FIC: Reflections 12: Compensations 1/3
Author: Trepkos
Pairing: Spike/Riley
Rating: NC17 overall
Standard disclaimer: no profit made, no copyright infringement intended.
Feedback: It’s what I live for
Previous parts:
Reflections 1: Down the Rabbit-hole 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 2: Through the Looking Glass 1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5 5/5
Reflections 3: Sentence First! Verdict afterwards! 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 4: Where do we go from here? 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 5: On the Road to Los Angeles 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 6: The Players Assemble 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 7: Reunion 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 8: Things Fall Apart 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 9: Caritas 1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5 5/5
Reflections 10: Trials 1/6 2/6 3/6 4/6 5/6 6/6
Reflections 11: Promises 1/3 2/3 3/3
Reflections 12: Compensations 1/3
Saturday 3rd February (contd.)
They were still on top of the covers, fully dressed - he and Riley locked together, as they’d fallen asleep: Riley’s arms wrapped around him like hoops round a barrel, and one of Riley’s thighs comfortingly snug between his own - when there was a tentative knock on the bedroom door.
Spike disentangled himself with care, and Riley just grunted and rolled over, as Spike went - rubbing his eyes - to see who was there.
“Oh, you again,” Spike greeted Harmony. “We don’t want any cookies, thanks.”
He made as if to shut the door in her face, then opened it a crack, and grinned tolerantly at her downcast expression.
“Sorry to disturb you … again,” she said. “But Angel asked me to invite you - uh, both of you -”
“Who is it?” Riley mumbled sleepily as he began to surface.
“Just some blonde: you don’t know ‘er.”
Harmony pouted and tried to peer around Spike into the room, but he blocked the doorway - just because he could - and she resumed her message, puffing disconsolately.
“Anyway, the Big Cheese told me to invite you to his suite for a party. Oops!” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I mean - ‘a get-together for the whole team, and associates’.” She bobbed from side to side as she corrected herself, then added in an apologetic whisper, “He’s been reading ‘Be a Better Boss, For Dummies’; I saw it on his desk! And he has something for you Spike; but don’t tell him I told you. He’s waiting for the right moment to give it to you.”
“What kind of something?” Spike demanded, instantly wary.
“Something cool: you’ll really like it.” She added enviously, “I mean really. I know I would.”
Though Spike racked his brains, he couldn’t think of a single thing they would both want. Clutching at straws, he said, “Can’t be nail varnish: you wear pink.”
She just smiled secretively.
“Is it bigger than a breadbox?” he asked, testing her resolve.
Harmony frowned in consternation.
“Hmm ...” Spike raised a speculative eyebrow: “… must be pretty close to breadbox-sized then.”
Realising she was in real danger of letting the cat out of the bag, Harmony slapped at his arm, but he dodged backwards and she missed.
“I’m not playing!” she protested. “You always win!”
“No: I just always beat you,” Spike said, smiling sweetly.
For a moment, he watched the wheels grinding in her brain, but then - rather than wait the few millennia it would take her to come up with a witty retort - he shrugged and said, “Okay. We’ll be along in a bit -”
He stuck his head back in to check with Riley.
“- okay?”
“Sure,” Riley said, yawning and stretching luxuriously. “Dunno what I’m agreeing to but you’re the boss.”
Mission accomplished, Harmony trotted away and Spike shut the door.
“What d’you reckon Angel wants to give me?” he asked Riley.
“Angel wants to …” Riley contemplated the possibilities - double entendres and all, if the face he was pulling was anything to go by. “Did he ever give you anything before?”
“Never anything I wanted,” Spike said, mirroring Riley’s scrunched-up expression with his own. “But I’m all curious now. Have to see what it is, don’t I? Two pressies in one day: must be my official birthday. Didn’t realise I’d been crowned Queen of England in my absence.”
“Huh?” Riley shook his head and stifled a yawn.
“Nothin’ really,” Spike said quickly.
That gob of his would get him into trouble one of these days.
“It’s just that the Queen gets two birthdays -” he explained, trying to sound bored with the whole topic: “her real one and her official one.”
Riley frowned. “How is that fair?” he said; he seemed genuinely affronted.
“Well, that’s the bleedin’ monarchy for you. ‘S not meant to be fair; that’s the whole point. ‘Anarchy for the bloody UK’ I say.” Spike fisted the air with a distinct lack of optimism. “About as likely as ‘Peace in our time’, is that. Bloody English, nation of bloody forelock-tugging -”
But Riley - evidently determined not to let Spike get away with distracting him this time - interrupted his staged rant, to demand: “So when is your birthday? We’ve been together over a year and you haven’t celebrated one yet. You just keep fobbing me off when I ask. Why do you do that? You can’t be worried about getting old!”
Spike scowled. “I don’t talk about it.”
“Why not?” Riley persisted; but then he faltered under Spike’s obstinate glare. “Oh no … something really bad happened on your birthday …”
The genuine concern in his partner’s eyes made Spike’s decision for him. Have to ‘fess up eventually, and now he was about to say it out loud: well, it seemed a bit trivial really.
“I’ll tell you why not, mate,” he said. “Because I’m stuck with the most embarrassin’ sign of the sodding zodiac, that’s why.”
“You believe in all that -” Riley looked doubtful - “I was gonna say, ‘crap’…?”
“Course not. But before I was vamped, my so-called friends never tired of using the fact that I was born on August the twenty-first - in the bloody sign of Virgo - as an excuse for mockery,” Spike grumbled. “A day earlier and I’d have been fine. No one takes the piss out of a ‘Leo’, right?”
Yeah, that would have made all the difference …
Riley laughed. “Well, why don’t you have an official birthday? How about today? You should have one. You like getting presents, right?”
“Ye-ah! Doesn’t everyone?” Spike brightened. Full of good ideas, was Riley. “Okay, what’s the date?”
