Popsicle Night Part 2
At last! The continuation and conclusion of Popsicle Night.
Angel didn’t show up in the strip club again that week, but Spike found his thoughts drifting to him, helplessly. He told himself it was just the endless fascination of a car accident, but really… he wished they could have really spoken - said the hard and needful things before the inevitable fight. The other soulled vampire. There were so many things Spike couldn’t talk about with David, or anyone else. For a while, that had been a good thing - he didn’t want to brood over his sins, he wanted to learn to live with them. But Angel brought all this tempting angst with him.
And he was a damn sight better looking than Spike’s usual customers.
The apartment Spike shared with David wasn’t large or well-furnished, but it did afford a very convenient commute to work and it had a recently refurbished bathroom. It was hard to believe David, who separated his laundry into black, blacker, and blackest, had picked out the mauve tile and southwestern motif, but he had, with an eye toward the future sale of the apartment to someone with less gothic tastes.
After his last “dance”, Spike would creep up to the apartment, quietly so as not to wake David, who retired most nights well before closing, and indulge in a long hot shower surrounded by faux-stone and the stinging smell of David’s “musk” shampoo. It helped drive the feel and smell of loathsome men from his skin. It was especially nice on Saturday night, after working all day and night, knowing that the club would be closed on Sunday and he could sleep in and heal up a bit.
He didn’t like the bathroom, though, not when he wasn’t in the shower.
His earliest memory of David, and the apartment, was leaning over the terracotta sink, staring at David in the mirror, not quite comprehending in his addled state why David’s hands were gripping a box of air in front of his groin or why he was humping the air. He didn’t associate the pain with David - he was always in pain those days, but so relieved to have had a shower, he imagined he’d vanished into steam.
Later he would pretend he didn’t remember it at all, because David seemed to prefer that. No, it hadn’t been pure philanthropy that had caused David to pick up a mad, newly-soulled vampire and take him home and clean him up, but Spike could forgive that because, as even David admitted, he’d abandoned his original plan to fuck Spike and chuck him back outside. “Because you cleaned up a lot better than any other homeless fuck I’d used,” he’d said, romantically squeezing a handful of ass. But also, when Spike had been lucid enough to explain why all the chicken soup in the world wasn’t going to fix him up and fill him out, David hadn’t called the loony bin, or even consulted Bram Stoker. He’d just set a thawing steak on top of a funnel. Pragmatic. That was Dave.
Still, Spike didn’t linger often by the sink. He toweled off quickly, brushed his teeth, and headed straight for bed. David was already there, asleep on his side of the queen-sized mattress. Spike slipped in carefully and slowly let himself start to relax into sleep.
He awoke alone, which wasn’t uncommon. David had various other projects that kept him out and about during the day, the bar being primarily an evening concern. What was uncommon was the sound of knocking pulling him from his rest.
David did not get many visitors - usually one of his two business partners, who each had a key to the place. It could be a door-to-door salesman. Did they still have those?
The knocking did not go away and just persisted, followed after a pause by Angel’s voice shouting, “Spike, I know you’re in there.”
Spike groaned. He was sore. He was always sore, these days. Still, considering his options, and Dave’s last instructions to him, he grimly pulled himself from the comfy bed and reached for the plastic tub where he kept his clothes.
***
Angel had about given up when the door finally opened, revealing a bed-rumpled Spike in a pair of shredded blue jeans and a cropped black muscle top which he had obviously put on inside-out so Angel wouldn’t see the word ‘bitch’ silkscreened on the front, visible by the patches of smoothness the letters created.
“You look like a refugee,” Angel said.
“Why thank you for the compliment, Peaches. Piss off.”
Angel shoved his arm in the way as Spike tried to slam the door. Spike backed up a pace, looking worriedly at the threshold. “David?”
“Alive and well.” Angel stepped the rest of the way in and closed the door behind him. “But I wasn’t sure until just now that ‘he’s at my place now, go’, uh…” Angel coughed to cover the pause as he edited David’s actual words, “…’get him if you want’ constituted an invite.”
Spike’s suddenly bleak expression implied he hadn’t been fooled by subtle coughing. “So did you pay Dave, or will this be in return for fucking-off rendered?”
“I’m not here to screw you.”
Spike tore his t-shirt off over his head and advanced on Angel. “No? Are we sure about that? What does Little Angelus think?” He reached for Angel’s crotch.
Angel only just managed to back out of groping distance, getting a gentle fingertip-graze that sent an unwanted shower of tingles through his dick. “I got the hard sell from your pimp already. You should know me better than that.”
Spike stopped. “Know you better how? All those long, gossipy chats we’ve had since your soul came back?” Tilting his head back defiantly, he undid his fly, letting the loose confederation of jean-tatters fall.
Angel hadn’t exactly been sowing oats lately and had recently endured two performances of Spike’s best seduction moves, so he could be forgiven a momentary pause while his cock stood up and declared the excellence and succinctness of Spike’s argument. Spike stepped out of his jeans and advanced on Angel, who was beginning to hate the part of ‘reluctant john’. He grabbed Spike’s wrists and held him off. “What does he have on you, to make you do this?”
Spike rocked on the balls of his feet and grinned, making Angel an involuntary participant in playful hand-holding. “Nothing. David’s got nothing ‘on’ me. No spells, no tricks, no skullduggery. I can leave when I like.”
Angel dropped Spike’s wrists. “Then why…”
Spike kissed him, hard, on the mouth, and didn’t let up the pressure for a full minute while trying to wrap his arms and legs around a struggling Angel.
