Fic for femmenerd; You Made Me Forget Myself; Spike/Angel
The final part of the post-NFASpangel fic. This one opens back in Rome. Just a reminder in case you're squicked. This is the NC-17 section (although hello? it's me ;) so it's not that NC-17)
Title: You Made Me Forget Myself (You’re Going to Reap Just What You Sow)
Author: lillianmorgan
Setting: post-Not Fade Away
Rating: Herein lies the NC-17, m/m sex
Pairing: Spike/Angel (plus Buffy pops up once or twice so you get the inevitable discussion of the other two pairings)
Disclaimer: I don’t own Joss’ and ME’s toys.
A/N: Thanks once again to yourlibrarian who juggled all sorts of miracles to get this beta-ed and back to me ::hugs::
Written for femmenerd who asked for this:
I do like me some comforty (no real hurt, just comfort and reconciliation) Spangel when Spike tops at long last (flip flopping the power dynamics from the days of Spangelus past). But, y'know...
Part One is here and Part Two is here.
You Made Me Forget Myself (You’re Going to Reap Just What You Sow)
Part Three
“They sin who tell that love can die.” From ‘Love Cannot Die’ by Robert Southey
It was not anything like avoiding Spike. It was merely that wherever Spike was, Angel made sure he absolutely was not. There was a difference, understated, but precise.
So it was weeks after Spike’s prodigal return that late one night as Angel contemplated and double checked a translation one of Giles’ lackeys had given him, that Spike was able to surprise him. How long he’d been lurking on the other side of the doorway it was difficult to say, but what was undeniable was the point at which the lurking bored him and he cried out very loudly, “Bloody Hell!”
“Spike?” Angel asked quietly, not lifting his eyes from the translation. He didn’t need superhuman senses to discern the highly toxic smell of spirits that reeled off the vampire as he entered the room.
“You are sincerely the most boring git I have ever had the misfortune to meet. How can you sit still for so long?” And just to prove his point, his feet zigzagged across the carpet towards Angel’s desk.
“You just have a short attention span,” countered Angel, still not favouring him with his gaze. Spike collapsed in the seat opposite him.
“Bollocks!” Spike shouted, lifting the bottle of Jack Daniels to his mouth and taking a prolonged swig from it. The kind that never needed a breath in between. Lowering the bottle, he peered at Angel through it. “You’re just jealous, ‘s all.” Of what, he didn’t say. Perhaps it was implicit.
“Where’s Buffy?” Angel asked, turning the page.
“It’s over, mate.”
“Again?”
“Final this time. Can’t put up with the little harridan’s whining commands day and night and night and day. ‘Spike take me to Florence! Spike quit smoking! Spike jump this high! Spike shake it all about!’” He shook his head in aggravation. “Had it up to here, mate.” And he jabbed his index finger into his neck.
Angel snorted. “Never could say no, could you?”
“Not a matter of that,” said Spike, standing but swaying slightly. “Come on. Let’s get slaughtered.”
Angel shook his head imperceptibly. “Can’t,” he muttered.
“Won’t, more like,” Spike insisted. “Come on. Everything can be solved once you reach the bottom of a bottle.”
“Can it?” asked Angel, raising head, finally, to glare at Spike.
“Yes,” Spike countered forcefully, “it can.” He nodded, then smirked deviously. “Or it can get you at least close to approximatin’.”
Angel couldn’t help but smile at Spike’s wit. He’d always been a sexy drunk.
“Ah-ah-ah. You’re waverin’. Can see it in your eyes. Come on,” he wheedled, leaning over the desk so his mouth was an inch from Angel’s. Staring at Angel’s lips, Spike continued, “I’ll make it worth your while.”
Frustrated by the stupid human reaction of his increased heart beat and his flushing cheeks (not to mention other dangerous developments), Angel pushed his chair away from the desk. Spike glided across the desk and leapt on him, lifting him up. “That’s the spirit, mate. Know this great little bar, just ‘round the corner.”
If Spike had been a Leicester Square Rent Boy in a previous life, and perhaps it was only Angel that had any perception that that wasn’t really possible, he certainly could do a top class impression of one now. Angel endured and suffered through a performance, stellar, inviting and degrading, that masqueraded as their evening -out- solving- his- problems- with- the- addition- of- alcohol.