“Third of February.”
Riley had said it without even having to stop and think. Poor kid was probably crossing off the days on his mental calendar till they could go back to the farm. He wasn’t the only one. Spike too, felt a yearning to get back there growing stronger every day: like it was really home.
“Well, what do you think?” Riley broke into his musings.
Oh, yeah; his birthday. Spike made an executive decision.
“Dunno what sign the third of February is, but it can’t be worse than what I’ve got, so it’s alright with me,” he said firmly. “Come on then, let’s get to my party.” He bounced excitedly on his heels. “Do you think Dad’s bought me a Play Station?”
~~
As they made their way towards Angel’s suite, Spike’s good mood began to evaporate, leaving suspicion crystallising in its place. When he thought about it, for Angel to organise any kind of social gathering at all - let alone a party - was so uncharacteristic as to border on the surreal.
What was Angel playing at?
Perhaps it was mean-spirited to think this way, but the whole scenario stank of some kind of set-up, designed to lull him into a false sense of security. But Spike wasn’t ready to be lulled. If the ‘present’ he was about to receive was a wooden delivery straight to the heart, for the edification of Team Angel, then Harmony was welcome to it.
He stuck a hand in his pocket and felt the carved surface of his own stake - oddly comforting - beneath his fingers.
“Something wrong?” Riley asked him, clearly sensing his unease.
“Probably nothing,” Spike replied. “Stay sharp though, yeah?”
Riley nodded. “Of course.”
The door to Angel’s suite was closed and there was no spill of light from beneath it, but Spike could tell there were a few warm bodies inside, so he braced himself for the inevitable. He muttered - “Here goes nothing” - and opened the door. The lights went on, a chorus of voices shouted “Surprise!” and a tangle of coloured streamers was thrown over them.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Spike said sardonically, as he knocked the offending items off his own head, and Riley’s shoulders.
He squinted at the assembled group. Not many surprises there. The usual suspects: Angel, Wesley, Genevieve, Cordelia, Harmony, and - the one responsible for throwing the streamers - that green bloke from the bar: Lorne. The ones he didn’t recognise were a black guy, who must be the one named ‘Gun’, and a puffy-faced fellow in whom Cordelia was displaying an inordinate amount of interest, and who looked like he was in software.
“How is this a surprise?” Spike said to the world in general - sounding a little bitchy even to his own ears. “You invited us to a party, and this looks pretty much like a party to me, absence of dancing girls notwithstanding.”
“Well, you didn’t expect the lights to be out did you?” Lorne hazarded.
Spike shrugged. “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.”
He took the drink Lorne handed him and knocked it back. Then he looked at the coffee table and gawped.
“This, on the other hand, is definitely a surprise.”
Angel had food: party food: and it was the kind you used to get on a Sunday-School outing: tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off, little iced cakes, sausage rolls, cheese and pineapple on sticks and such-like. If this was a fatted calf, it was most definitely lame.
Spike stole a glance at Angel and decided that he found Sire Version 4.0 distinctly unsettling. While somehow managing to maintain a faintly presidential air, the old man was even wearing a party hat; but then, Angel would do just about anything if he had an important aim in mind.
Glad of Riley’s presence, Spike squeezed his arm, hard, to make sure he wasn’t nodding off; but Riley was already sizing people up, keyed in by the ring to Spike’s simmering anxiety.
On the pretext of scrutinising the snacks, Spike discreetly scented the air, and what he found gave him some reassurance. While Cordelia’s protégé might need to change his armour before the night was much further advanced, there was no indication that the other party-goers were feeling anything other than relaxed and ready to have fun.
Angel had promised no tricks - and he’d seemed sincere.
Spike was prepared to consider the possibility that he was being paranoid; that for once, everything was exactly as strange as it appeared, and no more. Whatever was going on, there was only one thing certain in this brave new world.
“I need another drink,” Spike said firmly.
With almost supernatural prescience, Angel was already placing a whiskey in his hand. “Come on, Spike, Riley.” He hustled them along with disturbing bonhomie. “Come and meet the gang.”
“Okaaay, let’s party,” Spike said dryly.
Angel led them straight to the nerdy-looking bloke, who still looked like he might be about to spontaneously combust with excitement.
“Spike, this is David Nabbit. He owns a …” Angel frowned, the data temporarily eluding him - “a software company …?” he concluded uncertainly. “He helped us out with getting this place - and some other legal stuff. David, this is Spike, one of my associates: also known as ‘William the Bloody’ -”
Spike boggled at the eldritch twist Angel gave to the intonation of his name, and the awed and terrified David Nabbit gave his hand the over-hearty shake of a man with more adrenaline in his veins than he knows what to do with.
“- and Riley Finn, covert ops., who I’m hoping we’ll be seeing a lot more of -” Angel said, laughing self-consciously: “- ’cause if you can’t see him, you’re already dead!”
Riley looked askance at Spike, who shrugged, then at Angel, who avoided his eyes, and moved them along.
“Spike, you already know Cordelia from Sunnydale -”
“We were never formally introduced,” Cordelia said archly. “There was that whole ‘attacking us and killing our teachers’ thing, and then there was the part where you abducted my boyfriend and threw him together with that little tramp …”
Cordelia was now advancing on him, a threatening index finger primed and ready to fire, so Spike backed up with his hands raised.
Angel frowned slightly. “Cordy …”
“Okay! Letting bygones be bygones!” Cordelia breezed. “Spike’s our friend now, all safe and cuddly like a big puppy. I get it.”
“Good! Great!” Angel said heartily.
Nevertheless, Cordelia showed no sign of relaxing her grip on the large cross in her right hand, and all things considered, Spike couldn’t really blame the girl. It was reassuring really; at least with her, he knew where he stood.
“And Cordy, this is Riley Finn, Spike’s partner.”