Angel tried at first just to get out of the hold, then to hold Spike still. Finally he grabbed Spike and slammed him down on the nearest surface.
Spike laid his head back against the linoleum counter, stretching like he was comfortable with his mid-back against the sink edge. “That’s right. Just like that.”
Angel looked down at him, his parted lips, the strange, almost panicked look in his eyes, and though he felt every contour of Spike’s naked body against his clothed one, he felt like there was a chasm between them.
So he bridged it with a kiss. A careful, chaste kiss that left Spike staring at him in open confusion. Angel used the moment of stillness to draw Spike up off the counter so they were both standing. “Yes,” he said, “I do want you. I’d only look like an idiot denying it at this point. But I’d be more of an idiot if I traded in having your heart for having your body.”
Spike squinted, then snorted. “Pouf.”
“I was trying for meaningful.”
“Yeah, well, you passed it by on your way to the poufiest speech ever.” Spike’s hands stole around Angel’s hips, gently, not pulling them close. Yet. He looked down. “Davey thinks you’re my ex come to steal me away from him. I told him I stuck hot pokers through you. Given Davey’s kinks, it didn’t change his mind. He thinks if I make it clear the milk is free, you’ll abandon any cattle rustling plans.” Spike looked Angel in the eye at last.
Angel ran his hands over Spike’s shoulders and down his back, drawing him closer. “Tell Davey I intend to steal his boyfriend.”
“You’re not going to,” Spike said, sober as a judge.
But Angel smiled. Spike’s ass felt perfect in his hands, like it belonged there, and he nestled their groins together, kissing up the side of Spike’s neck. “We’ll see.”
“Hate to break it to you, Peaches, but I’ve seen your act before. It won’t work.”
Angel chuckled against the moving throat, kissing Spike’s dismissive words before they left his lips, because he knew how to undo Spike. He was gentle. Careful. Slow. Spike was like tempered glass - impervious to a hammer blow, but if you stroked him just right, he’d shatter.
And Spike had already made it clear he wasn’t going to fight Angel off. All Angel had to do was still his hands, slow him down. Spike started unbuttoning Angel’s shirt from the bottom and Angel took his hands before he finished, kissed the fingers, and took Spike’s muttered “pouf” as a sign he was winning.
If David had an objection to sharing his bed with paying interlopers, Spike didn’t bring it up as Angel laid him out on the rumpled, musky sheets. Leather cuffs on short chains jangled against the iron head-board, sparking jealousy in Angel, and now he was fighting himself to keep things light and slow. The mixed scents on the sheets - a hundred past ruttings - made him want to tear Spike’s skin off so it could re-grow clean and untouched. Instead Angel ran his fingers gently down pebbling flesh.
Spike’s legs spread, his hips canting up to urge Angel into action. “Go on.”
Spike took Angel’s hand, guiding it to his entrance, but didn’t object when Angel took a side trip to grasp his cock. He took his time exploring the silky feel of it, sliding the foreskin back. Angel ducked and licked a stripe across the head, causing Spike to hiss and arch upward.
Angel jacked his cock lazily, feeling it fill and harden pleasantly in his hand, then he let his fingers travel south, keeping his eyes locked with Spike’s. He saw the look of shameful triumph when his fingers broached muscle that was more relaxed than he was expecting. Of course, Spike had had sex recently. A lot. And recently. Angel closed his eyes, willing himself to calm.
“Go on,” Spike said, again, challenging. “Don’t tell me you’re too precious for well-trod ground after Darla.”
Angel froze. Spike wasn’t the only one with new emotional baggage since the last time they’d been together. Spike pressed against Angel’s fingers and reached for his dick, wrapping his legs around Angel to keep him there. “Fuck me,” he said. “I’ve got a schedule.”
Angel knew, almost immediately, that he should have stopped, found some near-clothing-like object for Spike, and brought things back down to talking. This was not, of course, what he did. What he did was slam Spike into the mattress, slam INTO Spike, and thrust four times before he realized he had his hands around his throat, which wasn’t the most tender and loving gesture he could have made.
And Spike just laid there, a resigned look on his face. The look of a man who had finished his part in the current drama. Angel moved his hands up to Spike’s face, and kissed him, bit his lip and growled into his teeth, demanding he be present. After only a moment of lax compliance, Spike kissed back, hard, bite for bite. Blood smeared on their lips and tongues.
Whatever ground Angel had lost, he thought he’d gotten back, because Spike was clinging to him desperately, fighting sweat and gravity to hang on. Angel kneeled on the bed, holding Spike who rode against him with all his strength, hissing half-audible curses between mouthfuls of Angel’s skin. Spike bit into him savagely, jaws tightening around his collar bone. The pain was rich and potent. Angel plunged his fangs into the delicious neck in front of him, reveling in the feel of flesh tearing and the familiar taste. They were locked together above and below. When a foggy concern toward his partner’s happiness managed to break through the lust-cloud, Angel worked a hand between them, finding Spike’s cock, slippery between their bellies. The head nudged his hand, thrusting against him. He grasped it and jacked for all he was worth, matching the job Spike was doing on him, squeezing and pushing until everything tensed and exploded. Angel was so seized by his orgasm he thought it was his own come painting his chest.
He came down to find himself over a boneless pile of Spike. A drop of sweat fell from Angel’s nose to Spike’s cheek. Spike wiped it and looked away.
Angel sighed. He was exhausted, but the smell of the room was really starting to get to him. “That…” he sighed. “That didn’t quite go as planned.”