As they both sat at the bar, or, rather Spike leaned off it, a collection of too many tall and empty beer glasses before them, Spike shimmied, tongue-wagged and wiggled his ass at every beautiful Roman boy that walked by. He chatted them up, marvelled at their perfect beard shaping, their diamond jewels adorning their ears, their gaudy belts, glasses, shirts that lead to fingers playing and messing with tamed chest hair. Some took an interest in Angel, but it was the conspicuous consumptive power of Spike’s radar hairstyle, clothes and willingness to exhibit his ostentatious desire and sex appeal that usually won them over.
“All my problems solved, eh?” Angel pondered to the bar, as he shook the dregs of his latest beer at the bottom of his glass. He stood up, and no the floor wasn’t about to meet him graciously on the invite. He swayed, reached for his coat, which had somehow found a home on the floor in a puddle of beer, and turned for the exit.
Spike chose this moment to listen to him, and called after him, “If not the beer, then Carlo’s fine-looking arsehole might also help.” And for good measure Spike whacked his new toy’s ass, as it wiggled about all over his lap.
“I’ve got no tolerance for this,” Angel thought, out loud or not he wasn’t sure. He took another step toward the door, with the helpful green sign above it saying ‘Esito’. However, the next step was haltered, when he saw Spike’s murderous glance waver in front of his eyes, perhaps the comment hadn’t stayed in his head.
“Are you blind, you stupid silly sod?” Spike growled, standing and tossing the rather unfortunate Carlo to the floor. “Can’t you see there’s only one person in the whole fucking room I’d rather see the inside of their arsehole?”
Angel raised his eyebrow. Was a bit tricky when he was drunk, and knowing his limits was even trickier. The room had hushed, they probably had an audience. His answer was another sway.
“Cold as fucking ice you are you great big pillock. Here I am whorin’ myself out to every bloke in the place and all I want to do is set my lips on yours, getting to suckin’ your prick so it doesn’t want to leave my mouth and -”
“Wait,” objected Angel. “Huh?”
“Oh Jesus…” Spike cried. He turned then and aimed a mutinous kick at a poor, unsuspecting high chair.
As he swung around, balling his fist so that his silver rings caught Angel’s eye, glinting and winking at him, Angel got an idea. He took a small, step then sort of fell on top of Spike, lips mashing together, tongues diving, heat exploding.
The rest was a blur of tangled limbs, walking together joined by lips, tripping and running as fast as they could, hands reaching for clothes, fingers running through hair and over asses, teeth nipping at sensitive skin, periods of separation as Angel found his house key and then they were in; inside the flat and inside each other.
Couldn’t shut Spike up though. “Fucking hell, Angelus, can’t wait to see what it’s like to fuck when you’re all hot and sweating for me. Jesus want to lick you all over, know that? Taste how sweet you’ll be when you’re quaverin’ for me, wantin’ to come but you can’t because -”
“Get on the fucking bed,” ordered Angel, “and take all your clothes off.”
“Hey!” exploded Spike, “I’m the fucking vampire here. I control the shots, yeah. I can have you, mate. So quit with the commands and get your own fucking clothes off.”
Angel cocked his head at an angle, looking Spike up and down as he huffed with haughtiness beside him. “Is that what you want, Spike? To feel the power? Guess you can, now you’ve got the upper hand. Am I all yours now?”
Spike wasn’t a dog, but he knew how to beg. His eyes glittered at the gauntlet Angel had laid out before him, hips faintly pushing forward in anticipation. Slowly, he peeled his belt off, and cracked it against his thigh with a sharp smack.
Angel jumped at the noise, his nerves skittering as he watched Spike stalk toward him, running the leather down his right arm, skidding lightly across his shoulder, then scraping harder down his left arm. “I just want you, Angel. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Makes no difference if you’re on your knees, your belly or your legs sky high. I wanna feel … wait,” Spike tilted his head and sniffed along Angel’s neck. “Are you nervous?”
