. But he had to ask.

* * * * * * *

Spike appeared at the daily meeting. He was subdued, which Angel immediately tagged as sneaky. He was thoughtful, which was clearly just plotting. Those damn blue eyes kept glancing in his direction, but the look wasn’t really shy or considering: Spike was just testing him.

He waited until the others had filed out, and as he rose to return to his office, said casually, ‘I think while this thing is still happening you should move back….’

‘Okay! Yeah. I’ll go get my stuff.’ Spike nodded, more to himself than Angel, and strode off.

* * * * * * *

Angel sat at his desk, speechless, even though he was alone and had no one to talk to anyway.

He was trying to see Spike’s angle, but it eluded him. Then the suspicion, which he’d harboured secretly all along, that Spike was creating this whole elaborate charade for some nefarious reason of his own sprang unbidden to his mind. Was he being played? It felt like it. Why else would Spike leap at the chance to return to the scene of such acute embarrassment to them both?

Then Angel was glad he’d manoeuvred Spike back into his apartment: he could kill two birds with this one shift in habitation—he could use Spike to explore his suppressed memories, but he could also keep Spike under close observation and discover why and how he was contriving this whole debacle.

* * * * * * *

Angel had thought the previous night’s spillages had been embarrassing enough. Moving around Spike in his living space was worse. He’d watched silently as Spike made trips up in his elevator, carrying various boxes. When he finally called it quits for the night, he walked into a scene of domestic horror: clothes strewn over his furniture; books, CDs and weird shiny things littering the floor.

‘You’re only fucking here for a day or two!’ He shouted, for there was no sign of the culprit. He heard singing and looked incredulous toward the bathroom. Nowhere in his plans to have Spike in his apartment had he considered Spike actually… being in his apartment. He’d sort of seen him not there until he’d needed him—perhaps appearing as magically as his jeans seemed to have disappeared. This is not what he had intended at all!

Before he’d given it too much thought, he stormed across the bedroom and into the steam-filled bathroom.

The speed with which Spike covered himself with a towel threw Angel completely. Spike had never, in the hundred years plus of their acquaintance, missed an opportunity to flaunt his nakedness. It was one of Angel’s abiding sources of hatred for his childe: this implied jibe about his lack of self-confidence and reluctance to expose his body. That he was merely modest seemed never to have occurred to Spike. A little incident recently with Eve, though, had altered Angel’s views on all of this. Walking out of the shower naked, standing blatantly before her, smelling her arousal and pointedly remaining flaccid had been an act of pure hatred and sexual domination. He realised now, for the first time, that Spike’s flaunting had been systematic of his hatred and disdain, too. So, why this odd modesty now?

Spike was shifting from one wet foot to another, waiting for something. Angel gritted his teeth and turned away. ‘Tidy up your shit.’

‘I need some… closet space.’

Whoa! Spike sharing his closet had never been part of the deal! ‘You have boxes. Use them.’

Before he could leave for the relative sanity of the living room, a soft voice asked, ‘Where am I going to sleep?’

‘What?’ He turned, not sure whether to be incredulous or amused.

‘The couch is kind of… uncomfortable.’

‘And you are kind of… a vampire.’

Spike gave him a small, spiteful look, which, thankfully, was much more like the old Spike. ‘I didn’t know that. Thanks for telling me.’ He pushed past Angel and went toward the living room, shedding his towel, Angel noticed, long before he got there.

Angel felt he’d failed some sort of test for which no one had prepared him or explained the rules, but he didn’t dwell on it: he was too busy not watching Spike’s tight, pale buttocks.

A shiver began in the small of his back, travelled up his spine and exploded in the back of his head. Pale buttocks fell through darkness, glowing, and were then gone. He suddenly needed to vomit, but would never show such weakness in front of his childe.

* * * * * * *

Spike lit a cigarette, having conversations with Angel in his head. He vented his spleen over the git and then made Angel grovel and plead for his love.

Why had he asked him to come back here if he hadn’t also wanted to explore this incredible thing that seemed to be happening between them? As he’d moved his meagre possessions into Angel’s apartment during the afternoon, it had gradually occurred to him that this new, strange passion for Angel was neither so new nor so strange.  When looked at in some lights, he could see that his relationship with Angel had always been passionate. And he had not always hated Angel as much as he had in Sunnydale—that had been a low point for them both. There had been a time when he’d felt friendship and approval from Angelus, although he was well aware that his sire’s moods were wild and unpredictable and often appeared one thing when they were actually quite another.

For all that, he had lived with Angelus and hunted with Angelus by his side for decades and though the fat git might deny it now, they had shared a bed many times over those long years. Sure, nothing unmanly—as he would then have termed it—had ever occurred, but they had curled together for animal companionship and protection and had never found that strange or embarrassing.