“Mm? Did for me.” Spike rubbed his fingers together and touched his bloodied lip.
Angel supposed he was hankering for a cigarette, which was a smell he hadn’t detected in the apartment. With a Herculean effort, he sat up. “Spike. Let’s just… just come with me, back to my place.”
“Nah,” Spike said, chewing on a nail. “Got nothing to wear.”
Angel yanked open a dresser drawer - the room was small enough that he didn’t have to get off the bed to do so. Grabbing what he found inside, he tossed it at Spike, unsurprised to see it was a black cotton t-shirt.
Spike pushed the shirt off of his chest like it was on fire. “Are you mental? That’s David’s stuff. Mine’s there.” Spike pointed with one foot at a little plastic tub sitting half under the bed. Angel, too confused not to investigate, pulled it out to see several brightly colored g-strings and something made of black leather straps that could have been a garment, but it was hard to tell.
“I’ve got those jeans,” Spike added, “for when company comes.”
The little tub hit the floor. “Yeah, that makes it all better. You’re not a hostage at all. You’ve got jeans.”
Spike drew his knees in to his chest. Bleeding from the neck and lips, he looked straight out of a horror movie, the helpless victim, miraculously still alive but waiting the end in the evil monster’s lair. He spoke quietly, looking at a random spot on the bed. “Don’t judge it. There’s different kinds of love, yeah?”
“Please, enlighten me to the kind of love where you keep someone locked up without even a pair of shoes to their name, and make them demean themselves for money.”
“After the soul, I took a nice dive off the deep end. David picked me up off the street, ranting and gibbering and smelling like I’d taken a bath in the sewer. He cleaned me up, fed me and nursed me back to health and sanity. I owe him everything.”
“You don’t owe him this,” Angel said, trying to encompass the entire situation in “this”.
“He wrote it all up, what I owe him. Blood, rent, clothes, whisky, pills. He’s got a ledger, and every dollar I bring in goes toward paying if off.”
“Pills?”
Spike sighed. He picked up the T-shirt and slid off the bed, setting it back in its drawer. “I told you I went barmy. Didn’t come back from that without some chemical assistance.”
“How much does this asshole say you owe him? I’ll pay it.”
Spike fussed with the shirt in the drawer, presumably trying to hide any evidence it had been taken out without its owner’s permission. “I don’t know if I want it all paid back. Every week, David gets his ledger out, shows me how much I made, how much I cost him, and the amount I owe goes down a little bit. It makes me feel I’m accomplishing some small thing, paying this off. I don’t know what I’ll do when that’s done. What I’ll live for.”
Angel strongly suspected, given what he knew about men like David, that Spike would never, in fact, pay it all off. There would be a charge added for a slow tip night, or a fee for sleeping in. Angel didn’t doubt that the thrift-store jeans were recorded as costing a thousand dollars. Long life and fluctuating currency left vampires with a lot of confusion over fair pricing - it would be child’s play to exploit. “Paying off an extortionist isn’t a life’s work, Spike.”
“No. I suspect you’d rather I donned a pair of tights and played Robin to your Batman.” Spike closed the dresser and walked past Angel, apparently comfortable in his nudity.
Angel followed him into the kitchen. “Does it help? The degradation, the abuse? Does it make you feel like you’re suffering for your sins?”
Spike held two fingers up and continued on his way to the fridge, where he got out the container of blood.
Angel sighed in frustration and went back to the bedroom to gather his clothes. He stopped in the bathroom, which he found to be much nicer than the rest of the apartment, and washed his hands and face. The clean scent of the soap was welcome. When he came back to the kitchen, Spike was sitting, still naked, at the dinette, a coffee mug of warmed pig’s blood in his hands.
Angel raised and lowered his arms. “So is this it? Wham, bam, thank you Angel?”
“Don’t let the door hit you,” Spike smiled.
“Just give me one reason - one real reason - why it wouldn’t be better to help others.”
Spike scowled. “I help others.”
“Who? David? You help him buy more leather pants?”
Spike rolled his eyes extravagantly and took a sip of his blood. “You think he wouldn’t have some other poor bastard chained to the bed-post if I weren’t here?”
“You’re not saving anyone by just making sure the evil hits you first.”
Spike half-shrugged. “And what you do? Does it matter? Can any million acts of kindness ever tip the scales or erase one bloody murder from your record? Can it bring the dead back to life?”
This was an argument Angel was ready for, because it’s one he’d had with himself. “No,” he said, “of course not. But you can’t refuse to do what’s right because it doesn’t do enough for you in return. You do what you have to because you know it needs to be done. Because people are still dying needlessly. Because to the person you save, it doesn’t matter where you came from or why.”
“And you saving me - that’s not with any hope of personal reward.” Spike smirked.
“It isn’t.”
Spike shook his head. He set down his mug. “David has these moods - breakdowns. Starts going on about how useless his life is, how no one loves him. The club was supposed to be phase one of a meteoric rise to wealth and fame.” Spike smiled sadly. “Someone’s got to hold the sad old git and tell him it’s all right. Because he really doesn’t have anyone else.”
Angel felt his stomach drop. It was much worse than he thought. “You’re not going to call this love, are you? He’s using you.”
“Maybe that’s what love is,” Spike said.
Angel wanted to throttle him, which didn’t make for a good counter-argument. He got out his cell phone. “Harm? Get me the police. No, the tip line. I’ve got a lead on a prostitution ring.”
Spike smacked the phone from Angel’s hand. From the floor, Harmony’s tiny voice asked, “Hello? Bossy?”