Spike took a firmer hold on Riley’s arm. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Cordelia had been checking his man out - on the sly - since they’d walked in the door. You could almost hear her salivating.
“Riley!”
She flashed a dazzling row of choppers, and batted her eyelashes in what someone with a sense of humour must have told her was an alluring manner.
“So, how did you two meet?”
“How did we …?” Riley began. “Oh: well, that’s a bit of a long story …”
A long story, the whole of which was distilled in the look he now exchanged with Spike. Their gazes still locked, Riley went on as though Cordelia wasn’t there. “I was in a covert demon-fighting unit and -”
Cordelia glanced from one to the other and rolled her eyes. “Office romance?” she said, sounding bored already.
“Kind-of” Riley conceded, shaking his head, slightly bemused.
“Cut a long story short, why don’t you?” Spike groused.
“Talking of demon-fighting units -” Angel cut in: “- Riley, come and meet Gunn, you have some things in common. He runs his own demon-fighting outfit in South Central.”
Shop-talk. Fan-bloody-tastic.
“Why can’t I ever meet a nice guy like that?” Cordelia whispered to Genevieve, indicating Riley’s retreating back with a discreet glance.
“Why don’t you say what you really mean?” Spike said sharply, taking advantage of the excuse not to tag along to the demon extermination conference, and turning back towards her
“And the prize for the biggest ears goes to -” Cordelia shot back with a saccharin smile. “So enlighten me, Bleach Boy. What do I really mean?”
Then Spike wished he’d kept his trap shut. He wasn’t too keen to say what they were both thinking.
“Well, I guess you’re wondering, ‘What does a nice bloke like Riley see in Spike?’”
Cordelia looked straight back at him, unfazed. “Well, you must admit, he’s not your usual type is he?”
“Not crazy you mean?” Spike said bluntly.
“Well, I was going to say, ‘not evil-blood-sucking-crazy like you’,” Cordelia said. She glanced sidelong at Genevieve. “No offence.”
“I haven’t eaten anyone in months,” Spike protested. “Well, not on purpose …”
“Like you could have!” Cordelia retorted. At his worried look she relented a little. “Don’t mind me. I know you’re trying so I guess I should give you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know from science, but I guess even a leech might turn into a butterfly. I mean, look at me. I was quite the queen bitch in High School -”
“Hard to believe,” Spike murmured.
She didn’t hear him, but went on - “I’m not a saint now -”
“Just a gold-digger,” Spike said with a sly glance in David Nabbit’s direction.
She heard - and saw - that one alright, and punched him on the arm - “Hey!” - but then she had the grace to acknowledge the hit, saying quietly, “It’s in a good cause.”
“What, keeping up your gym fees and augmenting your collection of Manolos?”
Spike stuck his tongue out.
Cordelia looked daggers at him; but this time the blades retracted on contact.
Okay then. Always leave ‘em wanting more.
He grabbed a jello shot, looked to see where Riley’d got to, and found him still talking weapons - homemade versus hi-tech - with the demon-fighter. Spike eyed them suspiciously. Seeing them so deep in conversation gave him a queasy feeling. It was irrational: he knew it was. The resemblances between Riley’s new acquaintance and his old comrade Forrest were just superficial; there was no sense of the vicious thuggery he remembered in Forrest’s every line and gesture, nor any sexual undercurrents between the two of them. Maybe he should hold off - keep his cool for the time being; Riley didn’t need smothering.
Feeling virtuous, Spike left the boys comparing the sizes of their stakes.
He spotted Genevieve sitting alone and looking a little overwhelmed, so he sauntered over to her. It was past time they caught up.
“How are you doing, pet?”
“Well, Angel’s letting me use one of the downstairs rooms to start a de-tox clinic for vamp junkies, and I’ve already got some talks scheduled -”
“Yeah, great,” Spike said, cutting into her runaway to-do list. “But I asked ‘how’ not ‘what’. Spotlight’s been on yours truly for long enough, with the surgery and what-all: I’ve even had you runnin’ round after me. But you’ve had a rough time yourself, and you don’t have to paste on a happy face for me, love; we were both there. So, I say again: ‘How are you doing?’”
“Oh. That.” Genevieve chewed on her thumb. “Well, Harmony’s helping me with the anger -”
Spike’s mind boggled at the prospect of Harmony as a therapist.
“Guess I gave her plenty reasons to be angry,” he admitted.
Genevieve looked puzzled. “She never said so.”
“Oh. Well, good …”
“And the nightmares aren’t so bad now … but I still see their faces sometimes. I dream about biting them - killing them - and their blood makes me sick. Sometimes I wish I’d killed them as they slept. I guess I was too weak and scared to think of it; but there’s no point getting all cross about it. Maybe none of them made it out of there anyway.” She lowered her voice. “I know it’s wrong of me, but I hope they didn’t.”
“No.” Spike said firmly. “Perhaps with my record, I’m not one to judge, but I don’t think it’s wrong. After what they did: bought us and …”
It was painful to think about: what they’d both been through: the thing that connected them. He wasn’t sure why he’d even brought it up. LA must be getting to him. Perhaps it was better to just try and forget it.
“Anyway, if you hadn’t been able to put them in thrall like you did, there’s no way you’d have walked out of there.” Spike shrugged and pinned on a maniacal grin. “Me? I hope demons ate their gizzards and chewed their knees off.” He touched his hand to her cheek. “And I’m right sorry I didn’t deal with them for you Gen. Would have, but I was a bit -”
“Hey! You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You’re the reason I’m here now - you and your friends.”
“You helped me too -” Spike said: “- tried to, anyway. Nearly got your head bit off for it, but you tried. Appreciate it. Thanks.”
He took another drink, knocked it back, and briefly slung an arm around her shoulders. “Made it through, didn’t we?”