Not now though apparently!

Oh, no! The high and mighty, I’m—the—CEO….

Spike blinked.

He hadn’t felt the unfiltered sunlight for so long that it never ceased to shock him into insensibility when he did… and why—could anyone tell him this?—had he wasted his goddamn ring running after that bloody bint, instead of plonking himself down and enjoying a nice little bit of bronzing? Didn’t matter how many times he asked himself that….

‘Run!’

‘Huh?’

‘Run! Damn you, run!’

Spike ran. It was too bright to see where he was going, so he collided with something hard and black. They went down in a tangle of limbs. A man was laughing, and bright green eyes twinkled out at him as a young priest untangled them and stood up. ‘You’re supposed to run after the ball, Kelly, not the batsman!’

For something to say, because it seemed appropriate and he was too disoriented to say anything more useful, Spike murmured, ‘You’re English.’

The priest tipped his head to one side and laughed again. ‘And will you never cease pointing that out to me?’ He held up a bat and caressed it lovingly. ‘It’s why I’m trying to bring God’s game to you heathen Irish—but don’t tell Father Michael I said that!’

At that name, Spike looked anxiously around. They were on a bright, sunlight green lawn, boys milling aimlessly around. He spotted Liam, sitting off to one side on his own and heaved a small sigh of relief.

The Father watched him closely and said, more of an observation than a question, ‘You’re fond of him.’

Spike took it as a statement and decided that a reply was neither wise nor necessary: he was wary of colouring any response about the child with his new feelings for the adult.  ‘He needs a good friend, Kelly. I’m glad to see you taking him under your wing… only… he’s very young—too young to be here, I would say. You must be… cautious.’

Spike glanced up, squinting into the bright light. ‘Cautious?’

The Father blushed faintly. ‘Strong attachment between boys is laudable as long as they remain… pure in God’s eyes.’

Spike snorted, and before he could stop himself, or think of his earlier promise to be more circumspect, he blurted out, ‘Maybe God should fasten his bloody peepers first on his so-called representatives on earth!’

The Father’s hand whipped out and caught Spike’s ear. ‘I chose not to believe the things they’re saying about your blasphemous tongue, child, but you speak like the very devil himself!’

Spike bit his tongue on his more natural reply and said in one of his practised, contrite tones, ‘I’m sorry… Father. I spoke… hastily.’

The twinkle returned, and the priest rubbed Spike’s ear thoughtfully. ‘Be a friend to the little one.’

* * * * * * *

Dream and reality merged again. Spike did not crash cleanly back to his own body. The rubbing of his ear continued, and on the confusion of hearing the familiar endearment, he opened his eyes to find he was lying on the couch with Angel sitting alongside him… rubbing his ear. No… holding a bloodstained cloth to it.

Angel sat back slightly as the eyes opened. ‘You faint— fell and hit your head on the table. And you’re….’

There was something in Angel’s voice that made Spike say alarmed, ‘What?’

‘You’re blistered.’

Spike looked down at his naked body, covered only by the towel he’d dropped in another lifetime to provoke Angel with his backside, and saw the angry sun-welts that blistered his arms. ‘We were playing cricket….’ He began to laugh uncontrollably at nothing and everything.

Angel closed his eyes. ‘This can’t be happening. I’ve never played….’ Then his hands on Spike tensed.

Spike closed his fingers around Angel’s wrist so tightly Angel was forced to open his eyes. Pointedly, slightly venomously, he said, ‘You’ve started to remember, haven’t you? You bastard! Were you going to mention it?’

Angel dropped the cloth he was still holding to Spike’s head, but left his hand there, extending his fingers and pushing them into the wet, tousled hair. ‘I started to remember after we—. After—. You sparked some memories, yes.’

Spike twisted his head away from a caress that only a few moments ago he’d have relished and struggled to sit up. ‘That’s why you invited me back here?’

Angel frowned. ‘Why else?’

Spike sagged but gave himself some credit for not doing this visibly. ‘Yeah. Why else.’ He was a prat—love’s bloody bitch still, and he hated it. He hung his head. ‘I’m not staying if—.’ Angel suddenly pressed his lips ardently to the hollow of Spike’s neck and his tongue darted out to taste the shower-warm flesh. Spike’s belly fluttered. He closed his throat on a groan of desire.

Just as suddenly, Angel leant back on the couch and shaded his eyes with his hand.

Spike turned almost in slow motion to the silent figure, his whole body tingling as if Angel’s tongue had explored all his secrets.

What was he remembering?

What had the smell and taste of his body prompted from that silent figure?