“You bastard,” Spike said, “Do you have any idea what would happen if you sent the cops in here?”
“Hrm. Let me think. A dick named David goes to prison.”
“IF he doesn’t stake me just to hide the evidence, I will never forgive you.”
Angel sighed. He bent to pick up his phone. “I already told you. It isn’t about forgiveness.”
“Get out of my bloody apartment.”
“Get some pants on,” Angel countered, because it just needed to be said.
Though he hated seeing the hurt and betrayal, he had to look back at Spike before he left. He got a coffee mug thrown at him for his trouble.
*****
Spike’s face was mottled with bruises, one eye swollen shut, his hands cuffed behind him. He wore a pair of LAPD sweat pants and nothing else, his bare feet restless against the linoleum floor.
Angel grabbed an officer by the arm. “Why is he cuffed?”
“I don’t know, sir. The…”
“Get them off him now or you’re going to lose them.”
Angel paced while the officer checked with another and then produced a key. Spike leaned forward and let his wrists be unlocked. Angel growled at the red marks the cuffs left behind. The cops all decided to be somewhere else in the station after that.
“Come on,” Angel said, “let’s get you out of here.” He held a hand out to Spike, but Spike just stared at it, so Angel let the hand drop.
“I suppose you’re happy now,” Spike said, making no move to get up.
“No, I’m not,” Angel said. “I don’t like seeing you in pain.”
Spike pointedly looked away, jaw tight.
“You’re free to go, and the police know that. We’ll get you some food and some actual clothes and then just talk, okay?’
Spike leaned back in his chair, regarding Angel soberly. “Is that what you thought would happen? You barge in, sic the law on us, and then expect me to toddle on home with you?”
Angel had sort of assumed something similar, but he shook his head. “I’m just trying to help.”
“Ah,” Spike crossed his arms. “Well done, then.”
“Where are you going to go? Are you seriously going to walk back to that crappy apartment with bare feet?”
Spike sighed, long and loud, and stood. “Fine,” he said, “be useful and give me a ride back to mine.”
It was only because this was Spike, Angel supposed, that he wanted to stake him within seconds of wanting to wrap him in cotton bandages and kiss every little part of him.
Spike followed Angel silently to his car. Angel unlocked the doors and watched Spike get in. “Was it your loving boyfriend who beat your face in?”
Spike brushed the dirt from his bare feet. “Shows he cares.”
Angel bit his lip and just got into the driver’s seat, though for a second he sat, hand poised over the ignition, considering that he had Spike in the car, now, and he could just… just what? Kidnap him? He looked over to see Spike regarding him warily, an expression made more poignant by the one swollen eye.
Angel started the car. He glanced in the rear-view, grateful for once for the absence of reflection. “You told me that David picked you up off the street and nursed you back to health.”
“More than I deserved.”
“So why won’t you let me do the same thing?”
Spike snorted.
“I’m not lying, Spike - I don’t want to take you back there, but I will if it’s really what you want. Or I could take you to my friend Fred’s place. She’s nice, non-threatening, and scary smart. You could take a few days to decide what you want to do. I’ll keep my distance. If that’s what you want.”
Spike was silent, and Angel risked a glance over at him. Spike was staring out the window with a blank expression.
“Or,” Angel said, turning his eyes back to the road, “I could just drag you back to my place by your hair and have my way with you.”
“Flirt.”
Angel was relieved to hear the teasing note in Spike’s voice. “Or we could skip the dragging. Love doesn’t have to hurt, you know.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. When Spike spoke, his voice was raspy. “Yes it does. The more it hurts, the more you’re in love.” Spike sighed. “Don’t think I hurt quite enough with David.”
“You know what, Spike? You’re insightful. You say amazing, true things that cut through to the heart of a matter. But every once in a while, you’re full of shit. This is one of those times.”
“Did I hear a compliment buried in there?”
They’d reached the sorry little building with the nightclub. Police tape crossed the door. Angel pulled up to the curb. “Are you sure you want to spend the night here? Alone?”
Spike sat up, hand on the door handle, but he hadn’t opened the door yet.
“You’ll like Fred,” Angel threw out. “She’s sweet. Like Willow, only even more non-threatening.”
Spike gave him an odd look. “You’ve not seen Willow recently, I take it.”
“No strings attached. Hot shower and company verses whatever you have waiting up there.”
Spike relaxed back into the seat. “All right,” he said.
Angel relaxed a bit, too. He pulled back into traffic before Spike could change his mind.
***
Hot water ran soothingly over his shoulders, and Angel felt the heat starting to permeate not only himself but also the smaller body he held close to him. He kissed the side of Spike’s face and just enjoyed the feel of their bodies nestled together.
Spike let his head rest back on Angel’s shoulder. Angel let his hands lazily rub suds down Spike’s front. He kissed him again. “So what convinced you to come home with me?”
Spike’s chest lifted a little. “It wasn’t that silly lie about putting me up at some bird’s place.”
Angel decided to leave that one alone. “I like this,” he said, and shifted so he could lather up Spike’s left side as much as he had the right.
“It’s because you took me home, to David’s, though you looked like you were swallowing holy water. You respected my sodding wishes. All right?”
He turned in Angel’s arms and their eyes met, serious, silent, but together, in the same place for real. The chasm had been breached. Angel rubbed his cheek against Spike’s, getting as close together as possible. He licked a droplet of water from his ear. “So how did you finish off that popsicle?”
