| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
Home | Gallery | Spike/Angel | Spike/Giles/Angel | Spike/Giles | Spike/Wesley/Angel | Buttons | Poems

Remember Me - Chapter 17

This is the best it has ever been.

Being with him touches me, more than I can say.

But can I just say this too…I HATE this place!

The idea of a holiday was abhorrent from the outset. Despite being physically and mentally exhausted, I just felt it was the wrong time to leave my…duties. I had told the Powers that I didn’t need a reward: that I wanted to continue saving people. I had just been granted this great gift…Spike, so the last thing I wanted to do was leave LA. But Spike's safely was threatened, so I agreed.

I had no idea he would bring me here. And I admit; being here in this place with him is incredible.

All those long weeks ago when he came to me in Los Angeles - when he was brought to me in Los Angeles - all those weeks ago, this was the place I remembered. This is where, thrusting into Darla then Dru, I had put my hand up to feel their soft, cold skin and had felt Spike instead. That touch was to start me on the long journey to where I am now. But nothing, nothing could have prepared me for just how good being with Spike was going to be.

I love him.

I love the way he thinks, I love his company, I love his body.

I tried to tell him that today. I think he got it. I think he understood me. I played a game with him. I'd played it before, but for once it was me that remembered, not him. I had found him beaten and scared and my evil, demon heart had wept for him. I knew why Darla had done it. I knew she abhorred my love for him. But I was scared to tell him, scared that in his pain and humiliation he would mock me. I just wanted him to admit he wanted me. But he didn’t. He just didn’t get it. But I tried it again today and this time I think he got it. I think he intuitively understood that there are no rules to what we have. We are dead. We are demons. I have a soul: he is chipped. We are insubstantial tricks of light. No ordinary rules for human love can apply to us. There is only belief in each other. There is only trust and conviction that there is just…us.

He seems so at home here. I am afraid. I'm afraid he wants to stay. And I can't do that. Even without my promise to the Powers, I just can't live…here. It's not me anymore. I seem to have left this further behind than he has. Perhaps he's just more adaptable than I am. Perhaps he has fewer needs. I don't know what I will do if he wants to stay. It will destroy me.

It's our third day here…I think. To be honest, I've rather lost track of the days. We have no routine and day seems to be night in this place. But after I got him to admit that he loved me I slept the literal sleep of the dead.

It's late morning now and the bed is empty. I hate waking up now to find myself alone. A hundred years of loneliness have been replaced by a few weeks of Spike's companionship and I am now beyond help. I stretch into the almost warm spot he has left. The fire has gone out and the room is incredibly cold. There's been a howling gale around the house all night and now a cold, steady rain beats against the window.

Hideous, hideous country. There's never any hot water. Everything's too small for me, if I've banged my head once on the beams in this room; I've done it a hundred times. There's nothing open for night dwellers. No shops, nowhere to get money. It's appalling.

But I'd never tell Spike that. It would break his dead heart. I can't wait to get back to LA. I can't wait to get back to the warmth, to proper plumbing, to modern conveniences, to the dry. To dry cleaners. Christ knows how I'm going to get my stuff clean here and I've only brought two bags for a whole week. I've worn everything already. It's a nightmare. I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep. Perhaps I can sleep away the rest of this holiday, or at least, spend it in bed. With Spike of course. No sleep then. Just the bed bit.

The door suddenly flings open and Spike comes in dripping wet but elated by something.

'Jesus, you lazy fuck, Angel. Get up. I thought you'd be up and showered and dressed. You've missed the hot water now. I've asked; it goes off at nine. So you're buggered, Mate. Still, won't matter, where we're going. Put your warm stuff on…come on…up and at 'em.'

'What the hell are you talking about Spike. It's mid-morning. We can't go out!'

'Bollocks. We've been through this before. Look out of the window. No sun. So get up. I want to show you something. I want to show you why we are here.'

'No. It's too cold. It's raining. Come back to bed.'

'If you don't get up now, I'm not getting up tonight. If you get my meaning.'

'You wouldn't.'

'Try me.'

'I hate you.'

'Yeah, yeah, heard it before. Now get up. I'll wait for you downstairs. Ten minutes. That's all I'll wait.'

Ten minutes! It takes that long to get my hair right. This absolutely intolerable. But I submit. The thought of not having Spike in my bed…all right, in me…is too awful to contemplate. But ten minutes!

I make it in fifteen, which is the best I can do. He gives me a long, slow look from head to toe. Disdain is evident in his features.

'I said warm, Angel.'

'This is my warm stuff.' I'm wearing a cashmere shirt, my long coat and wool pants. That and my leather shoes is the best I've got.