Spike watched the perfectly shaped lips beneath the hand, wondering if they would open and tell. Had he ever noticed how beautiful Angel’s mouth was before? Of course he had: it had been the instrument of their first, intimate acquaintance. What was Angel seeing? Did he remember a beautiful English priest with twinkling green eyes? Did he remember a day so sunny that it seemed impossible anything bad could happen within its bright embrace? Or was he seeing beneath the surface of things, colouring what had been with knowledge of all that was yet to come? Was he visiting a world made entirely of Angel’s warped memories, or had a real boy sat alongside a real cricket field in eighteenth century Ireland, looking as if the weight of the world were upon his shoulders even then?

He put a hand to the tingling flesh where Angel’s lips had touched him and heard a soft plea, ‘Let me help you remember it all, Angel,’ but the words were spoken only in his head. In his experience, confessions of love were best to be avoided: they left you so defenceless that you offered yourself as a sacrifice for the world when all you really wanted was a little kindness and affection.

His feelings for Angel were so complex and so confused that he could not use any previous experience to help him out anyway. He only knew he wanted to do what the pretty priest had urged: he wanted to look after this little one, and it seemed to him that this was the closest he’d ever felt to real love.

Chapter 5

 ‘Let’s go out.’

Angel started from his reverie and lowered his hand. ‘What?’

Spike slid further away on the couch, to give them both some space and repeated, ‘Let’s go out.’

‘On a… date?’

Spike laughed then reined it in at Angel’s confused expression. ‘I meant to hunt… but I’ll buy ya some flowers first if you like.’

Angel’s expression mellowed, and he huffed ruefully. ‘You meant patrol, I guess, not… hunt?’

Spike faltered then laughed and thumped him playfully. ‘Whatever. Better than sittin’ round here getting in each other’s way.’

‘It’s my apartment.’

‘Well, it’s temporarily mine now, too….’

Angel pursed his lips for a moment then leapt up, physicality and enthusiasm suddenly scenting the air. ‘Yeah. Let’s go.’

* * * * * * *

They changed and met at the elevator. Angel nodded toward Spike’s arms. ‘You… okay?’

Spike grinned infectiously, ‘Who’d’ve thought I’d get a bloody sunburn…? Ain’t life grand?’

Angel smiled shyly and as they waited for the doors to open murmured, ‘We could stop—buy some… lotion….’

‘You offering to… smooth it on?’

‘Stop it.’

‘Stop what?’

‘Being… weird. You’ve been weird since—.’ The blank was getting predicable. For one moment, in his mind, Angel named what they had done—cocks fisted; foreskins dragged down and explored; balls mouthed and stretched; come splattered wetly between them—but the words remained in his head, and he only repeated, ‘Stop it.’

Spike nodded contritely, waiting the perfect amount of time then asking slyly, ‘And you invited me back again because…? Sorry, I forgot your excuse….’ He got a childish thump for his troubles, which delighted him. He lit a cigarette and followed Angel through the deserted offices, watching the flow of the dark the coat and remembering what lay beneath.

* * * * * * *

It was the perfect antidote to everything. They both felt it: strolling through the warm night air; feeling the throb of blood around them; listening to this and to their souls, a contradictory habit that thrilled as much as it confused.  They headed toward the centre of town for a change, where the innocent nightlife would be. Angel did not confirm that he was anxious about Spike’s vulnerability given his tendency to leave his body every so often, and Spike did not call him on this decision to probably avoid any action at all. They watched the theatregoers and couples on dates happily, without missing, for once, the thrill of the kill.

When Spike finally spoke, Angel wondered if his childe had read his mind, or at least was thinking about sunburn on pale skin, as he was, for Spike flicked his cigarette butt away and said casually, ‘You have played cricket, by the way.’

Angel gave him a silent, sidelong glance.

‘Remember? In France that time, we were crossing the Alps or some damn hills, and it was bloody freezing, and we came across those old men playing with their balls?’

Angel sighed with weary, almost fond resignation. ‘It was the Vosges and boules.’

‘Whatever. Anyway, you said we could teach them a better game, and I thought you meant cricket.’

‘You always were a moron.’

‘Well, Jesus, Angel, they were all old and wrinkly. Never occurred to me you wanted to eat them!’

Angel pouted. ‘It was cold.’

‘So, we kinda played cricket with them—in the snow.’

‘They didn’t like fielding the boules we hit at them, did they?’

Spike sighed. ‘No.’ He pouted, too, and looked at his feet. ‘It was funnier then.’ After a while he asked softly, ‘Is this why we never talk now? Cus there’s not one thing we can say that won’t… hurt.’

Angel turned his head and looked carefully at him, then he huffed as if surprised that Spike had got this at last.