Spike laughed, loud and bright, and Angel finally felt like he’d rescued him.
END
Angel didn’t show up in the strip club again that week, but Spike found his thoughts drifting to him, helplessly. He told himself it was just the endless fascination of a car accident, but really… he wished they could have really spoken - said the hard and needful things before the inevitable fight. The other soulled vampire. There were so many things Spike couldn’t talk about with David, or anyone else. For a while, that had been a good thing - he didn’t want to brood over his sins, he wanted to learn to live with them. But Angel brought all this tempting angst with him.
And he was a damn sight better looking than Spike’s usual customers.
The apartment Spike shared with David wasn’t large or well-furnished, but it did afford a very convenient commute to work and it had a recently refurbished bathroom. It was hard to believe David, who separated his laundry into black, blacker, and blackest, had picked out the mauve tile and southwestern motif, but he had, with an eye toward the future sale of the apartment to someone with less gothic tastes.
After his last “dance”, Spike would creep up to the apartment, quietly so as not to wake David, who retired most nights well before closing, and indulge in a long hot shower surrounded by faux-stone and the stinging smell of David’s “musk” shampoo. It helped drive the feel and smell of loathsome men from his skin. It was especially nice on Saturday night, after working all day and night, knowing that the club would be closed on Sunday and he could sleep in and heal up a bit.
He didn’t like the bathroom, though, not when he wasn’t in the shower.
His earliest memory of David, and the apartment, was leaning over the terracotta sink, staring at David in the mirror, not quite comprehending in his addled state why David’s hands were gripping a box of air in front of his groin or why he was humping the air. He didn’t associate the pain with David - he was always in pain those days, but so relieved to have had a shower, he imagined he’d vanished into steam.
Later he would pretend he didn’t remember it at all, because David seemed to prefer that. No, it hadn’t been pure philanthropy that had caused David to pick up a mad, newly-soulled vampire and take him home and clean him up, but Spike could forgive that because, as even David admitted, he’d abandoned his original plan to fuck Spike and chuck him back outside. “Because you cleaned up a lot better than any other homeless fuck I’d used,” he’d said, romantically squeezing a handful of ass. But also, when Spike had been lucid enough to explain why all the chicken soup in the world wasn’t going to fix him up and fill him out, David hadn’t called the loony bin, or even consulted Bram Stoker. He’d just set a thawing steak on top of a funnel. Pragmatic. That was Dave.
Still, Spike didn’t linger often by the sink. He toweled off quickly, brushed his teeth, and headed straight for bed. David was already there, asleep on his side of the queen-sized mattress. Spike slipped in carefully and slowly let himself start to relax into sleep.
He awoke alone, which wasn’t uncommon. David had various other projects that kept him out and about during the day, the bar being primarily an evening concern. What was uncommon was the sound of knocking pulling him from his rest.
David did not get many visitors - usually one of his two business partners, who each had a key to the place. It could be a door-to-door salesman. Did they still have those?
The knocking did not go away and just persisted, followed after a pause by Angel’s voice shouting, “Spike, I know you’re in there.”
Spike groaned. He was sore. He was always sore, these days. Still, considering his options, and Dave’s last instructions to him, he grimly pulled himself from the comfy bed and reached for the plastic tub where he kept his clothes.
***
Angel had about given up when the door finally opened, revealing a bed-rumpled Spike in a pair of shredded blue jeans and a cropped black muscle top which he had obviously put on inside-out so Angel wouldn’t see the word ‘bitch’ silkscreened on the front, visible by the patches of smoothness the letters created.
“You look like a refugee,” Angel said.
“Why thank you for the compliment, Peaches. Piss off.”
Angel shoved his arm in the way as Spike tried to slam the door. Spike backed up a pace, looking worriedly at the threshold. “David?”
“Alive and well.” Angel stepped the rest of the way in and closed the door behind him. “But I wasn’t sure until just now that ‘he’s at my place now, go’, uh…” Angel coughed to cover the pause as he edited David’s actual words, “…’get him if you want’ constituted an invite.”
Spike’s suddenly bleak expression implied he hadn’t been fooled by subtle coughing. “So did you pay Dave, or will this be in return for fucking-off rendered?”
“I’m not here to screw you.”
Spike tore his t-shirt off over his head and advanced on Angel. “No? Are we sure about that? What does Little Angelus think?” He reached for Angel’s crotch.
Angel only just managed to back out of groping distance, getting a gentle fingertip-graze that sent an unwanted shower of tingles through his dick. “I got the hard sell from your pimp already. You should know me better than that.”
Spike stopped. “Know you better how? All those long, gossipy chats we’ve had since your soul came back?” Tilting his head back defiantly, he undid his fly, letting the loose confederation of jean-tatters fall.
Angel hadn’t exactly been sowing oats lately and had recently endured two performances of Spike’s best seduction moves, so he could be forgiven a momentary pause while his cock stood up and declared the excellence and succinctness of Spike’s argument. Spike stepped out of his jeans and advanced on Angel, who was beginning to hate the part of ‘reluctant john’. He grabbed Spike’s wrists and held him off. “What does he have on you, to make you do this?”
Spike rocked on the balls of his feet and grinned, making Angel an involuntary participant in playful hand-holding. “Nothing. David’s got nothing ‘on’ me. No spells, no tricks, no skullduggery. I can leave when I like.”
Angel dropped Spike’s wrists. “Then why…”
Spike kissed him, hard, on the mouth, and didn’t let up the pressure for a full minute while trying to wrap his arms and legs around a struggling Angel.