“Yeah: we really did,” she said, looking up at him with a satisfied smile.
Glancing around, Spike noticed that Angel was standing apart: looking faintly pathetic, his glass half-empty and the paper crown on his head all skewiff.
“’Scuse us. Have to go have a word with His Highness now.”
He snagged an unattended glass of wine, edged his way past Lorne and David Nabbit - engaged in negotiating safe demonic hospitality packages for David’s out of town business partners - and wandered over to Angel.
“So, just between you and me, what’s all this in aid of?” Spike said quietly. “Trying to prove you’re not a sad git with no mates and fewer social skills?”
Angel looked wounded.
He must have been practising that look, because it almost had Spike convinced.
“I just wanted my team to meet you properly,” Angel insisted.
Spike didn’t believe he’d heard correctly. Had Angel really said, ‘Wanted them to meet you’?
“And Riley of course,” Angel added.
“Why?” Spike demanded, still suspicious. “And what was that about seeing more of Riley?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Angel stonewalled, rocking slightly on his heels, smug and impervious.
“Fine!”
Suddenly irritated, Spike knocked back the wine, and banged the glass down on a convenient shelf right by Angel’s head. “Have your little secrets; doesn’t bother me.”
He went and poured himself another drink, then looked around for Riley. With a pang of jealousy, he saw that his partner was still engrossed in conversation with Bullet, across the coffee table; and they looked like they were settling in for the evening.
He’d tried to be good - tried not to let it get the better of him - but now he felt an urgent need to break up the impromptu demon-hunters’ convention. Spike wandered over and hunkered down beside Riley.
“Guess you must be Gun,” he said brusquely, looking his rival for Riley’s attention in the eye. “Nice moniker.”
The man he was addressing pretended not to notice anything amiss with his tone, and met his gaze levelly.
“It’s my real name: ‘Gunn’ with two enns. I guess you must be Spike. Sorry we haven’t met earlier, but I haven’t been around much lately - my crew needed me to help with training a couple of new guys; then I got roped into some maintenance work on the armoury.”
“Sharpening bits of wood,” Spike dryly clarified, hoping to get a rise out of him.
But ‘Gunn with two enns’ was a cool customer: he raised an eyebrow, but still he didn’t bite.
“We don’t just fight vamps,” he said calmly.
“Good to know,” Spike replied, with grudging respect. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.”
He reached a hand across the coffee table to shake Gunn’s hand, but hissed in sudden pain and sent potato chips and jello-shots flying, along with Cordelia’s cross which had been lying half-hidden amongst the party debris.
Gunn quickly hid a snicker behind a cough, and Spike grimaced at Cordelia.
“Wanna be careful where you stick those things, love.”
“It’s for your own good, Spike,” she said, shrugging and retrieving her weapon. “If you ate me for real, Angel would have to kill you, and he doesn’t need that trauma. This way, everyone’s covered, see?” She thrust the cross playfully towards his face.
Spike jerked backwards. “I notice you’re not pointing that thing at Harmony!” he said a little plaintively.
“Harmony’s my friend, and she’s kosher.”
Spike grinned at the word-choice, and caught Gunn suppressing a smirk. Maybe this bloke was okay after all.
“Or Genevieve,” Spike added.
“Genevieve is a vegetarian,” Cordelia countered.
Gunn shook his head in mock despair. “All you gray area vampires are makin’ my life too complicated. Time was, I saw fangs, all I had to do was a bit of dustin’. I have to have a debate with a dude before I kill ‘em now, just in case?”
“A stranger vamps out at you, don’t hesitate,” Spike said bluntly, then dead-panned, “Or if it’s Angel.”
“Hey!” Angel said from behind him. “Shut up, Spike.”
Spike bristled.
“Don’t tell me what to do, wanker.”
The temperature in the immediate area dropped a few degrees. Beside him, Riley grew tense, and Spike put a restraining hand on his arm, then reached for another shot, not doing Angel the courtesy of turning to face him. He felt Angel squat down behind him, then almost yelped in surprise when the glass was taken out of his hand.
“Slow down, Spike,” Angel muttered. “And would you please try and show a bit of respect, even if you have to fake it? Most of these people work for me, and last time I looked, so do you.”
Well, didn’t that just take the bloody biscuit?
“Yeah, sure, Angel,” Spike said sourly, not giving a toss who heard him. “I still work for you - sending you a load of mouldy old crap and taking your money for it. Maybe next time I’ll just sit at home and buy it on E-bay, instead of riskin’ life and limb so you can take the piss.”
Though no one else had really been listening, the jagged edge to Spike’s voice quickly cut short all the other conversations in the room. Concerned and puzzled faces turned towards them.
Riley looked uneasily from one to the other. Spike understood that he was giving them the chance to work it out, but - surrounded as he was by Angel’s team - it was good to know Riley was there, if back-up were needed. It took all his nerve to hold his position with his back to Angel, not looking at him even once.
The yawning silence was broken by a brittle laugh from Angel. Cryptic but insistent, he said, “Hey; I nearly had you with that one, didn’t I, Spike?”
He rested a hand on Spike’s shoulder and squeezed slightly before levering himself up and rubbing his thighs. “’E-bay!’” he said, shaking his head.
Spike frowned, quickly sobering up. He too, got to his feet, facing Angel, studying his eyes.
“Yeah … that was a good one Peaches,” he said uncertainly.
Conversations were quietly picked up, with significant glances between the participants, still alert for trouble.
“Yeah, we laugh about it now,” Angel said. He was smiling, but his eyes were anxious.
“Yeah,” Spike said.
Of course; how could he have forgotten?
“We do, don’t we?”
When the other conversations had resumed for real, Angel steered Spike towards the kitchen, saying, “Come on; let’s get some of the good stuff.”
With a discreet jerk of his head, Spike indicated to Riley that he should follow.