Spike lit a cigarette then said deceptively casually, ‘Maybe we should make some new, better memories.’

‘You’re doing that weird thing again.’

‘No, seriously, we could do this more often, for a start.’

‘Wander aimlessly around looking good in leather?’

‘Oh, fuck off.’

Angel smiled. ‘I guess we could. I save hundreds of people every day—apparently. But it’s not the same, ya know? Not the same as that one time you physically help someone….’

‘Best save ever? Quick.’

Angel laughed. ‘That’s easy: Buffy—from you.’

Spike twitched up his shoulder and considered the end of his cigarette. ‘I could say the same thing….’

‘You weren’t saving Buffy; you were hitting me with a tyre iron because you could and because you enjoyed it.’

‘Well, duh. But I was also saving Dru.’

‘Dru was never in any danger from me, Spike.’

‘Until you set ‘er on fire—don’t think I didn’t hear ‘bout that.’

‘You chained her up and tried to stake her!’

‘I wouldn’t really have done it! Jesus. Dru was my—.’

‘I know. I know she was.’

‘Bugger. We’re back to the hurt again.’

‘Then let’s go in there.’

Before Spike could reply, Angel was jogging across the street.

Spike caught up with him. ‘You’ve gotta be joking! In there?’

Angel was caught up with the beautiful patterns of coloured glass in the windows so only murmured, ‘Yeah.’

Spike glanced around to see if anyone he knew was watching then skulked into the church after Angel, half under the cover of his duster.

They sat at the back. Spike glanced around then sighed. ‘It’s not what I had in mind for our first date, pet.’

‘Weird thing again….’

‘Nice singing, though.’

‘Yeah. Shhh.’

Angel stretched his arms along the back of the wooden pew and closed his eyes. It was nice singing. It had always been nice: the only times he’d not been afraid. Why had he then had the voice of an angel when now he couldn’t hold a note? Perhaps his ability to sing God’s praises had been stolen along with his soul.

* * * * * * *

Spike watched Angel’s profile, studied the shape of his nose, the lay of his hair, the curve of his lips. He had been unchanging for all the decades that Spike had known him. It was as if the individual parts of Angel’s face were burned into his brain—like letters, which he could always construct to make one perfect word, never forgetting, despite the long passage of years, how to read the whole from the parts. In all the years that he had hated Angel, he’d never been blind to his beauty. Perhaps he’d always been a little seduced by it. Angelus had come to him like poetry and the power of his rhyme still resonated in Spike’s heart.

Disbelieving what he did, he put his hand lightly to Angel’s sleeve and stretched his fingers over the hardness beneath.

The dark coat swam before his eyes. When clarity returned, black cloth was still under his fingers; it was still hard like steel beneath, only now it wasn’t Angel he touched, nor was it a sleeve.

* * * * * * *

Angel felt the light touch, but before he could open his eyes or rise to whatever it was Spike was trying to piss him off with now, Spike fell on him.

He cursed, glanced around, then turned Spike so he was lying across the pew, head in his lap. His eyelids were fluttering, and his body felt as if electricity sparked through it. He wasn’t sure where to put his hands, so for wont of somewhere better, laid one over Spike’s forehead. The other seemed to fall naturally to his chest, and he could feel the sharp outline of Spike’s breastbone beneath the T-shirt. Spike jerked and with some long-forgotten ability to give comfort, Angel began to stroke his forehead. ‘Wake up.’ He did not expect Spike to hear this low hiss, so was not disappointed when the response was another jerk, this time accompanied by a small moan.  ‘It’s nice to see you in God’s house again.’

Angel looked up at the amused voice into a pair of green eyes. He blinked. A spasm shot through the hand that stroked Spike’s forehead. ‘This can’t be happening.’

‘What, my son? What do you think is happening here?’

‘You. You can’t be—.’

‘God’s ways are mysterious.’

‘No. I have to get out—. What do you want from me?’

‘I’ve come to collect.’

Angel rose, gathering Spike in his arms like a soldier bearing a fallen comrade off some furious battlefield. He backed away from the figure and made for the door.

‘Wait!’ Angel turned, his eyes wide and fearful, as if he had finally found something in the world that he was afraid of. The young priest took a step forward and held out a stack of papers. Frowning, he said softly, ‘Song sheets. I was collecting song sheets. I’m so sorry. Are you… okay?’

Angel blinked and saw only confusion in a pair of ordinary, grey eyes.

Nevertheless, he kicked the doors open and strode out into the night, carrying his unconscious burden.

* * * * * * *

Spike regained consciousness when they reached the street. Angel heard a hissed curse and eased him down, holding him until he stood by himself.