'Fine. You've been warned. Come on then.'

He's only in his habitual jeans, shirt and duster, so I can't see what the problem is. I follow him anxiously out into the mid-morning gloom. I will never get used to this. This is just not right. Vampires should be inside during the day. I don't remember going out before. Angelus had more sense I guess. I think I'll start a campaign to bring back coffins. Yeah, Vampires securely in coffins during the day.

'Stop brooding! This is not an attendance only excursion.'

'Where are we going?'

He stops, looks at me, turns his head and says gleefully, 'Up there.'

Oh, my, God. No!

In the distant gloom I can see the high moors that dominate this whole area. Bleak, freezing, wet, empty, moorland.

'Why for God's sake? What's up there?'

'Wait and see.'

'No Spike, I'm not going up there. It’s miles away, it's all uphill. I'm soaking wet already, I'm freezing…Spike…come back!'

Fuck.

I trudge after him muttering curses…wishing him more dead than he already is. He is almost flying with energy and enthusiasm for this place. His coat billows out behind him and he leaps from rock to rock.

We've only been climbing for half and hour when my foot sinks into the edge of a bog. I lose my shoe and in retrieving it, lose the other. I sink almost to my knees in the mud.

'I couldn’t hate you more at this moment Spike.'

'Oh come on, lighten up Mate. Look around you. Look at the moors. Breathe the…oh, you don't. Well you could, you know. You can breathe if you want to.'

'I am a Vampire Spike.' I never thought I'd be reduced to using that as an excuse. 'I don’t go out during the day, I don't climb hills, I don’t breathe, I don’t want to ponce around in billowing coats on the moors. This is not a fucking recreation of Wuthering Heights.'

'Wrong moors, Pet.'

Spike! I don’t fucking care.'

'He was a Vampire you know.'

I'm trailing behind him now, my feet freezing in my soaking shoes: he still leaps from rock to rock seemingly inexhaustible. It's raining so hard I almost lose sight of him.

'What fucking version of the book did you read?'

He suddenly appears along side me that intensely irritating grin on his face. I'm actually beginning to wonder if I should just give up on having him inside me ever again, and just go back to the hotel. 'It's obvious, Angel. Anyone can see that.'

'You are delusional.'

'Who could unquiet lie, in that quiet earth? Obvious. Only a Vampire would have that said about him. And what about the sudden acquisition of money…no explanation and oh, remember the torturing of puppies! I seem to remember another Vampire who liked nailing puppies…'

'Shut up, Spike. I'll nail something more substantial if we ever get off this bloody moor.'

'You'll have to catch me first then, Pet,' and he scampers off like a hyperactive child.

Eventually I reach the outcrop of rocks he was heading for. I find a sheltered nook and huddle down, determined to hate every minute of being up here.

'Come up to the top Angel.'

'Sod off.'

'Now come on, you're beginning to sound like me again. You can do better than that Angel. Come on, you wuss, it's only a few feet more.'

'I don't like climbing. I'm cold. I'm hungry and I'm sick to death of you.'

'Spoil sport.'

'I do not believe I gave up the chance to be human, for you.'

Well that silenced him. I give an evil, quiet grin to myself. He suddenly appears alongside me, sitting close as if he needs shelter himself.

'What did you just say, Angel?'

I look him straight in the eye. 'Before we left LA, I went to the Powers That Be and asked them to revoke my reward. I'm not going to become human now. Ever.'

'Why?'

His hair is dripping down, flattened and soft. His eyes are incredibly blue, brilliant in all this gloom. If he could only see himself, he would know why I did it. He is beautiful and I desire him beyond my ability to express it. Even if I do hate him as well at this very minute. But I can hate him and love him at the same time. As I said, no human rules apply to us. I take his face gently in my hands. 'Didn't seem so much of a reward.'

'Oh. So what are you going to get instead?'

'I've got it. It's you. They gave me, you.'

'Crap deal then!'

'Yeah, that's what I've been thinking for last three hours…ow!'

I kiss him deeply, almost reverently. And up on this Tor, in this freezing, wet, evil weather, I tell him the story of my vision and how I saw him turn to dust beneath me. How I…killed him. It is a long story and we are both shivering by the end.

We sit in silence for a while. I can mentally hear the cogs in his brain churning over this information. 'So that's why you were all over me when I came home with Wes. Hey! That's why you accepted my explanation of that fucking photo so quickly. And hey! What do you mean, you cut my fucking head off!'

'I didn't actually. Actually I spent all night making love to you.'

'Oh, yeah.'