“No, I’m…”
“Hello?” Spike singsonged, banging his hand to his chest, “vampire here. Can smell your glands on hyperload. Lots of lust, which is oh so obvious, but quite a bit of fear too. Come tell Spikey,” he said spreading himself over the nearest chair and patting his lap, “all about it.”
“There’s no need to rub it in,” Angel ground out, and felt his cock shrink uncontrollably.
“No need to rub what in?” Spike asked, but from the hard look in his eyes he knew exactly what Angel was talking about.
They exchanged brutal stares for an unmitigated period of time, ‘til Spike the first to be overcome by the tension, released a loud, aggressive huff. “Listen, ponce. You got it. You got to be the real boy, the poster boy for the PtB. All I’m asking is for this one little treat. Is it too much to ask?”
“I’m … it’s … complicated.”
“Bloody Hell! It’s always fucking complicated. Story of my bleedin’ life, just about to get the shag of a century and the other one gets cold feet. Or starts talking her mouth off about Paris. Or communes with the pixies.”
Angel felt the humour mellow his anger. “Tough time eh?”
“You always got what you want.”
“Not for the last century I didn’t.”
“Poor diddums. And here I am offerin’ again, and you’re passin’ me up.”
“It’s not that. I’m not fucking passing you up. I want to. Only…” Angel paused and clenched his jaw, and looked at the floor, ineloquence subsuming his feelings.
“You still got all the same working parts as before?”
“Yes, but - ”
“Well,” Spike said, running his index finger from the tip of his tongue down his chest to his jean buttons, then slowly popping them open, “have at it.”
“I’m afraid,” Angel countered. “This body … it breaks eaiser. The hurts take longer to heal. I can feel my mortality every time I bang my leg on the corner of a table. I’m limited now.”
Spike’s eyes glittered. Angel could usually tell the difference between straight lust and love but the distance between them in time or pummelling hearts, made it impossible for him to discern exactly what Spike was thinking.
“Sire,” Spike said, his voice dropping to a lustrous consistency which promised seduction, “I wanna fuck you. I won’t hurt you. I love you. With all my demon and all my soul. And it makes absolutely no difference to me if you heart beats or it doesn’t. In fact, it excites me. Wanna know what it feels like to run my tongue along your skin, and feel the heat rise off you. Envelop me. Fucking warm me.” He ran his tongue over lips. “I love you.”
“You always did, didn’t you? Even when I showed you nothing but pain, you offered me back your heart,” Angel said, then concluded, a gruffness invading his voice, “Then I’d kick it some more.”
“Just your way. Your vampire way. Know we felt a different sort of love, but we know devotion, loyalty, lust,” Spike suggested, sotto voce. “Know separation too.”
“It was a long time to be apart,” Angel nodded. “Too long. I forgot you and I forgot me when we were in L.A. But then you reminded me, and I learned to care for you all over again.”
Spike kicked his boot heel into his chair.
“You know,” Angel began, “when I left it wasn’t about you.”
“Never was about me, was it?”
Angel grimaced. “That’s not what I meant. When I left, it was the soul eating me up. You know…you know what that’s like. I couldn’t cope with the feelings, the thoughts, the nightmares that were living. And there you were … still … loving me even without a soul. And Darla was cruel. And Drusilla the embodiment of the worst evil I’d ever created eying me day after day. I couldn’t stay. I would have been a burden to you. It wouldn’t have been right.”
Spike stiffened. “Past’s the past, mate. I got over it, long time ago.”
“Did you really? No lingering abandonment issues you’d like to raise with me? No tit for tat?”
Spike sniffed. Then silence descended.
Finally, “So are we gonna shag or what?”
“You were always too impatient for your own good,” Angel said with a tight laugh. “But, you never did give up, once you got an idea in your head. Soul or no soul, I always admired you for that, you know.”
“Admired me enough for this?” And Spike swooped up off the chair and grabbed Angel’s face between his extended arms, tugging it down to be enveloped sweet, capricious kisses.
“OK?” Spike breathed huskily.
“You’re holding back. I don’t want you to - ”
Spike pounced again for a rougher kiss, then reached for Angel’s own belt and black trousers. Swiftly, though without pain, he began disrobing Angel.