Spike’s face was lowered. Angel glanced fearfully back at the church. ‘I—. We need to speak with Wesley. Something just happened—.’

Without speaking or giving any other indication that he had heard Angel’s words, with a cry of distress, Spike took off running—with an odd gait. Angel caught him as he tore through a park, not taking the paths, but crashing heedless through the trees. He tackled him and brought him down in a hard, painful crash to the ground. ‘Spike!’

Spike didn’t put up a fight. He seemed to have had it knocked out of him—whether by the fall or by something else, Angel couldn’t tell. ‘What the hell did you take off like that for? I saw something in the church. Something that might—.’

‘I’m not interested anymore.’

‘Huh?’ Angel let him get up, watching warily to see if he would bolt again. He began to brush down his clothes, watching Spike cagily. ‘You can’t just—.’

‘I can do anything I sodding well like. This is over.’

‘You mean you think you won’t dream again?’

‘I know I won’t. If I ignore it, then it’s not happening.’ On this burst of exceptional logic, Spike squared his shoulders, lit a cigarette and began to walk, as a man without a care in the world, toward the path.

Angel jogged to catch him up, not sure what was happening or how to tackle this new twist in Spike’s mood. ‘I think I saw one of the fathers from—.’

‘Window.’ Spike actually held up the palm of his hand in a childish gesture of not being able to hear and began humming tunelessly.

They came to the entrance of the park, and when Spike hesitated, Angel got that he was debating which way to turn. Right led them back to Wolfram and Hart, left to Spike’s apartment. Spike ground out his cigarette and turned right. Wondering why he felt such a sense of relief, Angel tagged along behind.

‘Are you going to run off again if I ask you a question?’

‘Depends what it is.’

‘Why were you limping when you ran? Why are you limping now?’

Spike’s shoulders clenched, and he lit another cigarette, a sure sign to Angel, who was very familiar with all Spike’s defensive gestures, that this line of questioning bothered him. ‘That’s two questions.’

‘Yeah, and I’m gonna ask another.’

‘Don’t bother.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’m coming back to get my clothes and shit, but that’s it, Angel. I’m not involved in this anymore.’

‘I saw one of the priests.’

Spike whirled around, tapping the side of his head. ‘Are you impaired? I told you! I’m not doing this anymore!’

‘The only way that’s going to be true is if we do do it—play it through.’

Spike poked him hard in the chest. ‘But it’s not you doing it, is it? And, Angel, one thing it’s not is play.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘No.’

By this, Spike confirmed that there was something to tell, so Angel let it drop temporarily as they walked back to the apartment.

* * * * * * *

As they stood in the living room, Angel could not but help notice the change in the atmosphere between them. He felt shut out where before there had been some sort of… connection. He missed it enormously. He wanted to reach out and hold Spike’s arm and somehow shake the truth out of him. Before he could act, Spike turned and said in an odd voice, ‘Mind if I take a shower?’

Angel nodded and shrugged. ‘Sure.’

Spike bent stiffly and gathered some clean clothes and without another word went through the bedroom and into the bathroom. Angel had the distinct impression that if there had been a door, it would have been firmly closed and securely locked.

There wasn’t a door though.

He paced, thinking about this omission.

Before he could talk himself out of something that might have long-term and unfortunate consequences if he got it wrong, he walked into the steam and braced his arms across the shower stall.

To his surprise, Spike did not turn his back to him, but neither was he flaunting his nakedness. He just stood there, looking defeated, the water streaming over his pale body, dripping off his long cock and glistening in droplets on the natural, dark hair.

‘What happened?’ Before Spike could respond, Angel glanced down at the water. Blood. To his heightened senses, the faint smell of blood was discernable over the scent of the soap.

Spike saw the look, and his eyes widened. ‘Get out.’

Angel stepped under the spray, ignoring the wetting and seized his shoulders. Spike fought back, but he was wet and naked and smaller, and it seemed as if he’d done all his fighting already that night. He just let it go: the struggle, the anger, the self-control. He tipped his head back and cried out, an animalistic cry of fury as Angel turned him around.

He was a mass of bruising. As with the sunburn, the physical frailties of his human, dream-self had returned with him to this reality. But the bruising was entirely localised: the tops of his thighs and buttocks mottled black and yellow. There was no sign of an open wound, however. Before Angel could ask, Spike turned his head and gave him a look that told him, without words, exactly where the source of the blood was and why. At that look, something deep inside, where Angel held his most private self, melted. Some barrier through which he had always filtered his view of Spike dissolved, and for the first time he saw in front of him not Spike, with all the associated baggage that came with that name, but just another man. Without the barrier, this man was just someone who was hurt, but someone who was too strong and too proud to speak that hurt aloud.