'And do you really ever think things through before you do 'em? You've given up so much; fuck, Angel…the chance to be human. It's all you wanted. Do you really…love me that much?'

A long kiss seems to satisfy him because he suddenly leaps up and starts scrambling and leaping over the rocks towards the top of the Tor again, shouting and singing off-key, in a falsetto voice. Bizarre Childe.

I watch him for a while huddled in the lee of the rock. I'm trying picture what warmth is. The wind has changed direction and is now blowing from the North. The steady rain has now turned to sleet. Horizontal sleet.

'Spike! Time to go.' But there's no sight of him at all.

I hear a slight noise and look up. Just for an instant I think I've seen some sort of moorland spirit, but on closer inspection it is a tiny, elderly woman securely wrapped from head to toe in waterproof clothing. She's carrying a large stick and has a huge backpack weighing her down.

She looks at me with equal astonishment.

She slowly takes in my city shoes, caked with mud and clearly soaked, my lightweight designer clothing and my extremely pale face. She spends a long time looking at my pale face.

'Are you quite all right?' I translate this as a polite way of her asking if I am fucking mad. 'You are lost.' This is a statement, not a question.

'Err…no, actually I'm not. Strange as that may seem. I know where I am.'

'Ahh, American.' And that clearly, in her mind, explains everything.

'You are not really dressed for the weather or the moors are you? I really think I should accompany you down.' She must have been all of seventy, about five foot nothing and she was offering to accompany this eternal, Master Vampire down the hill. I've been brought low.

'You look very cold. I've some tea in my thermos, would you like some?'

'Err…no, that is very kind of you, but we're going down soon…my friend wanted to see the…' what the hell did Spike want to see up here?

'I gather your companion is the other young man, unsuitably dressed, prancing around on the top. Singing.'

Wait till I tell Spike he was prancing! 'Yes, did you meet him?' I pray he did not speak to her. He's like a fire-and-forget missile sometimes, open mouth, let loose.

'Oh yes!' A slight grin. 'I think I startled him rather.'

'Hum. He's acting out scenes from Wuthering Heights. Probably thought you were a moorland spirit.'

'Wrong moors, dear. But that explains it…American actors…now I understand it all.' That 'all' took in the hair, the clothes, the ludicrous situation, everything.

'Well, if you are sure you are both all right, I'll be on my way. I want to get to Okehampton before dark. Nice to have met you…goodbye.'

'Bye.' Please take me with you and adopt me and put me in front of a fire and feed me.

She gave me one last look and trudged off.

'Spike!'

'What?' If my heart could stop, it would. He just materialized out of nowhere.

'Down! Now!'

'But you haven't seen it yet…come on Angelus.' He grasps my hand and pulls me to the top. He called me Angelus. This must be important. He never makes that mistake now. Just as I never call him, Will. It's not who we are now.

We get to the top. The wind is almost impossible to stand against. But the sleet has stopped. I glance nervously at the sky. There seem to be patches in the deep, somber cloud. 'Spike. Look. There are holes…in the cloud. This is serious.'

'I know. Fabulous isn't it?'

'What?'

'Look.'

He turns me around so I am facing the panorama of the moors in front of us. He slips his arms under my coat and wraps them securely around me against the wind and rests his chin on my shoulder so he can talk comfortably above its howling.

'Look.'

So I do. A beam of sunlight comes out from the cloud. It looks like a finger of God touching the land. It's miles from us, but even so, I feel a shiver of dread run down my spine. But, oh, I see what he means. It is beautiful. The whole ground is a light purple from the Heather. There are patches of mossy green, the whole, blending like a watercolour up to the steel gray sky. The granite rocks glisten like pools of sliver. I look harder. This reminds me of something. I close my eyes and try to bring the memory to the surface. I see these colours around me, but not here. Somewhere else, recently.

'Like it, Luv?'

I turn my head slightly so I am inches from his face. He is looking with a sad longing over the scene and it comes to me.

This is his basement. He has recreated this place thousands of miles away in a distant, foreign, sunny land. I never realized he was homesick. I never saw it. He's brought me all this way, brought me up this godforsaken hill to try and tell me something.

My borrowed blood runs cold in my veins. He is leaving me. He misses this. That's what he's brought me up here to tell me.

'Good, isn't it? Angel? Don't you see it? It's my place.'

'I know. You miss it don't you?'

'What, this? This fucking freezing country where it's always raining? Nah…don’t miss it at all, I've got the best bits in my basement. That's much better, just the colours without the rain, without the cold.'

'I thought you were trying to tell me you were staying…here.' If there is a catch in my voice, it's only the cold.