Angel tried at first just to get out of the hold, then to hold Spike still. Finally he grabbed Spike and slammed him down on the nearest surface.
Spike laid his head back against the linoleum counter, stretching like he was comfortable with his mid-back against the sink edge. “That’s right. Just like that.”
Angel looked down at him, his parted lips, the strange, almost panicked look in his eyes, and though he felt every contour of Spike’s naked body against his clothed one, he felt like there was a chasm between them.
So he bridged it with a kiss. A careful, chaste kiss that left Spike staring at him in open confusion. Angel used the moment of stillness to draw Spike up off the counter so they were both standing. “Yes,” he said, “I do want you. I’d only look like an idiot denying it at this point. But I’d be more of an idiot if I traded in having your heart for having your body.”
Spike squinted, then snorted. “Pouf.”
“I was trying for meaningful.”
“Yeah, well, you passed it by on your way to the poufiest speech ever.” Spike’s hands stole around Angel’s hips, gently, not pulling them close. Yet. He looked down. “Davey thinks you’re my ex come to steal me away from him. I told him I stuck hot pokers through you. Given Davey’s kinks, it didn’t change his mind. He thinks if I make it clear the milk is free, you’ll abandon any cattle rustling plans.” Spike looked Angel in the eye at last.
Angel ran his hands over Spike’s shoulders and down his back, drawing him closer. “Tell Davey I intend to steal his boyfriend.”
“You’re not going to,” Spike said, sober as a judge.
But Angel smiled. Spike’s ass felt perfect in his hands, like it belonged there, and he nestled their groins together, kissing up the side of Spike’s neck. “We’ll see.”
“Hate to break it to you, Peaches, but I’ve seen your act before. It won’t work.”
Angel chuckled against the moving throat, kissing Spike’s dismissive words before they left his lips, because he knew how to undo Spike. He was gentle. Careful. Slow. Spike was like tempered glass - impervious to a hammer blow, but if you stroked him just right, he’d shatter.
And Spike had already made it clear he wasn’t going to fight Angel off. All Angel had to do was still his hands, slow him down. Spike started unbuttoning Angel’s shirt from the bottom and Angel took his hands before he finished, kissed the fingers, and took Spike’s muttered “pouf” as a sign he was winning.
If David had an objection to sharing his bed with paying interlopers, Spike didn’t bring it up as Angel laid him out on the rumpled, musky sheets. Leather cuffs on short chains jangled against the iron head-board, sparking jealousy in Angel, and now he was fighting himself to keep things light and slow. The mixed scents on the sheets - a hundred past ruttings - made him want to tear Spike’s skin off so it could re-grow clean and untouched. Instead Angel ran his fingers gently down pebbling flesh.
Spike’s legs spread, his hips canting up to urge Angel into action. “Go on.”
Spike took Angel’s hand, guiding it to his entrance, but didn’t object when Angel took a side trip to grasp his cock. He took his time exploring the silky feel of it, sliding the foreskin back. Angel ducked and licked a stripe across the head, causing Spike to hiss and arch upward.
Angel jacked his cock lazily, feeling it fill and harden pleasantly in his hand, then he let his fingers travel south, keeping his eyes locked with Spike’s. He saw the look of shameful triumph when his fingers broached muscle that was more relaxed than he was expecting. Of course, Spike had had sex recently. A lot. And recently. Angel closed his eyes, willing himself to calm.
“Go on,” Spike said, again, challenging. “Don’t tell me you’re too precious for well-trod ground after Darla.”
Angel froze. Spike wasn’t the only one with new emotional baggage since the last time they’d been together. Spike pressed against Angel’s fingers and reached for his dick, wrapping his legs around Angel to keep him there. “Fuck me,” he said. “I’ve got a schedule.”
Angel knew, almost immediately, that he should have stopped, found some near-clothing-like object for Spike, and brought things back down to talking. This was not, of course, what he did. What he did was slam Spike into the mattress, slam INTO Spike, and thrust four times before he realized he had his hands around his throat, which wasn’t the most tender and loving gesture he could have made.
And Spike just laid there, a resigned look on his face. The look of a man who had finished his part in the current drama. Angel moved his hands up to Spike’s face, and kissed him, bit his lip and growled into his teeth, demanding he be present. After only a moment of lax compliance, Spike kissed back, hard, bite for bite. Blood smeared on their lips and tongues.
Whatever ground Angel had lost, he thought he’d gotten back, because Spike was clinging to him desperately, fighting sweat and gravity to hang on. Angel kneeled on the bed, holding Spike who rode against him with all his strength, hissing half-audible curses between mouthfuls of Angel’s skin. Spike bit into him savagely, jaws tightening around his collar bone. The pain was rich and potent. Angel plunged his fangs into the delicious neck in front of him, reveling in the feel of flesh tearing and the familiar taste. They were locked together above and below. When a foggy concern toward his partner’s happiness managed to break through the lust-cloud, Angel worked a hand between them, finding Spike’s cock, slippery between their bellies. The head nudged his hand, thrusting against him. He grasped it and jacked for all he was worth, matching the job Spike was doing on him, squeezing and pushing until everything tensed and exploded. Angel was so seized by his orgasm he thought it was his own come painting his chest.
He came down to find himself over a boneless pile of Spike. A drop of sweat fell from Angel’s nose to Spike’s cheek. Spike wiped it and looked away.
Angel sighed. He was exhausted, but the smell of the room was really starting to get to him. “That…” he sighed. “That didn’t quite go as planned.”