~~
TBC
Pairing: Spike/Riley
Rating: NC17 overall
Standard disclaimer: no profit made, no copyright infringement intended.
Feedback: It’s what I live for
Previous parts:
Reflections 1: Down the Rabbit-hole 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 2: Through the Looking Glass 1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5 5/5
Reflections 3: Sentence First! Verdict afterwards! 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 4: Where do we go from here? 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 5: On the Road to Los Angeles 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 6: The Players Assemble 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 7: Reunion 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 8: Things Fall Apart 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4
Reflections 9: Caritas 1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5 5/5
Reflections 10: Trials 1/6 2/6 3/6 4/6 5/6 6/6
Reflections 11: Promises 1/3 2/3 3/3
Reflections 12: Compensations 1/3
Saturday 3rd February (contd.)
They were still on top of the covers, fully dressed - he and Riley locked together, as they’d fallen asleep: Riley’s arms wrapped around him like hoops round a barrel, and one of Riley’s thighs comfortingly snug between his own - when there was a tentative knock on the bedroom door.
Spike disentangled himself with care, and Riley just grunted and rolled over, as Spike went - rubbing his eyes - to see who was there.
“Oh, you again,” Spike greeted Harmony. “We don’t want any cookies, thanks.”
He made as if to shut the door in her face, then opened it a crack, and grinned tolerantly at her downcast expression.
“Sorry to disturb you … again,” she said. “But Angel asked me to invite you - uh, both of you -”
“Who is it?” Riley mumbled sleepily as he began to surface.
“Just some blonde: you don’t know ‘er.”
Harmony pouted and tried to peer around Spike into the room, but he blocked the doorway - just because he could - and she resumed her message, puffing disconsolately.
“Anyway, the Big Cheese told me to invite you to his suite for a party. Oops!” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I mean - ‘a get-together for the whole team, and associates’.” She bobbed from side to side as she corrected herself, then added in an apologetic whisper, “He’s been reading ‘Be a Better Boss, For Dummies’; I saw it on his desk! And he has something for you Spike; but don’t tell him I told you. He’s waiting for the right moment to give it to you.”
“What kind of something?” Spike demanded, instantly wary.
“Something cool: you’ll really like it.” She added enviously, “I mean really. I know I would.”
Though Spike racked his brains, he couldn’t think of a single thing they would both want. Clutching at straws, he said, “Can’t be nail varnish: you wear pink.”
She just smiled secretively.
“Is it bigger than a breadbox?” he asked, testing her resolve.
Harmony frowned in consternation.
“Hmm ...” Spike raised a speculative eyebrow: “… must be pretty close to breadbox-sized then.”
Realising she was in real danger of letting the cat out of the bag, Harmony slapped at his arm, but he dodged backwards and she missed.
“I’m not playing!” she protested. “You always win!”
“No: I just always beat you,” Spike said, smiling sweetly.
For a moment, he watched the wheels grinding in her brain, but then - rather than wait the few millennia it would take her to come up with a witty retort - he shrugged and said, “Okay. We’ll be along in a bit -”
He stuck his head back in to check with Riley.
“- okay?”
“Sure,” Riley said, yawning and stretching luxuriously. “Dunno what I’m agreeing to but you’re the boss.”
Mission accomplished, Harmony trotted away and Spike shut the door.
“What d’you reckon Angel wants to give me?” he asked Riley.
“Angel wants to …” Riley contemplated the possibilities - double entendres and all, if the face he was pulling was anything to go by. “Did he ever give you anything before?”
“Never anything I wanted,” Spike said, mirroring Riley’s scrunched-up expression with his own. “But I’m all curious now. Have to see what it is, don’t I? Two pressies in one day: must be my official birthday. Didn’t realise I’d been crowned Queen of England in my absence.”
“Huh?” Riley shook his head and stifled a yawn.
“Nothin’ really,” Spike said quickly.
That gob of his would get him into trouble one of these days.
“It’s just that the Queen gets two birthdays -” he explained, trying to sound bored with the whole topic: “her real one and her official one.”
Riley frowned. “How is that fair?” he said; he seemed genuinely affronted.
“Well, that’s the bleedin’ monarchy for you. ‘S not meant to be fair; that’s the whole point. ‘Anarchy for the bloody UK’ I say.” Spike fisted the air with a distinct lack of optimism. “About as likely as ‘Peace in our time’, is that. Bloody English, nation of bloody forelock-tugging -”
But Riley - evidently determined not to let Spike get away with distracting him this time - interrupted his staged rant, to demand: “So when is your birthday? We’ve been together over a year and you haven’t celebrated one yet. You just keep fobbing me off when I ask. Why do you do that? You can’t be worried about getting old!”
Spike scowled. “I don’t talk about it.”
“Why not?” Riley persisted; but then he faltered under Spike’s obstinate glare. “Oh no … something really bad happened on your birthday …”
The genuine concern in his partner’s eyes made Spike’s decision for him. Have to ‘fess up eventually, and now he was about to say it out loud: well, it seemed a bit trivial really.
“I’ll tell you why not, mate,” he said. “Because I’m stuck with the most embarrassin’ sign of the sodding zodiac, that’s why.”
“You believe in all that -” Riley looked doubtful - “I was gonna say, ‘crap’…?”
“Course not. But before I was vamped, my so-called friends never tired of using the fact that I was born on August the twenty-first - in the bloody sign of Virgo - as an excuse for mockery,” Spike grumbled. “A day earlier and I’d have been fine. No one takes the piss out of a ‘Leo’, right?”
Yeah, that would have made all the difference …
Riley laughed. “Well, why don’t you have an official birthday? How about today? You should have one. You like getting presents, right?”
“Ye-ah! Doesn’t everyone?” Spike brightened. Full of good ideas, was Riley. “Okay, what’s the date?”