Angel’s face creased with pity, and more to hide the fact that he wanted to cry than to comfort Spike, he dragged him into a rough and ready embrace, tightening his arms around the resistant figure. ‘Are you… okay?’ It was pathetic, inadequate, but it was all he could think of to ask.

Spike swallowed and eased himself out of Angel’s arms. ‘I need to—.’ He faltered and tipped his head back once more to regain control. ‘Just let me get clean, yeah?’

Angel reluctantly nodded and stepped, soaking, back out of the water. ‘I’ll heat you some blood.’

Spike nodded, his eyes dull, as he watched Angel walk away.

* * * * * * *

By the time Spike had emerged from the water and dressed, Angel had changed his clothes, called Wesley and outlined some of the night’s events—without going into specifics—warmed some blood for them both and ordered in some food that he thought Spike would like.  Keeping busy kept his mind off what he had seen and, more importantly, thinking about what might have happened. He watched the listless figure cross to the living room, watched him dress, and then went in, carrying two mugs of blood. Spike took his without interest and went to the window.

Angel came and stood alongside him. ‘I know you don’t want to do this thing anymore, and that’s okay, Spike. Whatever you want, only…’ he hesitated ‘it’s going to happen again, isn’t it? Whether you want it to or not….’ Spike made no indication that he heard. ‘When you were unconscious in the church, I saw a priest… I thought I saw a priest that I had known back then. I remember him vaguely. But it wasn’t him—of course. That’s the first time I’ve been… involved… as well…. Say something… please….’ When nothing was forthcoming, he continued, ‘Things are coalescing to something. I feel it. Wesley’s agreed—.’

‘You told the human?’

Angel felt the words like the backlash of a whip and winced. ‘No! I told him you’d been… beaten.’

Spike seemed to regret his outburst, betraying as it did the fragility of his carefully constructed air of detachment. He buried his face in the mug and drank deeply. For the first time, Angel noticed the collar around his neck—fingers of bruising where he had been held down.

Angel’s cell rang, making them both jump, and he answered it, eyes on Spike’s lowered head. A few moments later, the elevator doors slid open on some bags, which he brought further into the apartment. ‘I didn’t know what you’d like, so I got something of everything.’

‘What is this, Angel? I said I’m going.’

‘You can eat first then.’ Trying not to seem desperate, he pushed Spike’s wet towel off the couch, sat, and began to lay out some of the aromatic, steaming dishes.

Spike sat down but didn’t touch the food. He seemed to be finding fault with his cuticles, ripping at them angrily.   Softly, Angel murmured, ‘I preferred it when you were being weird.’

Spike’s eyes lifted to his, some decision seeming to flicker, unmade, in their blue depths. Angel slowly handed him a prawn cracker. ‘You were occasionally weird with me back in day, Will. Not all our memories are painful…. Do you want to, maybe, just… trust me?’

Spike held the cracker loosely in his hand, clearly with no intention of eating it. But his decision seemed to have been made, for he relaxed very slightly and said simply, ‘I can still feel him… inside.’

Angel’s head jerked back. Spike was watching his reaction carefully. At something he saw in Angel’s shock, he asked woodenly, ‘How could you have forgotten something like that?’

Angel rose, agitated. ‘I’ve told you: I don’t remember any of it. If I’d remembered anything like… that… I would have told you: warned you! What the fuck do you think I am, Spike?’

Spike rose, too, not so wooden suddenly. ‘I think you’re the man who murdered me, has hated me for decades and only two days ago told me that he’d leave me back in that place if he could—permanently! That’s what I think you are!’

‘Oh, God! What a freaking mess!’ Before he knew what he was doing, Angel’s arm shot out, and he snagged Spike to him. He wrapped his arms tightly around Spike’s neck. ‘Why are you paying for my sins? I should be the one this is happening to.’

He suddenly released him but, keeping his eyes on Spike, went to the phone. He stabbed a number and said, ‘Order the jet. I need it tonight.’ Spike’s mouth opened slightly as if to protest, but he said nothing. Angel nodded at some agreement he saw in this silence and added, ‘Two passengers to Galway. If we can’t land there, then Shannon. We need a suitable car waiting.’

Chapter 6

Packing, taking a car to the airport, all passed in a blur of silent anxiety. Every so often, Angel would glance obliquely at Spike, but he could not order his thoughts enough to express them. Finally, as they took their seats in the jet early the following afternoon, facing each other either side of a small window, he said, ‘Are you… okay?’ He hated this useless repetition of something so weak, but he could not articulate his concern any better. ‘Do you want to see a… doctor, or something?’

Spike didn’t look at him, but stared listlessly out of the window. ‘Would you?’