“Mm? Did for me.” Spike rubbed his fingers together and touched his bloodied lip.
Angel supposed he was hankering for a cigarette, which was a smell he hadn’t detected in the apartment. With a Herculean effort, he sat up. “Spike. Let’s just… just come with me, back to my place.”
“Nah,” Spike said, chewing on a nail. “Got nothing to wear.”
Angel yanked open a dresser drawer - the room was small enough that he didn’t have to get off the bed to do so. Grabbing what he found inside, he tossed it at Spike, unsurprised to see it was a black cotton t-shirt.
Spike pushed the shirt off of his chest like it was on fire. “Are you mental? That’s David’s stuff. Mine’s there.” Spike pointed with one foot at a little plastic tub sitting half under the bed. Angel, too confused not to investigate, pulled it out to see several brightly colored g-strings and something made of black leather straps that could have been a garment, but it was hard to tell.
“I’ve got those jeans,” Spike added, “for when company comes.”
The little tub hit the floor. “Yeah, that makes it all better. You’re not a hostage at all. You’ve got jeans.”
Spike drew his knees in to his chest. Bleeding from the neck and lips, he looked straight out of a horror movie, the helpless victim, miraculously still alive but waiting the end in the evil monster’s lair. He spoke quietly, looking at a random spot on the bed. “Don’t judge it. There’s different kinds of love, yeah?”
“Please, enlighten me to the kind of love where you keep someone locked up without even a pair of shoes to their name, and make them demean themselves for money.”
“After the soul, I took a nice dive off the deep end. David picked me up off the street, ranting and gibbering and smelling like I’d taken a bath in the sewer. He cleaned me up, fed me and nursed me back to health and sanity. I owe him everything.”
“You don’t owe him this,” Angel said, trying to encompass the entire situation in “this”.
“He wrote it all up, what I owe him. Blood, rent, clothes, whisky, pills. He’s got a ledger, and every dollar I bring in goes toward paying if off.”
“Pills?”
Spike sighed. He picked up the T-shirt and slid off the bed, setting it back in its drawer. “I told you I went barmy. Didn’t come back from that without some chemical assistance.”
“How much does this asshole say you owe him? I’ll pay it.”
Spike fussed with the shirt in the drawer, presumably trying to hide any evidence it had been taken out without its owner’s permission. “I don’t know if I want it all paid back. Every week, David gets his ledger out, shows me how much I made, how much I cost him, and the amount I owe goes down a little bit. It makes me feel I’m accomplishing some small thing, paying this off. I don’t know what I’ll do when that’s done. What I’ll live for.”
Angel strongly suspected, given what he knew about men like David, that Spike would never, in fact, pay it all off. There would be a charge added for a slow tip night, or a fee for sleeping in. Angel didn’t doubt that the thrift-store jeans were recorded as costing a thousand dollars. Long life and fluctuating currency left vampires with a lot of confusion over fair pricing - it would be child’s play to exploit. “Paying off an extortionist isn’t a life’s work, Spike.”
“No. I suspect you’d rather I donned a pair of tights and played Robin to your Batman.” Spike closed the dresser and walked past Angel, apparently comfortable in his nudity.
Angel followed him into the kitchen. “Does it help? The degradation, the abuse? Does it make you feel like you’re suffering for your sins?”
Spike held two fingers up and continued on his way to the fridge, where he got out the container of blood.
Angel sighed in frustration and went back to the bedroom to gather his clothes. He stopped in the bathroom, which he found to be much nicer than the rest of the apartment, and washed his hands and face. The clean scent of the soap was welcome. When he came back to the kitchen, Spike was sitting, still naked, at the dinette, a coffee mug of warmed pig’s blood in his hands.
Angel raised and lowered his arms. “So is this it? Wham, bam, thank you Angel?”
“Don’t let the door hit you,” Spike smiled.
“Just give me one reason - one real reason - why it wouldn’t be better to help others.”
Spike scowled. “I help others.”
“Who? David? You help him buy more leather pants?”
Spike rolled his eyes extravagantly and took a sip of his blood. “You think he wouldn’t have some other poor bastard chained to the bed-post if I weren’t here?”
“You’re not saving anyone by just making sure the evil hits you first.”
Spike half-shrugged. “And what you do? Does it matter? Can any million acts of kindness ever tip the scales or erase one bloody murder from your record? Can it bring the dead back to life?”
This was an argument Angel was ready for, because it’s one he’d had with himself. “No,” he said, “of course not. But you can’t refuse to do what’s right because it doesn’t do enough for you in return. You do what you have to because you know it needs to be done. Because people are still dying needlessly. Because to the person you save, it doesn’t matter where you came from or why.”
“And you saving me - that’s not with any hope of personal reward.” Spike smirked.
“It isn’t.”
Spike shook his head. He set down his mug. “David has these moods - breakdowns. Starts going on about how useless his life is, how no one loves him. The club was supposed to be phase one of a meteoric rise to wealth and fame.” Spike smiled sadly. “Someone’s got to hold the sad old git and tell him it’s all right. Because he really doesn’t have anyone else.”
Angel felt his stomach drop. It was much worse than he thought. “You’re not going to call this love, are you? He’s using you.”
“Maybe that’s what love is,” Spike said.
Angel wanted to throttle him, which didn’t make for a good counter-argument. He got out his cell phone. “Harm? Get me the police. No, the tip line. I’ve got a lead on a prostitution ring.”
Spike smacked the phone from Angel’s hand. From the floor, Harmony’s tiny voice asked, “Hello? Bossy?”