They collapsed on Angel’s bed, tugging at clothes and tweaking skin to rupture arousal. Angel felt Spike was hungry, ravenous for something he had waited eons to discover. Angel found a vague feeling of release issue through his body as he relaxed and gave up the power of controlling the act over to Spike. It was an alien but oddly liberating sensation that shivered through his body; over two hundred years and fifty years of control slipping away.
As Angel began to turn over into the position he had always preferred Spike to be in, ass waving in the air, his muted acquiescence both alarming and exciting him, Spike covered his hand and jerked him back. Then he was entered, fraction by infinitesimal fraction, as their gazes locked upon each other, capturing, encasing for Angel the spectrum of emotions that hurtled across Spike’s face. A vision he never knew he’d witness in all his life - watching Spike master as they fucked.
When it was over, and Spike took to licking the droplets of sweat that pooled on Angel’s chest, Angel felt a largesse subsume him. A weariness was lifted.
Kissing Spike roughly on the forehead, he fell back on the pillows slipping into a dreamless, contented sleep.
~*~*~*~*
They travelled from west to east across the States by Amtrak, haunting night trains from city to city. Angel slept, regimenting himself into humanity and Spike chain-smoked, chugged back piss-poor beer and generally kept guard. You never knew what sort of evil Machiavelli was out there hunting them. Once they hit New York, a paradise of stimuli, they boarded a cruise ship, destined for Rome. Spike spent the journey amusing all the old biddies at the Black Jack tables; Angel lingered out of sight and out of mind on the viewing deck at odd moments of the day and night.
Spike noticed how they barely talked; Angel always rose before the dawn as Spike was stumbling back from the night’s revelries. As if to rub in the way their relationship had so opened into void, while Spike slept or read, encased indoors, Angel spent days in the sun away from the shared cabin.
Avoiding Spike.
Spike could probably guess that Angel was infinitely distressed that the prophecy had passed to him. The shock, Spike assumed, would be bloody horrendous. Now Angel was normal, and coping with normal, integrating into his life was a tougher grind than any slice of extraordinary.
Then, there was Spike. The constant reminder of all he had been, all his memories wrapped into the tight compact body he had used to fantasise about fucking. Unattainable still, but now with a super-sharp edge.
The night before they arrived in Rome, Spike sealed himself off at the far end of the pool deck. Pulling up a deck chair, with pen and paper lifted from a very courteous gift shop, at 3AM, he began scribbling:
“Dear Angel Ponce Angel,
Reckon this must be hard on you. And I know I haven’t been much chop in helping you to deal with the bright, shiny newness of being human.
Think perhaps I owe you, after all you inducted me with such knowledge and finesse into the world of being a vampire.
However, I know I can’t help you; not like we’d both like it. There’ll always be this thing between us. Eloquent, I know. But you know what I’m getting at? Like the first moment I met you in that musty hotel room, I’ve always felt I had to prove myself. You were this inexorable hurdle I had to overcome.
Bloody Hell.
Anyway, this ‘thing’ has mutated now into something radically different, right? I’m beginning to wonder if we are too different. But I suddenly realised that my need to prove myself has gone. Well, not gone gone. But it hit me that what seemed more important was you learning the ways of being human. I need a new yardstick to aspire to and I think you’ve got a way to go before you get there.
I’m reminded of Phillip Larkin in this instance. Never read Larkin to you, did I? Too contemporary. Drusilla found him so as well, and I fear that the lack of a supernatural element might have caused her to drift. But he had a way with words, a way of expressing change and constancy both. There’s a poem called “The Trees” he wrote and the last two lines are thus:
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
It’s prettier than saying turn over a new leaf, but I suppose that’s my way of saying you need to go out into the world and live, don’t you?
You’ve been given this extraordinary gift. Now use it.
But know this, as a son esteems a father, as a brother admires a brother and as a lover cares for his lover, I will to you.
Yours,
William"
He placed it into an enveloped, wrote “Liam” on the front. When they arrived in Rome, and had tracked down the whereabouts of Buffy and Giles, he slipped it, unnoticed, into Angel’s case. After the euphoria of reunion, he kissed Buffy goodbye, promising to return for Dawn’s graduation, then left Rome without a backward glance.