'Hah! You wuss! I am never going to let you forget that! Me! Here! No cable! No cold beer! No junk food! No nights hot enough to unfreeze even your sorry ass! Come off it, Mate. I'm not that stupid. Nah…I just wanted you to see it for yourself.'

'What Spike? What am I supposed to be getting from this hideous experience?'

‘This is where I came, Luv, the day afterwards. After you’d touched me and kissed me, I got up and came up here. I didn’t ask permission, I knew you wouldn’t have let me out during the day. Angelus was just as anal as you really. But I did. I came up here and I saw this. So this was in me mind as I was...shit, I’m gonna sound like the biggest poof in England, but I’m gonna say it anyway...as I was falling in love with you. This is what I saw. Just as it is now. And I’ve carried that memory in me head all these years. Carried you, and the feel of you in me head too.’

‘I thought you were pining on an airfield somewhere.’ He slaps me playfully on the belly.

‘That was metaphorical pining. This is real. I came up here and thought you loved me...’

‘I did...’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t know that…did I?’

We both stand looking over at the view. I admit I was glancing nervously at the sky too.

‘Angel...’

‘Um?’

‘You know the leather?’

God, how his mind jumps around. ‘Yes, I know the leather...what about it?’

‘It was a fantasy wasn’t it and I did it for you.’

I don’t like the way this conversation is going or the slightly seductive tone to his voice.

‘Yes...’

‘Well I want one now. Here on this bleeding rock. Where I came hopelessly a hundred fucking years ago. I wanted you then and couldn’t have you. All I could think about was how you kissed me and how much I wanted you inside me. Now I can have you. Please Angel.’

Has he really brought me all the way to England, all the way to this pile of rocks for me to shag him in a howling wind? That’s what this holiday has all been about? My head says, NO! It says it’s freezing. But my heart can’t deny him. Wherever my love for Spike resides in this demon-infested, dead body, it says...do this for him.

I take his hands in mine and place them over my cock. ‘Okay.’

I feel him smile into my ear. He undoes my pants, eases them down just enough to get me out. He takes me in his hand. I look down.

He peers over my shoulder.

‘Oh.’

‘Okay...maybe another fantasy then, Luv. Later. Tonight!’

‘Looking forward to getting back to LA now, Spike?’

‘Oh yeah!’

So he tucks my tiny, shriveled cock away for me and we make our way thoughtfully down the hill.

‘Must have been the cold.’

‘Oh, yeah, right, Pet. Just the cold. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Oh, I’m not. It was cold up there.’

‘Hey, Pet, we’re room temperature creatures. It was probably below freezing, so no wonder. Totally understandable.’

‘Are you laughing?’

‘Hardly Angel. That would be insensitive of me. I mean, I only waited for a hundred years...’ He runs off gleefully into the dark.

Fortunately I can pick up his scent and follow him, even in the dark that has now overtaken us. We’ve been out nearly eight hours. I’m so tired and cold I can’t even brood anymore. So I follow Spike disconsolately down the hill.

Following him, would have been a good plan if he had known where he was going.

Four hours later we make our way through the lodge gates and up the gravel drive to the main door. The night porter lets us in. I’m sure he’s seen stranger sights but I can’t imagine how. I feel completely...flat. Drenched. Evil. Spike is oddly quiet and abashed. I didn’t shout that loud when we got lost. I only vamped out for a few moments. I only punched him once.

I thought, given the circumstances, I’d been quite restrained.

The porter wishes us a good night and nods at Spike that all the requests for the room have been done.

I forgive him the minute I walk in. In our absence, they’d stoked the fire regularly so the room is almost sub-tropical in temperature. He looks at me and gives a faint shrug. ‘I thought we might be cold.’

I heat up six bags of blood while he strips out of his wet stuff. While he drinks, I do the same.

‘See you’ve recovered then, Pet,’ he says amiably, nodding towards my cock.

‘Physically maybe. I’ll have mental scars for days.’

‘Ahh, poor Angel. Do you need your ego stroking a little then?’

‘Not my ego Spike...this.’

So we kneel face to face in the firelight. His long, supple fingers warming themselves on my cock.

I put my hands to his hair and pull him into a deep kiss.

‘How good at pretending are you Spike...imagine we are on those bloody rocks again...?’

So, in our imaginations, he took me on top of his precious English rocks. As his aching cock pushed past my ring of tight muscle, I swear I could feel again the rain on my face. As he set up a deep, intimate rhythm in my body, his groans mingled with the howling of the wind. When his cold cum erupted in my bowels and I felt a high, almost painful orgasm, it was his colours I saw exploding behind my eyes.