“Third of February.”
Riley had said it without even having to stop and think. Poor kid was probably crossing off the days on his mental calendar till they could go back to the farm. He wasn’t the only one. Spike too, felt a yearning to get back there growing stronger every day: like it was really home.
“Well, what do you think?” Riley broke into his musings.
Oh, yeah; his birthday. Spike made an executive decision.
“Dunno what sign the third of February is, but it can’t be worse than what I’ve got, so it’s alright with me,” he said firmly. “Come on then, let’s get to my party.” He bounced excitedly on his heels. “Do you think Dad’s bought me a Play Station?”
~~
As they made their way towards Angel’s suite, Spike’s good mood began to evaporate, leaving suspicion crystallising in its place. When he thought about it, for Angel to organise any kind of social gathering at all - let alone a party - was so uncharacteristic as to border on the surreal.
What was Angel playing at?
Perhaps it was mean-spirited to think this way, but the whole scenario stank of some kind of set-up, designed to lull him into a false sense of security. But Spike wasn’t ready to be lulled. If the ‘present’ he was about to receive was a wooden delivery straight to the heart, for the edification of Team Angel, then Harmony was welcome to it.
He stuck a hand in his pocket and felt the carved surface of his own stake - oddly comforting - beneath his fingers.
“Something wrong?” Riley asked him, clearly sensing his unease.
“Probably nothing,” Spike replied. “Stay sharp though, yeah?”
Riley nodded. “Of course.”
The door to Angel’s suite was closed and there was no spill of light from beneath it, but Spike could tell there were a few warm bodies inside, so he braced himself for the inevitable. He muttered - “Here goes nothing” - and opened the door. The lights went on, a chorus of voices shouted “Surprise!” and a tangle of coloured streamers was thrown over them.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Spike said sardonically, as he knocked the offending items off his own head, and Riley’s shoulders.
He squinted at the assembled group. Not many surprises there. The usual suspects: Angel, Wesley, Genevieve, Cordelia, Harmony, and - the one responsible for throwing the streamers - that green bloke from the bar: Lorne. The ones he didn’t recognise were a black guy, who must be the one named ‘Gun’, and a puffy-faced fellow in whom Cordelia was displaying an inordinate amount of interest, and who looked like he was in software.
“How is this a surprise?” Spike said to the world in general - sounding a little bitchy even to his own ears. “You invited us to a party, and this looks pretty much like a party to me, absence of dancing girls notwithstanding.”
“Well, you didn’t expect the lights to be out did you?” Lorne hazarded.
Spike shrugged. “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.”
He took the drink Lorne handed him and knocked it back. Then he looked at the coffee table and gawped.
“This, on the other hand, is definitely a surprise.”
Angel had food: party food: and it was the kind you used to get on a Sunday-School outing: tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off, little iced cakes, sausage rolls, cheese and pineapple on sticks and such-like. If this was a fatted calf, it was most definitely lame.
Spike stole a glance at Angel and decided that he found Sire Version 4.0 distinctly unsettling. While somehow managing to maintain a faintly presidential air, the old man was even wearing a party hat; but then, Angel would do just about anything if he had an important aim in mind.
Glad of Riley’s presence, Spike squeezed his arm, hard, to make sure he wasn’t nodding off; but Riley was already sizing people up, keyed in by the ring to Spike’s simmering anxiety.
On the pretext of scrutinising the snacks, Spike discreetly scented the air, and what he found gave him some reassurance. While Cordelia’s protégé might need to change his armour before the night was much further advanced, there was no indication that the other party-goers were feeling anything other than relaxed and ready to have fun.
Angel had promised no tricks - and he’d seemed sincere.
Spike was prepared to consider the possibility that he was being paranoid; that for once, everything was exactly as strange as it appeared, and no more. Whatever was going on, there was only one thing certain in this brave new world.
“I need another drink,” Spike said firmly.
With almost supernatural prescience, Angel was already placing a whiskey in his hand. “Come on, Spike, Riley.” He hustled them along with disturbing bonhomie. “Come and meet the gang.”
“Okaaay, let’s party,” Spike said dryly.
Angel led them straight to the nerdy-looking bloke, who still looked like he might be about to spontaneously combust with excitement.
“Spike, this is David Nabbit. He owns a …” Angel frowned, the data temporarily eluding him - “a software company …?” he concluded uncertainly. “He helped us out with getting this place - and some other legal stuff. David, this is Spike, one of my associates: also known as ‘William the Bloody’ -”
Spike boggled at the eldritch twist Angel gave to the intonation of his name, and the awed and terrified David Nabbit gave his hand the over-hearty shake of a man with more adrenaline in his veins than he knows what to do with.
“- and Riley Finn, covert ops., who I’m hoping we’ll be seeing a lot more of -” Angel said, laughing self-consciously: “- ’cause if you can’t see him, you’re already dead!”
Riley looked askance at Spike, who shrugged, then at Angel, who avoided his eyes, and moved them along.
“Spike, you already know Cordelia from Sunnydale -”
“We were never formally introduced,” Cordelia said archly. “There was that whole ‘attacking us and killing our teachers’ thing, and then there was the part where you abducted my boyfriend and threw him together with that little tramp …”
Cordelia was now advancing on him, a threatening index finger primed and ready to fire, so Spike backed up with his hands raised.
Angel frowned slightly. “Cordy …”
“Okay! Letting bygones be bygones!” Cordelia breezed. “Spike’s our friend now, all safe and cuddly like a big puppy. I get it.”
“Good! Great!” Angel said heartily.
Nevertheless, Cordelia showed no sign of relaxing her grip on the large cross in her right hand, and all things considered, Spike couldn’t really blame the girl. It was reassuring really; at least with her, he knew where he stood.
“And Cordy, this is Riley Finn, Spike’s partner.”