Finis
Title: You Made Me Forget Myself (You’re Going to Reap Just What You Sow)
Author: lillianmorgan
Setting: post-Not Fade Away
Rating: Herein lies the NC-17, m/m sex
Pairing: Spike/Angel (plus Buffy pops up once or twice so you get the inevitable discussion of the other two pairings)
Disclaimer: I don’t own Joss’ and ME’s toys.
A/N: Thanks once again to yourlibrarian who juggled all sorts of miracles to get this beta-ed and back to me ::hugs::
Written for femmenerd who asked for this:
I do like me some comforty (no real hurt, just comfort and reconciliation) Spangel when Spike tops at long last (flip flopping the power dynamics from the days of Spangelus past). But, y'know...
Part One is here and Part Two is here.
You Made Me Forget Myself (You’re Going to Reap Just What You Sow)
Part Three
“They sin who tell that love can die.” From ‘Love Cannot Die’ by Robert Southey
It was not anything like avoiding Spike. It was merely that wherever Spike was, Angel made sure he absolutely was not. There was a difference, understated, but precise.
So it was weeks after Spike’s prodigal return that late one night as Angel contemplated and double checked a translation one of Giles’ lackeys had given him, that Spike was able to surprise him. How long he’d been lurking on the other side of the doorway it was difficult to say, but what was undeniable was the point at which the lurking bored him and he cried out very loudly, “Bloody Hell!”
“Spike?” Angel asked quietly, not lifting his eyes from the translation. He didn’t need superhuman senses to discern the highly toxic smell of spirits that reeled off the vampire as he entered the room.
“You are sincerely the most boring git I have ever had the misfortune to meet. How can you sit still for so long?” And just to prove his point, his feet zigzagged across the carpet towards Angel’s desk.
“You just have a short attention span,” countered Angel, still not favouring him with his gaze. Spike collapsed in the seat opposite him.
“Bollocks!” Spike shouted, lifting the bottle of Jack Daniels to his mouth and taking a prolonged swig from it. The kind that never needed a breath in between. Lowering the bottle, he peered at Angel through it. “You’re just jealous, ‘s all.” Of what, he didn’t say. Perhaps it was implicit.
“Where’s Buffy?” Angel asked, turning the page.
“It’s over, mate.”
“Again?”
“Final this time. Can’t put up with the little harridan’s whining commands day and night and night and day. ‘Spike take me to Florence! Spike quit smoking! Spike jump this high! Spike shake it all about!’” He shook his head in aggravation. “Had it up to here, mate.” And he jabbed his index finger into his neck.
Angel snorted. “Never could say no, could you?”
“Not a matter of that,” said Spike, standing but swaying slightly. “Come on. Let’s get slaughtered.”
Angel shook his head imperceptibly. “Can’t,” he muttered.
“Won’t, more like,” Spike insisted. “Come on. Everything can be solved once you reach the bottom of a bottle.”
“Can it?” asked Angel, raising head, finally, to glare at Spike.
“Yes,” Spike countered forcefully, “it can.” He nodded, then smirked deviously. “Or it can get you at least close to approximatin’.”
Angel couldn’t help but smile at Spike’s wit. He’d always been a sexy drunk.
“Ah-ah-ah. You’re waverin’. Can see it in your eyes. Come on,” he wheedled, leaning over the desk so his mouth was an inch from Angel’s. Staring at Angel’s lips, Spike continued, “I’ll make it worth your while.”
Frustrated by the stupid human reaction of his increased heart beat and his flushing cheeks (not to mention other dangerous developments), Angel pushed his chair away from the desk. Spike glided across the desk and leapt on him, lifting him up. “That’s the spirit, mate. Know this great little bar, just ‘round the corner.”
If Spike had been a Leicester Square Rent Boy in a previous life, and perhaps it was only Angel that had any perception that that wasn’t really possible, he certainly could do a top class impression of one now. Angel endured and suffered through a performance, stellar, inviting and degrading, that masqueraded as their evening -out- solving- his- problems- with- the- addition- of- alcohol.