We lay sated and luxurious in front of the fire. We didn’t know it then, but that was to be our last daytime excursion of the holiday. When we woke in the morning, it was to a strange light coming in through the drawn curtains. Spike slipped out of bed and cautiously opened a crack, peering out.

‘Hey! Come look Angel.’

It was a brilliant, clear day, not a cloud in the sky. But the really amazing thing was that the whole place was covered in a foot of deep, pure, snow.

‘Can’t go out now then.’ Please agree, Spike!

‘Guess not.’

‘Wonder what we’ll do then. For the rest of the holiday?’

‘Yeah...I wonder.’ An evil grin. ‘You or me?’

‘Oh...let’s start with you and see shall we? I’m feeling energetic.’

There is only so much you can do in a hotel. Some of our more ‘energetic’ activities had to be curbed. So we became inventive instead. We found ourselves sharing fantasies and desires that had lain repressed for decades. Once we had begun, there was no holding back. I discovered more about Spike in those last three days, and he about me, than possibly a lifetime in LA would have allowed us to do.

We talked for hours. We kissed for longer. We made love as many times as even our Vampiric strength would allow.

We shared our blood in intimate ways beyond the Lore of the Sire and Childe bond. We broke all the rules that holiday, human and Vampire. We felt ourselves to be completely free of restrictions and inhibitions.

It was a very good time.

But in the end, were we both glad to get home. It actually felt like coming home for both of us.

The arson attacks had been mysteriously solved in our absence. Wesley told me they had someone responsible. If he looked as though he knew more than he was telling me, I didn’t ask, I was just glad Spike was off the hook.

Because that meant he could be with me constantly. It meant he could come out on all my cases, be with me when I was working. Help if he wanted to. And now, he seemed to want to. Perhaps he just didn’t want to leave my side either. We always seemed to know what the other was thinking.

I know Cordelia and Wesley both noticed the difference between us. Spike was easily accepted and the four of us became tightly bound together in our work. If I worked even harder to prove my commitment to the Powers and, in some way, to thank them for their gift...well, Spike was there fighting alongside me, so I didn’t mind. Of course, we both believed in the work hard, play hard, motto, so life away from work was fun too. Although Spike finally found out what it was like to have an insatiable demon lover wanting you after a long day of fighting other demons. I even saw him...tired, once or twice. It was funny.

We spent most of our time at his place. I’d gotten kind of fond of the high-tech gadgets. I saw them with completely new eyes. We spent a lot of time showering for some reason, both of us never losing the delight of turning on the tap and finding...water! Hot water. Hot, powerful, water. And of course, what can I say? I just wanted those colours around me all the time. I wanted to be loved on the Wild Heather. I wanted to take him against those granite rocks again and again. That he had recreated that place, here in LA, made me hard every time I thought about it. Hell, what can I say, Spike made me hard every time I saw him.

He indulged my fantasies about him too. Leather became quite a feature of his wardrobe. He wore it to work: he wore it at home. He never let the others see that he knew the effect it had on me. But I knew, he knew. I knew he was smiling to himself when his muscles moved, sleek and hard under the material as he fought. I knew, he knew the effect his thighs alongside me in the car had on me. How I kept my hands off him sometimes was a mystery to both of us, but we enjoyed talking about it at night when we were alone.

It was not all a one-way thing either. I became as bad as him sometimes. I had never realised quite how much Spike had looked up to me and respected me. I always thought he hated and derided me. But he had confessed that that was just his way of defending himself against the pain of my rejection. So I swear I found myself becoming deliberately...heroic, on occasions. It would have embarrassed me if I hadn’t have known the reaction I was having on Spike. I almost caught him hopping from foot to foot after one rescue so desperate was he to get me alone and...God I hate using his terminology, but in this case, it seems appropriate...get me alone and shag me.

We couldn’t have been closer. When I wasn’t with him I thought about him. When I was with him I bathed in him. I opened myself up to him in ways I never thought I could. I confided in him and relied on him and he was always there for me.

I never once regretted the decision I had made to lose my reward. A brief flash of humanity, or an eternity with Spike?

Not much of a contest.

That is, of course, if we got to have our eternity. I think the Powers That Be have a warped sense of humour sometimes. Doesn’t matter how much I tried to make up for my ingratitude, how much I tried to prove that I was committed to the good fight, in the end it seemed as if it was all going to be for nothing.

Maybe they thought it was funny.

I think maybe they are just cruel.

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
Home | Gallery | Spike/Angel | Spike/Giles/Angel | Spike/Giles | Spike/Wesley/Angel | Buttons | Poems