That silenced Angel for a while. It churned in his gut, thinking about what had happened, feeling a confusing sense of something being taken from him. Finally, unable to stand the uncharacteristic, depressed silence from his companion, he said tetchily, ‘You are a vampire, Spike.’

Spike nodded, as if this observation—that he shouldn’t, couldn’t, feel such pain or humiliation—was apposite, but he pointed out curtly, ‘I brought back the damage to the child.’

This effectively silenced Angel as he dwelt on the implications of this for his childe.

To his surprise, Spike was the first to ease the tension between them. Somewhere over the north Atlantic, he asked softly, ‘And we’re doing this because…?’

Angel sighed, a tiny sigh of relief, keeping inside his sudden surge of joy: if Spike could ask that, he was recovering from the shock. He grimaced. ‘I got tired of being on the defensive.’

‘We’re going…?’

‘On the offensive, yeah.’

‘Uh huh.’ Spike lit a cigarette. Watching him do this simple, yet so familiar a thing made Angel’s guts wrench with something deeply pleasurable. He had the absurd notion to touch Spike, but he couldn’t see this little scene actually play out: it was too not what they were about. Despite this conclusion, he slid his foot across the small gap that separated them and kicked Spike gently in the shins. ‘Welcome back.’

Spike looked up. His eyes flashed with amusement and something else, which Angel could not discern, and then he said, ‘Ponce,’ distinctly and kicked him back, only harder.

* * * * *

Just as he had held Spike in the church, just as he had embraced and held him since then, Angel now found himself doing small, uncharacteristic kindnesses for Spike. He could not say why he made sure he was well fed; he could not say why he fetched him blood and snacks and drinks from the bar. Some part of these small acts of kindness was to distract himself from dwelling on what had happened and how it made him feel, but a much larger part was to act out genuine contrition for his guilt. It wasn’t every day someone else got raped in his memories. So he tolerated Spike’s music playing, encouraged him to get drunk and focused entirely on Spike’s comfort as they flew on, getting closer and closer to some enemy that he had no idea how to defeat.

* * * * * * *

Spike pretended to be drunk and therefore silent and half asleep so he could watch Angel. He knew exactly what Angel thought had happened—he’d planted and cultivated that suspicion since he’d regained consciousness outside the church; although, at first, this had not been deliberate. He had been in shock, and all he had wanted was to hide what had happened from Angel as well as from himself. So he’d run. Then the unspoken lie had taken on a life of its own, and he was living it here and now… with Angel: Angel now treating him as he’d wanted to be treated for ten decades, but never had… Angel being the companion he had once been for such a short time of bright delight that Spike now remembered it almost with bitterness for the unfulfilled expectations it had birthed.  All this, given life on one huge lie of omission and silence. Guilt ate at him.

His frightening new love for Angel had not changed. Angel was now exactly the man he wanted to love. It would be so simple to lean forward and cup Angel’s face in his hands and press their mouths together. Angel would respond to the kiss. He knew this. Out of guilt, out of confusion, Angel would respond, and then this response would turn into something more. Something better for both of them.

Only now, he couldn’t. Now the lie lay heavy and squalid between them. He didn’t deserve anything from Angel but disdain, and the irony—that he finally deserved Angel’s hatred just as this hatred was finally over—kept him silent and sad for the rest of the trip. He pretended to be drunk just as effectively as he pretended everything else in his damned life. Damned. For what he had done, he was surely damned now. In his over-active imagination, the faint smell of jet fuel became the sulphurous gasses of hell.

* * * * * * *

In a small, private jet, they were able to land at Galway. A jeep with vampire-safe glass, courtesy of the Dublin branch of the firm, was waiting for them as they stepped out of the tiny terminal in the pre-dawn soft light.

Angel slid behind the driver’s seat and stared ahead for a moment, deep in thought.

Spike watched the familiar profile and asked a question he’d always wanted to ask. ‘How come you’ve never been back?’

Angel turned, and they held each other’s gaze for a moment. ‘If you’d asked me that before all this started, I’d have said because there was nothing here for me anymore. Now? I’m not so sure. Maybe there’s too much.’

Spike closed his eyes for a moment then opened them and nodded. ‘Okay, let’s go find out what.’

Angel smiled and then with a small frown of wonder put his fingers to Spike’s cheek. ‘You… still with me here?’

Spike’s heart ached with the need to confess.

‘What, Spike? Tell me…?’

‘Nothing.’ He turned to stare out of the side window. Angel’s hand hovered for a moment and was then withdrawn. With a twitch of his jaw, Spike added, ‘Light’s comin’; let’s find that hotel.’