As they both sat at the bar, or, rather Spike leaned off it, a collection of too many tall and empty beer glasses before them, Spike shimmied, tongue-wagged and wiggled his ass at every beautiful Roman boy that walked by. He chatted them up, marvelled at their perfect beard shaping, their diamond jewels adorning their ears, their gaudy belts, glasses, shirts that lead to fingers playing and messing with tamed chest hair. Some took an interest in Angel, but it was the conspicuous consumptive power of Spike’s radar hairstyle, clothes and willingness to exhibit his ostentatious desire and sex appeal that usually won them over.
“All my problems solved, eh?” Angel pondered to the bar, as he shook the dregs of his latest beer at the bottom of his glass. He stood up, and no the floor wasn’t about to meet him graciously on the invite. He swayed, reached for his coat, which had somehow found a home on the floor in a puddle of beer, and turned for the exit.
Spike chose this moment to listen to him, and called after him, “If not the beer, then Carlo’s fine-looking arsehole might also help.” And for good measure Spike whacked his new toy’s ass, as it wiggled about all over his lap.
“I’ve got no tolerance for this,” Angel thought, out loud or not he wasn’t sure. He took another step toward the door, with the helpful green sign above it saying ‘Esito’. However, the next step was haltered, when he saw Spike’s murderous glance waver in front of his eyes, perhaps the comment hadn’t stayed in his head.
“Are you blind, you stupid silly sod?” Spike growled, standing and tossing the rather unfortunate Carlo to the floor. “Can’t you see there’s only one person in the whole fucking room I’d rather see the inside of their arsehole?”
Angel raised his eyebrow. Was a bit tricky when he was drunk, and knowing his limits was even trickier. The room had hushed, they probably had an audience. His answer was another sway.
“Cold as fucking ice you are you great big pillock. Here I am whorin’ myself out to every bloke in the place and all I want to do is set my lips on yours, getting to suckin’ your prick so it doesn’t want to leave my mouth and -”
“Wait,” objected Angel. “Huh?”
“Oh Jesus…” Spike cried. He turned then and aimed a mutinous kick at a poor, unsuspecting high chair.
As he swung around, balling his fist so that his silver rings caught Angel’s eye, glinting and winking at him, Angel got an idea. He took a small, step then sort of fell on top of Spike, lips mashing together, tongues diving, heat exploding.
The rest was a blur of tangled limbs, walking together joined by lips, tripping and running as fast as they could, hands reaching for clothes, fingers running through hair and over asses, teeth nipping at sensitive skin, periods of separation as Angel found his house key and then they were in; inside the flat and inside each other.
Couldn’t shut Spike up though. “Fucking hell, Angelus, can’t wait to see what it’s like to fuck when you’re all hot and sweating for me. Jesus want to lick you all over, know that? Taste how sweet you’ll be when you’re quaverin’ for me, wantin’ to come but you can’t because -”
“Get on the fucking bed,” ordered Angel, “and take all your clothes off.”
“Hey!” exploded Spike, “I’m the fucking vampire here. I control the shots, yeah. I can have you, mate. So quit with the commands and get your own fucking clothes off.”
Angel cocked his head at an angle, looking Spike up and down as he huffed with haughtiness beside him. “Is that what you want, Spike? To feel the power? Guess you can, now you’ve got the upper hand. Am I all yours now?”
Spike wasn’t a dog, but he knew how to beg. His eyes glittered at the gauntlet Angel had laid out before him, hips faintly pushing forward in anticipation. Slowly, he peeled his belt off, and cracked it against his thigh with a sharp smack.
Angel jumped at the noise, his nerves skittering as he watched Spike stalk toward him, running the leather down his right arm, skidding lightly across his shoulder, then scraping harder down his left arm. “I just want you, Angel. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Makes no difference if you’re on your knees, your belly or your legs sky high. I wanna feel … wait,” Spike tilted his head and sniffed along Angel’s neck. “Are you nervous?”
“No, I’m…”
“Hello?” Spike singsonged, banging his hand to his chest, “vampire here. Can smell your glands on hyperload. Lots of lust, which is oh so obvious, but quite a bit of fear too. Come tell Spikey,” he said spreading himself over the nearest chair and patting his lap, “all about it.”