Spike took a firmer hold on Riley’s arm. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Cordelia had been checking his man out - on the sly - since they’d walked in the door. You could almost hear her salivating.
“Riley!”
She flashed a dazzling row of choppers, and batted her eyelashes in what someone with a sense of humour must have told her was an alluring manner.
“So, how did you two meet?”
“How did we …?” Riley began. “Oh: well, that’s a bit of a long story …”
A long story, the whole of which was distilled in the look he now exchanged with Spike. Their gazes still locked, Riley went on as though Cordelia wasn’t there. “I was in a covert demon-fighting unit and -”
Cordelia glanced from one to the other and rolled her eyes. “Office romance?” she said, sounding bored already.
“Kind-of” Riley conceded, shaking his head, slightly bemused.
“Cut a long story short, why don’t you?” Spike groused.
“Talking of demon-fighting units -” Angel cut in: “- Riley, come and meet Gunn, you have some things in common. He runs his own demon-fighting outfit in South Central.”
Shop-talk. Fan-bloody-tastic.
“Why can’t I ever meet a nice guy like that?” Cordelia whispered to Genevieve, indicating Riley’s retreating back with a discreet glance.
“Why don’t you say what you really mean?” Spike said sharply, taking advantage of the excuse not to tag along to the demon extermination conference, and turning back towards her
“And the prize for the biggest ears goes to -” Cordelia shot back with a saccharin smile. “So enlighten me, Bleach Boy. What do I really mean?”
Then Spike wished he’d kept his trap shut. He wasn’t too keen to say what they were both thinking.
“Well, I guess you’re wondering, ‘What does a nice bloke like Riley see in Spike?’”
Cordelia looked straight back at him, unfazed. “Well, you must admit, he’s not your usual type is he?”
“Not crazy you mean?” Spike said bluntly.
“Well, I was going to say, ‘not evil-blood-sucking-crazy like you’,” Cordelia said. She glanced sidelong at Genevieve. “No offence.”
“I haven’t eaten anyone in months,” Spike protested. “Well, not on purpose …”
“Like you could have!” Cordelia retorted. At his worried look she relented a little. “Don’t mind me. I know you’re trying so I guess I should give you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know from science, but I guess even a leech might turn into a butterfly. I mean, look at me. I was quite the queen bitch in High School -”
“Hard to believe,” Spike murmured.
She didn’t hear him, but went on - “I’m not a saint now -”
“Just a gold-digger,” Spike said with a sly glance in David Nabbit’s direction.
She heard - and saw - that one alright, and punched him on the arm - “Hey!” - but then she had the grace to acknowledge the hit, saying quietly, “It’s in a good cause.”
“What, keeping up your gym fees and augmenting your collection of Manolos?”
Spike stuck his tongue out.
Cordelia looked daggers at him; but this time the blades retracted on contact.
Okay then. Always leave ‘em wanting more.
He grabbed a jello shot, looked to see where Riley’d got to, and found him still talking weapons - homemade versus hi-tech - with the demon-fighter. Spike eyed them suspiciously. Seeing them so deep in conversation gave him a queasy feeling. It was irrational: he knew it was. The resemblances between Riley’s new acquaintance and his old comrade Forrest were just superficial; there was no sense of the vicious thuggery he remembered in Forrest’s every line and gesture, nor any sexual undercurrents between the two of them. Maybe he should hold off - keep his cool for the time being; Riley didn’t need smothering.
Feeling virtuous, Spike left the boys comparing the sizes of their stakes.
He spotted Genevieve sitting alone and looking a little overwhelmed, so he sauntered over to her. It was past time they caught up.
“How are you doing, pet?”
“Well, Angel’s letting me use one of the downstairs rooms to start a de-tox clinic for vamp junkies, and I’ve already got some talks scheduled -”
“Yeah, great,” Spike said, cutting into her runaway to-do list. “But I asked ‘how’ not ‘what’. Spotlight’s been on yours truly for long enough, with the surgery and what-all: I’ve even had you runnin’ round after me. But you’ve had a rough time yourself, and you don’t have to paste on a happy face for me, love; we were both there. So, I say again: ‘How are you doing?’”
“Oh. That.” Genevieve chewed on her thumb. “Well, Harmony’s helping me with the anger -”
Spike’s mind boggled at the prospect of Harmony as a therapist.
“Guess I gave her plenty reasons to be angry,” he admitted.
Genevieve looked puzzled. “She never said so.”
“Oh. Well, good …”
“And the nightmares aren’t so bad now … but I still see their faces sometimes. I dream about biting them - killing them - and their blood makes me sick. Sometimes I wish I’d killed them as they slept. I guess I was too weak and scared to think of it; but there’s no point getting all cross about it. Maybe none of them made it out of there anyway.” She lowered her voice. “I know it’s wrong of me, but I hope they didn’t.”
“No.” Spike said firmly. “Perhaps with my record, I’m not one to judge, but I don’t think it’s wrong. After what they did: bought us and …”
It was painful to think about: what they’d both been through: the thing that connected them. He wasn’t sure why he’d even brought it up. LA must be getting to him. Perhaps it was better to just try and forget it.
“Anyway, if you hadn’t been able to put them in thrall like you did, there’s no way you’d have walked out of there.” Spike shrugged and pinned on a maniacal grin. “Me? I hope demons ate their gizzards and chewed their knees off.” He touched his hand to her cheek. “And I’m right sorry I didn’t deal with them for you Gen. Would have, but I was a bit -”
“Hey! You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You’re the reason I’m here now - you and your friends.”
“You helped me too -” Spike said: “- tried to, anyway. Nearly got your head bit off for it, but you tried. Appreciate it. Thanks.”
He took another drink, knocked it back, and briefly slung an arm around her shoulders. “Made it through, didn’t we?”