Angel watched him for a moment longer, unconsciously rubbing his fingers where they had touched the cool face, then he nodded and turned his attention to the unfamiliar vehicle.

* * * * * * *

Dawn rose over a landscape that had not changed since Angel’s last sojourn to its barren mystery. He drove with one hand on the wheel, careless on the empty, straight road, staring out at the windswept moors, deep in his own thoughts.

‘You’re remembering.’

The soft comment pulled his attention back to his companion, and he nodded. ‘But later. When I was older.’

‘Good memories?’

Angel laughed. ‘I’m not sure I’d know what one of those was.’

Thinking he’d replied too harshly or too cynically or just too not something he now wanted to be with Spike—for whatever confusing reason that was—Angel was about to moderate his reply, when Spike asked wistfully, ‘Do you think that’s why we become… vampires?’

‘Huh? We don’t become. We’re… done unto—as you never cease to remind me.’

‘Yeah, but what makes one person more susceptible to that than another?’

‘Susceptible?’

‘Well, yeah, it’s like lightning: some people are just susceptible to getting hit.’

Angel chuckled. ‘Are you likening me to lightning in your life?’

At the subtle, flirtatious tone, Spike seemed to visibly shrivel, and Angel immediately said, ‘Sorry,’ which didn’t help the situation at all, so they stayed silent by mutual agreement until they reached the hotel.

It was the first time that they really took in they were no longer in America. No recreation of the “old country” could have achieved what was natural within this small hotel. Angel ran his hand over a balustrade that had been supporting hands when his were still human. He walked on flagstones that might have once borne his human steps. He took adjoining suites, hefted his bag and followed Spike up the dark, almost oppressive staircase.

* * * * * *

They were glad to part for a while, to secure their own rooms against light, to find some space from the intense emotions that they had brought to this old country. But like moths, drawn back to a flame of habit, within an hour, Angel knocked on the adjoining door, and Spike let him in, chucking him a beer from the mini bar.

‘It’s kinda early.’

‘It’s bedtime for us.’

They both made wry faces and moved swiftly on from this unfortunate comment. ‘So… where was this school of yours?’

‘Few miles west of here.’

‘Can you go any further west without fallin’ off?’

Angel smiled. ‘I could hear the ocean sometimes on quiet nights.’

It was on the tip of Spike’s tongue to make a comment about conveniently selective memory, but he let it go. He was acutely aware of the close proximity of the place now and feared plummeting back into the dream. Talking about it as well wouldn’t help.

He sat on the end of his large, comfortable bed and opened his beer. Angel sat on one of the easy chairs and looked at his watch. ‘I’m still on our time. Wesley might be at work.’

Spike snorted as if there were no question about this. While Angel checked in and updated his friend on the situation, Spike flicked channels on the TV, clearly disgusted by what was on offer on two terrestrial channels in the west of Ireland at six in the morning.

When this was done, they could sense the light behind the drapes and knew it was time for them to separate and sleep. Spike suddenly seemed fascinated in an Open University, black and white programme on wave creation in the southern Pacific. Angel was engrossed in the “This is Galway” information pack that had been out on the table. They could hear the tick of a clock somewhere in the room. A car went past. Spike made to light a cigarette then seemed to think better of it. Reluctantly, he turned off the television. ‘Well, I’d better crash….’

Angel nodded and rose, seemed about to say something, but obviously thought better of it and went back through the adjoining door.

He did not, Spike noticed, close it fully.

It was then like an itch he could not scratch. He wanted to close it; he wanted to open it more. Either, he knew, would say more about them than it would about the position of a door.

He tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Before his latest visit to the dream world he would have taken his courage in his hands and gone through the door to whatever lay for him on the other side. But now, he didn’t deserve what that might be. This new Angel (who now seemed to need no fond imagination from him to conjure) had grown from a lie. Whatever developed between them, based on a lie, would—.

Spike jerked to sitting. Angel stood in the doorway between their rooms, bare chest pale and smooth in the muted light. They stared at each for a moment, then Spike twitched the corner of the bedclothes down.

Angel slid in alongside him. They curled into each other. One hundred years slid away as if they had not existed, and in this animal warmth and protection they slept more soundly than they had in all those intervening years.

Chapter 7

Spike woke and guilt rose upon him like vomit might after a night of drunkenness. He could not hold it back, and it broke forth in a cry of pain.

Before he could quiet or leave the bed, he began to cry.

Angel woke still sleepy, confused.

Spike almost slipped out of his embrace—almost but not quite. He wasn’t quick enough, and Angel seized him, asking wildly, ‘What? For Christ’s sake, Spike! What?’

When he felt the depth of Spike’s pain, saw the anguish in his face, he added