“There’s no need to rub it in,” Angel ground out, and felt his cock shrink uncontrollably.
“No need to rub what in?” Spike asked, but from the hard look in his eyes he knew exactly what Angel was talking about.
They exchanged brutal stares for an unmitigated period of time, ‘til Spike the first to be overcome by the tension, released a loud, aggressive huff. “Listen, ponce. You got it. You got to be the real boy, the poster boy for the PtB. All I’m asking is for this one little treat. Is it too much to ask?”
“I’m … it’s … complicated.”
“Bloody Hell! It’s always fucking complicated. Story of my bleedin’ life, just about to get the shag of a century and the other one gets cold feet. Or starts talking her mouth off about Paris. Or communes with the pixies.”
Angel felt the humour mellow his anger. “Tough time eh?”
“You always got what you want.”
“Not for the last century I didn’t.”
“Poor diddums. And here I am offerin’ again, and you’re passin’ me up.”
“It’s not that. I’m not fucking passing you up. I want to. Only…” Angel paused and clenched his jaw, and looked at the floor, ineloquence subsuming his feelings.
“You still got all the same working parts as before?”
“Yes, but - ”
“Well,” Spike said, running his index finger from the tip of his tongue down his chest to his jean buttons, then slowly popping them open, “have at it.”
“I’m afraid,” Angel countered. “This body … it breaks eaiser. The hurts take longer to heal. I can feel my mortality every time I bang my leg on the corner of a table. I’m limited now.”
Spike’s eyes glittered. Angel could usually tell the difference between straight lust and love but the distance between them in time or pummelling hearts, made it impossible for him to discern exactly what Spike was thinking.
“Sire,” Spike said, his voice dropping to a lustrous consistency which promised seduction, “I wanna fuck you. I won’t hurt you. I love you. With all my demon and all my soul. And it makes absolutely no difference to me if you heart beats or it doesn’t. In fact, it excites me. Wanna know what it feels like to run my tongue along your skin, and feel the heat rise off you. Envelop me. Fucking warm me.” He ran his tongue over lips. “I love you.”
“You always did, didn’t you? Even when I showed you nothing but pain, you offered me back your heart,” Angel said, then concluded, a gruffness invading his voice, “Then I’d kick it some more.”
“Just your way. Your vampire way. Know we felt a different sort of love, but we know devotion, loyalty, lust,” Spike suggested, sotto voce. “Know separation too.”
“It was a long time to be apart,” Angel nodded. “Too long. I forgot you and I forgot me when we were in L.A. But then you reminded me, and I learned to care for you all over again.”
Spike kicked his boot heel into his chair.
“You know,” Angel began, “when I left it wasn’t about you.”
“Never was about me, was it?”
Angel grimaced. “That’s not what I meant. When I left, it was the soul eating me up. You know…you know what that’s like. I couldn’t cope with the feelings, the thoughts, the nightmares that were living. And there you were … still … loving me even without a soul. And Darla was cruel. And Drusilla the embodiment of the worst evil I’d ever created eying me day after day. I couldn’t stay. I would have been a burden to you. It wouldn’t have been right.”
Spike stiffened. “Past’s the past, mate. I got over it, long time ago.”
“Did you really? No lingering abandonment issues you’d like to raise with me? No tit for tat?”
Spike sniffed. Then silence descended.
Finally, “So are we gonna shag or what?”
“You were always too impatient for your own good,” Angel said with a tight laugh. “But, you never did give up, once you got an idea in your head. Soul or no soul, I always admired you for that, you know.”
“Admired me enough for this?” And Spike swooped up off the chair and grabbed Angel’s face between his extended arms, tugging it down to be enveloped sweet, capricious kisses.
“OK?” Spike breathed huskily.
“You’re holding back. I don’t want you to - ”
Spike pounced again for a rougher kiss, then reached for Angel’s own belt and black trousers. Swiftly, though without pain, he began disrobing Angel.