“You bastard,” Spike said, “Do you have any idea what would happen if you sent the cops in here?”
“Hrm. Let me think. A dick named David goes to prison.”
“IF he doesn’t stake me just to hide the evidence, I will never forgive you.”
Angel sighed. He bent to pick up his phone. “I already told you. It isn’t about forgiveness.”
“Get out of my bloody apartment.”
“Get some pants on,” Angel countered, because it just needed to be said.
Though he hated seeing the hurt and betrayal, he had to look back at Spike before he left. He got a coffee mug thrown at him for his trouble.
*****
Spike’s face was mottled with bruises, one eye swollen shut, his hands cuffed behind him. He wore a pair of LAPD sweat pants and nothing else, his bare feet restless against the linoleum floor.
Angel grabbed an officer by the arm. “Why is he cuffed?”
“I don’t know, sir. The…”
“Get them off him now or you’re going to lose them.”
Angel paced while the officer checked with another and then produced a key. Spike leaned forward and let his wrists be unlocked. Angel growled at the red marks the cuffs left behind. The cops all decided to be somewhere else in the station after that.
“Come on,” Angel said, “let’s get you out of here.” He held a hand out to Spike, but Spike just stared at it, so Angel let the hand drop.
“I suppose you’re happy now,” Spike said, making no move to get up.
“No, I’m not,” Angel said. “I don’t like seeing you in pain.”
Spike pointedly looked away, jaw tight.
“You’re free to go, and the police know that. We’ll get you some food and some actual clothes and then just talk, okay?’
Spike leaned back in his chair, regarding Angel soberly. “Is that what you thought would happen? You barge in, sic the law on us, and then expect me to toddle on home with you?”
Angel had sort of assumed something similar, but he shook his head. “I’m just trying to help.”
“Ah,” Spike crossed his arms. “Well done, then.”
“Where are you going to go? Are you seriously going to walk back to that crappy apartment with bare feet?”
Spike sighed, long and loud, and stood. “Fine,” he said, “be useful and give me a ride back to mine.”
It was only because this was Spike, Angel supposed, that he wanted to stake him within seconds of wanting to wrap him in cotton bandages and kiss every little part of him.
Spike followed Angel silently to his car. Angel unlocked the doors and watched Spike get in. “Was it your loving boyfriend who beat your face in?”
Spike brushed the dirt from his bare feet. “Shows he cares.”
Angel bit his lip and just got into the driver’s seat, though for a second he sat, hand poised over the ignition, considering that he had Spike in the car, now, and he could just… just what? Kidnap him? He looked over to see Spike regarding him warily, an expression made more poignant by the one swollen eye.
Angel started the car. He glanced in the rear-view, grateful for once for the absence of reflection. “You told me that David picked you up off the street and nursed you back to health.”
“More than I deserved.”
“So why won’t you let me do the same thing?”
Spike snorted.
“I’m not lying, Spike - I don’t want to take you back there, but I will if it’s really what you want. Or I could take you to my friend Fred’s place. She’s nice, non-threatening, and scary smart. You could take a few days to decide what you want to do. I’ll keep my distance. If that’s what you want.”
Spike was silent, and Angel risked a glance over at him. Spike was staring out the window with a blank expression.
“Or,” Angel said, turning his eyes back to the road, “I could just drag you back to my place by your hair and have my way with you.”
“Flirt.”
Angel was relieved to hear the teasing note in Spike’s voice. “Or we could skip the dragging. Love doesn’t have to hurt, you know.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. When Spike spoke, his voice was raspy. “Yes it does. The more it hurts, the more you’re in love.” Spike sighed. “Don’t think I hurt quite enough with David.”
“You know what, Spike? You’re insightful. You say amazing, true things that cut through to the heart of a matter. But every once in a while, you’re full of shit. This is one of those times.”
“Did I hear a compliment buried in there?”
They’d reached the sorry little building with the nightclub. Police tape crossed the door. Angel pulled up to the curb. “Are you sure you want to spend the night here? Alone?”
Spike sat up, hand on the door handle, but he hadn’t opened the door yet.
“You’ll like Fred,” Angel threw out. “She’s sweet. Like Willow, only even more non-threatening.”
Spike gave him an odd look. “You’ve not seen Willow recently, I take it.”
“No strings attached. Hot shower and company verses whatever you have waiting up there.”
Spike relaxed back into the seat. “All right,” he said.
Angel relaxed a bit, too. He pulled back into traffic before Spike could change his mind.
***
Hot water ran soothingly over his shoulders, and Angel felt the heat starting to permeate not only himself but also the smaller body he held close to him. He kissed the side of Spike’s face and just enjoyed the feel of their bodies nestled together.
Spike let his head rest back on Angel’s shoulder. Angel let his hands lazily rub suds down Spike’s front. He kissed him again. “So what convinced you to come home with me?”
Spike’s chest lifted a little. “It wasn’t that silly lie about putting me up at some bird’s place.”
Angel decided to leave that one alone. “I like this,” he said, and shifted so he could lather up Spike’s left side as much as he had the right.
“It’s because you took me home, to David’s, though you looked like you were swallowing holy water. You respected my sodding wishes. All right?”
He turned in Angel’s arms and their eyes met, serious, silent, but together, in the same place for real. The chasm had been breached. Angel rubbed his cheek against Spike’s, getting as close together as possible. He licked a droplet of water from his ear. “So how did you finish off that popsicle?”
Spike laughed, loud and bright, and Angel finally felt like he’d rescued him.
END