“Yeah: we really did,” she said, looking up at him with a satisfied smile.
Glancing around, Spike noticed that Angel was standing apart: looking faintly pathetic, his glass half-empty and the paper crown on his head all skewiff.
“’Scuse us. Have to go have a word with His Highness now.”
He snagged an unattended glass of wine, edged his way past Lorne and David Nabbit - engaged in negotiating safe demonic hospitality packages for David’s out of town business partners - and wandered over to Angel.
“So, just between you and me, what’s all this in aid of?” Spike said quietly. “Trying to prove you’re not a sad git with no mates and fewer social skills?”
Angel looked wounded.
He must have been practising that look, because it almost had Spike convinced.
“I just wanted my team to meet you properly,” Angel insisted.
Spike didn’t believe he’d heard correctly. Had Angel really said, ‘Wanted them to meet you’?
“And Riley of course,” Angel added.
“Why?” Spike demanded, still suspicious. “And what was that about seeing more of Riley?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Angel stonewalled, rocking slightly on his heels, smug and impervious.
“Fine!”
Suddenly irritated, Spike knocked back the wine, and banged the glass down on a convenient shelf right by Angel’s head. “Have your little secrets; doesn’t bother me.”
He went and poured himself another drink, then looked around for Riley. With a pang of jealousy, he saw that his partner was still engrossed in conversation with Bullet, across the coffee table; and they looked like they were settling in for the evening.
He’d tried to be good - tried not to let it get the better of him - but now he felt an urgent need to break up the impromptu demon-hunters’ convention. Spike wandered over and hunkered down beside Riley.
“Guess you must be Gun,” he said brusquely, looking his rival for Riley’s attention in the eye. “Nice moniker.”
The man he was addressing pretended not to notice anything amiss with his tone, and met his gaze levelly.
“It’s my real name: ‘Gunn’ with two enns. I guess you must be Spike. Sorry we haven’t met earlier, but I haven’t been around much lately - my crew needed me to help with training a couple of new guys; then I got roped into some maintenance work on the armoury.”
“Sharpening bits of wood,” Spike dryly clarified, hoping to get a rise out of him.
But ‘Gunn with two enns’ was a cool customer: he raised an eyebrow, but still he didn’t bite.
“We don’t just fight vamps,” he said calmly.
“Good to know,” Spike replied, with grudging respect. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.”
He reached a hand across the coffee table to shake Gunn’s hand, but hissed in sudden pain and sent potato chips and jello-shots flying, along with Cordelia’s cross which had been lying half-hidden amongst the party debris.
Gunn quickly hid a snicker behind a cough, and Spike grimaced at Cordelia.
“Wanna be careful where you stick those things, love.”
“It’s for your own good, Spike,” she said, shrugging and retrieving her weapon. “If you ate me for real, Angel would have to kill you, and he doesn’t need that trauma. This way, everyone’s covered, see?” She thrust the cross playfully towards his face.
Spike jerked backwards. “I notice you’re not pointing that thing at Harmony!” he said a little plaintively.
“Harmony’s my friend, and she’s kosher.”
Spike grinned at the word-choice, and caught Gunn suppressing a smirk. Maybe this bloke was okay after all.
“Or Genevieve,” Spike added.
“Genevieve is a vegetarian,” Cordelia countered.
Gunn shook his head in mock despair. “All you gray area vampires are makin’ my life too complicated. Time was, I saw fangs, all I had to do was a bit of dustin’. I have to have a debate with a dude before I kill ‘em now, just in case?”
“A stranger vamps out at you, don’t hesitate,” Spike said bluntly, then dead-panned, “Or if it’s Angel.”
“Hey!” Angel said from behind him. “Shut up, Spike.”
Spike bristled.
“Don’t tell me what to do, wanker.”
The temperature in the immediate area dropped a few degrees. Beside him, Riley grew tense, and Spike put a restraining hand on his arm, then reached for another shot, not doing Angel the courtesy of turning to face him. He felt Angel squat down behind him, then almost yelped in surprise when the glass was taken out of his hand.
“Slow down, Spike,” Angel muttered. “And would you please try and show a bit of respect, even if you have to fake it? Most of these people work for me, and last time I looked, so do you.”
Well, didn’t that just take the bloody biscuit?
“Yeah, sure, Angel,” Spike said sourly, not giving a toss who heard him. “I still work for you - sending you a load of mouldy old crap and taking your money for it. Maybe next time I’ll just sit at home and buy it on E-bay, instead of riskin’ life and limb so you can take the piss.”
Though no one else had really been listening, the jagged edge to Spike’s voice quickly cut short all the other conversations in the room. Concerned and puzzled faces turned towards them.
Riley looked uneasily from one to the other. Spike understood that he was giving them the chance to work it out, but - surrounded as he was by Angel’s team - it was good to know Riley was there, if back-up were needed. It took all his nerve to hold his position with his back to Angel, not looking at him even once.
The yawning silence was broken by a brittle laugh from Angel. Cryptic but insistent, he said, “Hey; I nearly had you with that one, didn’t I, Spike?”
He rested a hand on Spike’s shoulder and squeezed slightly before levering himself up and rubbing his thighs. “’E-bay!’” he said, shaking his head.
Spike frowned, quickly sobering up. He too, got to his feet, facing Angel, studying his eyes.
“Yeah … that was a good one Peaches,” he said uncertainly.
Conversations were quietly picked up, with significant glances between the participants, still alert for trouble.
“Yeah, we laugh about it now,” Angel said. He was smiling, but his eyes were anxious.
“Yeah,” Spike said.
Of course; how could he have forgotten?
“We do, don’t we?”
When the other conversations had resumed for real, Angel steered Spike towards the kitchen, saying, “Come on; let’s get some of the good stuff.”
With a discreet jerk of his head, Spike indicated to Riley that he should follow.
~~
TBC