They collapsed on Angel’s bed, tugging at clothes and tweaking skin to rupture arousal. Angel felt Spike was hungry, ravenous for something he had waited eons to discover. Angel found a vague feeling of release issue through his body as he relaxed and gave up the power of controlling the act over to Spike. It was an alien but oddly liberating sensation that shivered through his body; over two hundred years and fifty years of control slipping away.
As Angel began to turn over into the position he had always preferred Spike to be in, ass waving in the air, his muted acquiescence both alarming and exciting him, Spike covered his hand and jerked him back. Then he was entered, fraction by infinitesimal fraction, as their gazes locked upon each other, capturing, encasing for Angel the spectrum of emotions that hurtled across Spike’s face. A vision he never knew he’d witness in all his life - watching Spike master as they fucked.
When it was over, and Spike took to licking the droplets of sweat that pooled on Angel’s chest, Angel felt a largesse subsume him. A weariness was lifted.
Kissing Spike roughly on the forehead, he fell back on the pillows slipping into a dreamless, contented sleep.
~*~*~*~*
They travelled from west to east across the States by Amtrak, haunting night trains from city to city. Angel slept, regimenting himself into humanity and Spike chain-smoked, chugged back piss-poor beer and generally kept guard. You never knew what sort of evil Machiavelli was out there hunting them. Once they hit New York, a paradise of stimuli, they boarded a cruise ship, destined for Rome. Spike spent the journey amusing all the old biddies at the Black Jack tables; Angel lingered out of sight and out of mind on the viewing deck at odd moments of the day and night.
Spike noticed how they barely talked; Angel always rose before the dawn as Spike was stumbling back from the night’s revelries. As if to rub in the way their relationship had so opened into void, while Spike slept or read, encased indoors, Angel spent days in the sun away from the shared cabin.
Avoiding Spike.
Spike could probably guess that Angel was infinitely distressed that the prophecy had passed to him. The shock, Spike assumed, would be bloody horrendous. Now Angel was normal, and coping with normal, integrating into his life was a tougher grind than any slice of extraordinary.
Then, there was Spike. The constant reminder of all he had been, all his memories wrapped into the tight compact body he had used to fantasise about fucking. Unattainable still, but now with a super-sharp edge.
The night before they arrived in Rome, Spike sealed himself off at the far end of the pool deck. Pulling up a deck chair, with pen and paper lifted from a very courteous gift shop, at 3AM, he began scribbling:
“Dear Angel Ponce Angel,
Reckon this must be hard on you. And I know I haven’t been much chop in helping you to deal with the bright, shiny newness of being human.
Think perhaps I owe you, after all you inducted me with such knowledge and finesse into the world of being a vampire.
However, I know I can’t help you; not like we’d both like it. There’ll always be this thing between us. Eloquent, I know. But you know what I’m getting at? Like the first moment I met you in that musty hotel room, I’ve always felt I had to prove myself. You were this inexorable hurdle I had to overcome.
Bloody Hell.
Anyway, this ‘thing’ has mutated now into something radically different, right? I’m beginning to wonder if we are too different. But I suddenly realised that my need to prove myself has gone. Well, not gone gone. But it hit me that what seemed more important was you learning the ways of being human. I need a new yardstick to aspire to and I think you’ve got a way to go before you get there.
I’m reminded of Phillip Larkin in this instance. Never read Larkin to you, did I? Too contemporary. Drusilla found him so as well, and I fear that the lack of a supernatural element might have caused her to drift. But he had a way with words, a way of expressing change and constancy both. There’s a poem called “The Trees” he wrote and the last two lines are thus:
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
It’s prettier than saying turn over a new leaf, but I suppose that’s my way of saying you need to go out into the world and live, don’t you?
You’ve been given this extraordinary gift. Now use it.
But know this, as a son esteems a father, as a brother admires a brother and as a lover cares for his lover, I will to you.
Yours,
William"
He placed it into an enveloped, wrote “Liam” on the front. When they arrived in Rome, and had tracked down the whereabouts of Buffy and Giles, he slipped it, unnoticed, into Angel’s case. After the euphoria of reunion, he kissed Buffy goodbye, promising to return for Dawn’s graduation, then left Rome without a backward glance.
Finis